West, Benjamin
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- West, Benjamin
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(1738 - 1820), painter, b. Springfield, Philadelphia; left America 1760; settled in London 1763; exh. SA 1764 - 8, RA 1769 - 1819; PRA 1792.
1760 - 3 [dep.Delaware 12 Apr. 1760] Leghorn (27 Jun. 1760), Rome (10 Jul. - 20 Aug.), Leghorn, Rome (late autumn 1760 - summer 1761), Leghorn (c.Jul. - Nov.), Florence (Nov. 1761 - Aug. 1762), Bologna, Parma, Mantua, Verona, Padua, Venice, Florence (by Jan. 1763), Rome (Jan. - May), Florence (c.1 Jun.), Leghorn (Jun.), Parma, Genoa, Turin [London 20 Aug. 1763]
Benjamin West was the first American artist to visit Italy and he was allegedly an object of curiosity throughout his stay. Cardinal Albani assumed he must be a savage, and thirty carriages accompanied him on his first visit to the Belvedere, where he compared the Apollo with a young Mohawk warrior. But he was not the only American traveller in Italy and perhaps he subsequently exaggerated the impact of his arrival. West had set out from Philadelphia in 1760 'profoundly sensible ... that he could not hope to attain eminence in his profession, without inspecting the great master-pieces of art in Europe'.1 His journey was principally sponsored by William Allen, the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, and his brother-in-law Governor James Hamilton, together known as 'the magistracy of Philadelphia'.
West sailed with William's son John Allen and nephew Joseph Shippen in April 1760, and landed at Leghorn on 27 June. He was received by the merchants Jackson and Rutherfurd, who were familiar with American trade. Robert Rutherfurd was to be particularly protective of West and soon furnished him with letters of introduction to Cardinal Albani in Rome. While Allen and Shippen remained in Leghorn to sort out their mercantile affairs, West went straight to Rome, arriving on 10 July. Besides the near-blind Cardinal Albani, he met Thomas Robinson (later 2nd Baron Grantham) who immediately introduced him into society, including the Abb? Grant, Daniel Crespin and the antiquarian Joseph Wilcocks. West painted Robinson's portrait (untraced) which was much admired by Nathaniel Dance, while Thomas Jenkins thought it was by Mengs, who was also painting Robinson at that time. Mengs, who became (in his own words) West's favourite master, advised him to visit Florence, Bologna, Parma and Venice and then return to Rome 'and paint an historical compositon', the reception of which should determine his future course. Batoni, by contrast, received him loftily, allowing him to watch him paint as a suitable reward for having travelled three thousand miles.
A rheumatic fever was to hamper West throughout his stay in Italy. On 20 August 1760, on doctor's advice, he returned to Leghorn, where he was cared for by Rutherfurd, and by John Dick, the British consul. But he was soon able to return to Rome where he joined the classes held by Mengs at the Capitoline Academy, and resumed copying classical statuary and works by Michaelangelo and Raphael. In September Shippen and Allen told him that John Murray, the British resident at Venice, wanted West to provide him with a picture showing the costume of an American Indian, and West duly painted the Savage taking leave of his Family (Royal Coll. of Surgeons, London) in which the pose of the Indian is that of the Apollo Belvedere. He made his first copies for his American sponsors, of a Sibyl by Mengs and of Domenichino's Cumaean Sibyl (which he called St Cecilia; both now Ferens AG, Hull); the pictures had arrived at Philadelphia by May 1762. West had apparently painted two more portraits by 1761, of his compatriot and fellow traveller John Allen (priv. coll.) and of Captain Charles Medows (Thoresby Hall, Notts.) executed for John Dick. As his reputation grew, William Allen in Philadelphia approved further allowances: 'from all accounts he is likely to turn out a very extraordinary person in the painting Way', he wrote to his banker David Barclay in London on 19 August 1761; 'and it is a pity such a Genius should be cramped for want of a little Cash'.
By the summer of 1761 the rheumatic pains recurred and West had returned to Leghorn. He spent four months in Rutherfurd's house, before Rutherfurd arranged, through Horace Mann, to have him examined by Dr Nannoni at Florence. Four times the doctor operated on an abcess on his ankle, the last occasion in February 1762. On 11 May 1762 West wrote from Florence to Shippen (then back in Philadelphia) saying how he had already been 'near fore Months in a most deplorable Condition Lodged in a House over against the Palazzo Pitti without being able to stir out to see anything'. Horace Mann had been extremely attentive and had sent English travellers to him, amongst them the Duke of Grafton who had ordered a copy of the Madonna della sedia, which West subsequently had to decline. West slowly recuperated, a specially constructed table by his bed enabling him to draw. That summer he began three more copies for his Philadelphia patrons. The first was the Mengs Holy Family belonging to Lord Cowper, which he completed 'in about two months ... nothing but such a study after Mings could have made me go through with so large a copy, and in so short a time', he later told Shippen (London, 1 September 1763). He finished a second copy, of the so-called Annibale Carracci Venus lamenting Adonis from the Corsini Palace, and had laid in a third, of Titian's Venus of Urbino in the Uffizi, when a fire in the Uffizi (12 August 1762) put an end to his progress. The last two remain untraced today, but the Holy Family is in the Ferens AG, Hull. West then met the antiquary James[?] Matthews, until recently an executive in the firm of Jackson and Rutherfurd, with whom he determined to undertake the tour of northern Italy first suggested by Mengs. At the same time West received still further credit from Allen; 'we have such an extraordinary account of Mr West's Genius in the painting way', he wrote to Barclay on 10 October 1762, 'that we venturre to afford him these Supplies, and for his Incouragement to take it out in Copies'.
Thus, secure financially and with further letters of introduction from Rutherfurd, West and Matthews set off for Lombardy. At Bologna West copied by stealth Guido Reni's SS Peter and Paul in the Sampieri Palace,2 and at Parma Correggio's Holy Family with S Jerome, which he left unfinished as he proceeded to Mantua, Verona, Padua and Venice. There West painted two portraits. The first, of Lady Northampton and her infant daughter (Bass Museum of Art, Miami Beach) - the composition derived from Raphael's Madonna della sedia - 'gained great applause', as Rutherfurd told Shippen, and the second was of John Murray, for whom West had already produced the Savage taking leave of his Family; the portrait is now untraced. He met Richard Dalton, George III's Librarian, who ordered him to paint a small composition for the King and further suggested they should meet in Rome and go together to England (an arrangement Dalton subsequently had to cancel). West returned to Florence and finished his copy of Titian's Venus in January 1763,3 before returning to Rome.
There he painted the Cimon and Iphigenia for George III and a pendant, Angelica and Medoro. These were the history pictures which Mengs had originally advised him to attempt on his return to Rome, and they earned him the reputation of being 'the American Raphael'; they were exhibited in London in 1764 but are now untraced. In 1763 he also copied Guido Reni's Herodias from the Corsini Palace (Ferens AG, Hull). He met and encouraged the young Angelica Kauffman, who had just arrived in Italy, and they drew each other's portraits (her drawing of West inscribed drawn in Rome ... 1763 is now in the NPG).
West's father then suggested that since the war between France and England was over, he should return home via England. West was initially uncertain, but Crespin encouraged him to accompany the Scottish dilettante William Patoun back to England and the two eventually set off in May 1763. They reached Florence on about 1 June and West then spent three days in Leghorn bidding farewell to his friends and supervising the packing and dispatch of his copies to Philadelphia. West and Patoun went on to Parma, where both completed copies of the Correggio St Jerome (untraced). West was elected to the Academy and, during an audience at Court, he kept his hat on, quaker-fashion, throughout the ceremony, to the dismay of the courtiers and the delight of the Duke. West had already been elected to the Academies at Florence and Bologna. West and Patoun then left Italy through Genoa and Turin; on 20 August they reached England where West was to remain for the rest of his life.
According to his earliest biographer, John Galt, West was not impressed with Italy; he lamented the theocratical despotism and political tyranny; moral energy was subsiding; 'the country was covered with ruins, and the human character in ashes'. Only those places where trade was established - Turin, Genoa, Leghorn and Venice - preserved some community of feeling, and the little republic of Lucca provided 'a perfect exception to the general degeneracy of the country'.
1. See E.P. Richardson, Pennsylvania Mag., 102[1978]: 3 - 26. Erffa/Staley, 14 - 23, 33, 441 - 8, 486, 529, 537 - 40, and Galt, West, 1:84 - 149. Letters in the Shippen, Burd and Hubley MSS, Hist. Soc.of Pennsylvania (Rutherfurd, 22 Apr. and 21 Jun. 1763; and from William Allen and West). 2. Morgan Jnl., 76 - 7. 3. Borroni 1987, 146 (1, 7 Jan. 1763).