The popularity of Benjamin West owed entirely to the patronage of George III and his project for the Chapel of Revealed Religion at Windsor Castle (1780-1801). He exhibited this picture, also known as The Messiah on a White Horse, at the Royal Academy in 1804, and later claimed that the subject was conceived for the Revealed Religion project, although a larger version never materialized. The principal figure is the heroic rider of Revelations, often identified as the messiah. The painting probes the extent to which the apocalyptic sublime can introduce the grotesque without being overwhelmed by it. View Text Item

Several of the pictures bought by the Institute at the Blakeslee Sale have already been described in previous issues of the Bulletin. There remains the interesting study by Benjamin West for the large picture entitled Death on the Pale Horse, owned by the Pennsylvania Academy. The sketch shows strength and firmness, and is more pleasing and forceful in composition than the larger picture for which it was a study. The colors are subdued, being mostly shades of bronze and dull red. The subject is taken from Revelations VI, 8: "And I looked and behold a pale horse and his name that sat on him was Death and Hell followed with him, and power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword and with hunger and with death and with the beasts of the earth." The painter's conception of the text shows Death as a splendid youth seated on a white horse charging out of the sky at the head of a troup of heroic horsemen, below him crowds of human beings are fleeing from the vision, idols are falling from their pedestals, strange beasts are in the midst, and turmoil and destruction on every side.Very different is the Philadelphia picture for which this is a study. In the former we see Death appearing on the white horse in the centre of the canvas represented as a much older man with vicious face hurling lightning with both hands. Behind him are a few hideous creatures half enveloped in cloud. In the foreground are men and women fighting wild beasts or dying in agony. To the right a king upon a white charger rides from the scene.Benjamin West was born in 1738 in the Quaker village of Springfield, Pennsylvania. His biographers dwell at length on the extraordinary phenomenon of a boy, born and brought up under the conditions of that period and place, ever having developed a desire to draw. It is said that his early training was derived entirely from the Indians, from whom he learned the use of the rude pigments which they made for the adornment of their own bodies. Mr. Pennington, an early patron, provided him with his first paint box, armed with which he set out for Philadelphia at the age of eighteen. There he was able to get commissions for portraits from which he made a living. He later moved to New York, and in his twenty-second year found another patron who sent him to Rome. Many are the tales of the excitement caused in the Eternal City by the arrival of this young barbarian, the first American born artist to go to Italy. He was received with great favor and was much sought socially. He found many friends and patrons, executed numerous commissions, and was hailed as a great painter by his fellow artists. In 1768 he went to England with no intention of remaining, but the reception accorded him was so delightful and the opportunities for work proved so alluring that he sent for the lady to whom he had been engaged before leaving America, and was married and settled in London.West won favor almost immediately; in 1772 he was appointed historical painter to the King, and from that time on his commissions kept him very busy and brought him a large income. He is said to have received £20,795 for seven pictures illustrating Revealed Religion for the Oratory at Windsor, a very high price for those days. In 1768 he was one of the four artists chosen to draw up a plan for the founding of the Royal Academy, and in 1792, on the death of Reynolds, he was elected president of that society, an office which he held until 1815. It was customary for the holders of this office to be knighted, but West, being a Quaker, asked to have the ceremony omitted in his case. He died in 1820 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.West became thoroughly Anglicised, and seems to have suffered no loss of favor during the trying days of the Revolution. That his sympathies were still, to a certain extent at least, with his compatriots is evidenced by the fact that his studio was known as the American school, and that he was ever ready to assist his fellow countrymen with money and advice. His pupils included such men as Peale and Trumbull, while Stuart spent eight years in his studio and was one of his favorite pupils. West was a man of ability, but not of sufficient originality to go far beyond the painters of his time. His great prosperity and popularity made it difficult for him to free himself from the tendency to shallow repetition of classical forms which was the style among historical painters of his day. The greatest step in advance that he made was in introducing contemporary military uniforms, as in his painting of the Death of Wolfe. While this seems to us now an obvious and wholly proper arrangement, in West's day the grandeur and importance of such a scene were supposed to require the use of classical costumes.The sketch belonging to the Institute was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804. It is signed B. West, 1804.Referenced Work of Art

1. Death on the Pale Horse, by Benjamin West

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In a small settlement in the newly-founded colony of Pennsylvania, Benjamin West was born two hundred years ago. This year, the Pennsylvania Museum of Art is celebrating the bicentennial with an exhibition of his work—engravings, drawings, and over sixty paintings, three of which, the Drummond portrait group, the portrait of Lady Diana Barker, and the Destruction of the Beast, are lent by The Minneapolis Institute of Arts.West was not only a gifted painter, but unlike most artists, seemed to have had good fortune at his side from the very beginning. His family, who were Quakers, early recognized his talent; friendly Indians, runs the legend, showed him how to make pigments from plants; even the household cat helped his career by contributing fur for his brushes. And with this modest equipment he is said to have painted portraits which so impressed a Philadelphia merchant who chanced to see them that he was instrumental in arranging for the lad to meet other Philadelphians who, in their turn, were also impressed and invited him to make them a visit.In Philadelphia he met with nothing but kindness. A Mr. Wayne and a Dr. Morris were his first public patrons, the one giving him money to buy colors and canvases, and the other buying some drawings for a few shillings apiece. West never forgot them; over sixty years later he spoke of them to his biographer, John Galt, and asked that their names be most particularly recorded. A friendly interest was also shown him by another Philadelphian, a Mr. Flower, in whose house he spent some months. It was in the Flower household that he first became aware of the limitless horizons of literature. Up to then he had known few books beyond the Bible, but now the library of a “man of parts” was at his disposal, and for the first time he learned of the Greek and Roman civilizations, their poetry, and their art. The story of Socrates and his death impressed him especially, and he painted a large canvas of the latter subject that attracted a good deal of attention. Again good fortune was with him, for the Provost of the College of Philadelphia saw it and, realizing that here was a youth of great talent, at once offered, in the ungainly words of Galt, “to undertake to make him to a certain degree acquainted with classical literature; while at the same time he would give him such a sketch of the taste and character of the spirit of antiquity as would have all the effect of the regular education requisite to a painter.” Generous friends arranged for him to attend the College, and while the instruction he received there would not now be considered of a kind to help a young man make his way in the world, it never proved a barrier to his advancement, either social or artistic, and left in him an indelible preference for historic painting.By the time he was sixteen he was well launched as a portrait painter in Philadelphia and receiving five guineas a portrait. His studies in classical history had, however, instilled in him a desire to go abroad, and as a step in this direction he spent the next few years in New York, where he could ask for a portrait twice the price that Philadelphians would pay. Finally he arrived in Rome in mid-summer, 1760, and there, as Samuel Isham says, “the picturesqueness of his position as the member of a strange and fantastic religious sect come from the distant wilds of America . . . to study the fine arts was in every way calculated to arouse the interest and curiosity of the society of cosmopolitan dilletanti settled there.”In Rome, as elsewhere, he charmed and impressed everyone. He was made a member of the Academies in Florence, Bologna and Parma, and the reputation he made during his three-year sojourn in Italy was well known in England sometime before West himself arrived there, his luggage consisting principally of huge canvases commemorating scenes from the Greek and Roman classics, copies of the Old Masters, and some portraits. Three of these paintings he showed at the Spring Gardens Exhibition in 1764, and his success was at once assured.Indeed, so great was this success that he gave up all thought of returning to America, though to settle in London had not been part of his original plans. One of this new friends and admirers was Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York, who presented him to George III. The King was immensely pleased with him, though the vast canvas representing Agrippina with the Ashes of Germanicus, which he had brought with him at the Archbishop’s suggestion, did not, apparently, appeal to the royal patron. But he was sufficiently interested and impressed to give him a commission on the spot for a painting which was to tell the story of the Departure of Regulus.From this time on, except for those periods toward the end of his life when his mind was clouded, George III was the close friend and patron of the American painter. His first important commission to him was the decoration of the royal chapel at Windsor, and in 1772 he was officially appointed Historical Painter of the King. It was about this time that West created a sensation by painting a picture of the death of General Wolfe at the siege of Quebec and clothing his subjects, not in the flowing draperies of Greece or Rome, as was customary, but in the uniforms of the period. Sir Joshua Reynolds, already a close friend of West’s, remonstrated with him, saying that the picture would be a complete failure unless the figures were shown in the garments of classical heroes. The King, also, was concerned. But West was adamant. The event commemorated, he insisted, had taken place in a region of the world unknown by either the Greeks or the Romans, “and at a period of time when no such nations, nor heroes in their costumes, existed.” When it was finished, both the King and Reynolds were thoroughly won over, the latter exclaiming, it is said, “West has conquered . . . I withdraw my objections . . . I foresee that this picture will not only become one of the most popular, but occasion a revolution in art.”West, with Reynolds, was one of the four founders of the Royal Academy, and so highly was he thought of, both as an artist and a gentleman, that at the death of Reynolds, the Academy’s first president, he was elected to succeed him. He was the only American ever to hold that position.Though West married an American girl, who left Pennsylvania against her parents’ wishes to join him in London, he himself never returned to America, and died in London in 1820, aged eighty-two and active to the last.West accomplished a prodigious amount of work, all of it received at the time with exaggerated praise and little, if any, discrimination of what was good and what mediocre. After his death, however, there was a revulsion of feeling: the pendulum had swung the other way; historical and classical painting was no longer fashionable, and the ten-league canvases of his later years were pointed out as being particularly still and lifeless, and, from the aesthetic viewpoint, meaningless.Today, however, he has come back into his own. Critics, their vision clearer at a distance, can judge his worth with less passion than could his more immediate worshippers or detractors. Aside from his extraordinary skill, we realize today his historic importance and influence. He was, to quote Fiske Kimball, important “not merely as the first American artist to achieve European position,” and influential “not merely as the founder of the American school, through whose hospitable studio passed two generations of pupils from beyond the sea—Pratt and Bembridge and Peale and Stuart, Allston and Morse. Importance in the general evolution of European painting; influence not merely on British painters but on the French. Position as a pioneer of European classicism and as the founder of romanticism in figure painting.”Of the three paintings lent by the Institute to the Philadelphia bicentenary, the Drummond portrait group is the most interesting historically, since it portrays Peter and George, two sons of Archbishop Drummond, West’s first English patron, and Mary Bridget Milnes, the bride of Peter. The three are seated in a row. Mary, in the center, wearing flowing garments and high-powdered hair, points with shapely forefinger to the portrait of the Archbishop, which George, at the left, holds on his knee. George had recently entered the church, and wears the black clothes and white lappet of his profession. At the right, looking nobly bored, is Peter Drummond, in the uniform of Colonel in the Yorkshire Militia. The painting of their father, which George is holding, is a small version of the one painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1764; in it the Archbishop is wearing his official regalia as Chancellor of the Order of the Garter, and holds in his hands the Royal Purse. It is not without interest that the original portrait of the Archbishop by Reynolds was exhibited in Minneapolis some years ago. It is now owned by the City Art Museum of St. Louis.The portrait of Lady Diane Barker has a gentle, mellow quality not often seen in the work of West. It was painted in 1766, only a few years after his arrival in London, and before George III had, by his princely commissions, freed him from the necessity of portrait-painting as a livelihood. The element of repose, as well as the quiet greys and soft rose tones that predominate, mark this as being an unusually suave example of West’s painting.The third painting lent to the bicentennial exhibition is The Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet, shown on the following page. A detail of the central figure is illustrated on the cover of this Bulletin.For some time this composition was known as Death on the Pale Horse, a subject suggested by the eighth verse of the sixth chapter of Revelations. Fiske Kimball of the Pennsylvania Museum, however, has pointed out that certain verses of the nineteenth chapter furnished West with the true inspiration for this painting: “And I saw the heavens opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war . . . And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. . . . And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet, that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image.”This remarkably dynamic work, painted when West was nearing seventy, is notable not only for the red-brown tones characteristic of his vast symbolic paintings, but illustrates also the classical and romantic spirit which had such profound influence on his contemporaries and which was later discredited and vilified when Classicism and Romanticism went out of style. Byron’s apologetic reference to West as “Europe’s worst daub, poor England’s best,” does not present the poet as a discerning critic of art. Many decades were to pass, however, before that opinion was to be reversed. Today, the reputation of Benjamin West not only as an artist but as a significant landmark in American as well as European painting, is secure.The Destruction of the Beat and the False Prophet, as well as the Drummond portrait group, were purchased by the Dunwoody Fund, the former in 1915, the latter in 1931. The portrait of Lady Diana Barker was presented through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. James Ford Bell, who in 1931 included it as part of the furnishing and equipment of two rooms from Charleston, South Carolina, which they gave to the Institute in memory of James S. and Sallie M. Bell.The West Bicentennial Exhibition closes early in April. Visitors to the museum, therefore, may within a few weeks study more carefully the paintings discussed in this article.Referenced Works of Art

1. Detail from The Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet by Benjamin West (1738-1820). Lent by the Institute to the West Bicentennial Exhibition, Philadelphia.
2. The Drummond Family by Benjamin West. Painted in 1776, the year he was elected president of the Royal Academy.
3. Portrait of Lady Diana Mary Barker by Benjamin West. Painted in 1766 when the artist was twenty-eight.

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A painting of Benjamin West’s Italian period, a recent gift from the Chester Dale Collection, bring to the Art Institute a fourth and historically important example of the artist’s work. It is a portrait of the Countess of Northampton and her daughter, Lady Elizabeth Compton, done in Venice in 1762. Hitherto only four pictures have been definitely attributed to the three years West spent in Italy: the Portrait of Mr. Robinson, Cimon and Iphigenia, Angelica and Medoro, and a copy of Correggio’s St. Jerome done in Parma when the artist was en route to England. Mr. Dale’s gift of the West portrait is characteristic not only of his generosity to and his interest in American museums, but of the trend, on the part of American collectors as a whole, to share their collections with the public. This particular picture is interesting as an example of his catholic taste, and of his practice of acquiring good paintings whether or not they belong to the French Impressionist and contemporary schools that constitute such a splendid monument to his taste.The Northampton portrait, probably done on the swing around Italy recommended by Mengs to West as the best means of acquainting himself with the old masters, offers a further example of his development before his arrival in England. It is a portrait of unusual charm, both of color and composition. The Countess, clothed in a voluminous blue mantle opening over a flame-red robe, is seated in an open window that looks out on a rolling landscape. Her head is bent over her daughter who sits on her lap looking out at the spectator. The debt to Raphael, whom West greatly admired, is obvious, but the simplicity of the composition, the treatment of masses, and the lack of distracting detail in costume, show the personal feeling for portraiture that marked West’s best early work.While still in America West had painted some admirable portraits, notably that of Thomas Mifflin as a Boy, now in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. But even there, while earning his living by painting likenesses and trying to save enough money for a trip to Italy, he had a hankering to be a historical painter. Already he seems to have been torn between the desire to practice an art based on nature and an art based on what he could garner from the best of the old masters. When he arrived in Rome in 1760, where he was received with an interest and adulation of extraordinary proportions, admiration for the antique was at its height. It was at the suggestion of Mengs that West made a tour of Italy to study the works of the great Venetians, Correggio, Carracci, and others. Thereafter he was to return to Rome and paint a historical composition by which his talent might be judged by the Romans.Before he could undertake this journey, however, West had a nervous collapse occasioned, apparently, by the excitement of seeing and doing too much in Rome. He returned to Leghorn for a rest amid quieter surroundings, went back to Rome to finish his studies there, but was forced to return again to Leghorn, where an infected foot caused him to remain in close confinement for almost a year.When West had recovered from his long and painful illness, he set out on his travels with a Mr. Matthews. In Venice, where he painted the Northampton portrait, he was particularly interested in Titian’s use of color. After prolonged observation he arrived at what he believed to be the secret of Titian’s style. It was of little use to him, however, and color remained one of the weakest points of his work.The tour completed, West returned once more to Rome, where he painted the historical compositions suggested by Mengs. These were the Cimon and Iphigenia and the Angelica and Medoro which he later took with him to England. They were received with great acclaim by the Roman critics, and West was further honored by being made a member of the Academy, not only of Rome, but of Florence, Bologna, and Parma also.Thus it was that he arrived in England, in August, 1763, with a reputation already well established. In London, as in Rome, he had the good luck to meet the right people without delay, among them Reynolds and Wilson. It was at their suggestion that he submitted three pictures to the Spring Gardens Exhibition in 1764: the two historical paintings he had done in Rome, and a portrait of General Moncton. West’s paintings had an immediate success; a success that is the more to be wondered at because appreciation of painting in England was then at an ebb so low that artists were generally considered beneath actors in the social scale.West’s welcome to London was so flattering and full of such promise that he decided to settle in England for life. He might have regretted his decision had the Archbishop of York not taken him under his wing. Admired as his paintings were, they did not at first find a ready sale. If the Archbishop had not secured for him the patronage of the King, George III, his career might have been far different.Like West, Robert Hay-Drummond, Archbishop of York, believed that historical painting was the only worthy style in which a painter might work, and he endeavored to secure an annuity for the artist. He failed, and West continued to do portraits, probably because they were the one type of painting in which the English dared to invest at the time. The portrait of Lady Diana Mary Barker, reproduced on page 97, illustrates his general style of feminine portraiture at this period. It was done in 1766, and is in the suave, sentimental manner then in demand. It will be observed that West has here succumbed to the English convention of elaborate detail in the painting of the costume; a quality which is missing in the Northampton portrait.In 1767 West painted a picture of Agrippina with the Ashes of Germanicus for the Archbishop, and it was this picture that was instrumental in securing his presentation to the King. The Archbishop described the painting so eloquently to the King that West was commanded to bring his picture to the palace so that His Majesty might see it. George III was so impressed by it that he immediately gave West a commission for a painting of the Departure of Regulus.From that time forward, except toward the end of his life when his mind became unbalanced, George III was the close friend and patron of West. West’s first important commission was the decoration of the Royal Chapel at Windsor. In 1722 he was officially appointed Historical Painter to the King. The appointment set the seal of royal approval on a departure West had made in the painting of the Death of General Wolfe during the previous year. Instead of clothing his subjects in the flowing draperies of Greece and Rome, as was customary in historical paintings of the period, West had put them in contemporary uniforms. This flouting of tradition created a major sensation, but West persisted in his ides despite the remonstrances of all his friends and fellow artists. When the picture was finished it was generally agreed that he had been right in breaking with tradition, and the painting became one of his most admired works.West’s close association and friendship with the King, which remained unbroken throughout the Revolutionary War, encouraged him to present an idea which he, Reynolds, and some other artists had been contemplating: the founding of the Royal Academy. The King became actively interested in the project and the Academy was established in 1768 with Sir Joshua Reynolds as its first president. When he died, he was succeeded by West, the only American ever to hold the office.West’s prestige in England was, indeed, phenomenal. He accomplished a prodigious amount of work, yet he always had time to give advice and instruction to the young American artists who flocked across the Atlantic to his studio. Among them were Charles Wilson Peale, Trumbull Ralph Earl, Pratt, Allston, and Morse. He continued his work in portraiture despite the fact that he relished it little. One of the best of his portraits is that of Peale, done about 1768. He did several others, among them likenesses of the King, the Queen, and members of the Drummond family. One of the latter, acquired by the Art Institute in 1931, is reproduced above. It depicts Peter Auriol Drummond, third son of West’s patron, his bride, Mary Bridget, and George William Drummond, the sixth son of the Archbishop. The three are seated, looking at a portrait of their father to which Mrs. Drummond points with her right hand. It has been suggested that the portrait, done by Reynolds in 1764, was included in this painting to honor the memory of the Archbishop, who died in 1776, the year this group was painted. In the grace and adroitness with which he has managed a somewhat awkward composition, West displays the skill in arrangement so notable in many of his historical paintings.It was in the painting of these historical works that West found his greatest inspiration and pleasure. During the period preceding his appointment as Historical Painter to the King, he painted a series of historically important canvases other than those commissioned by the Archbishop and George III. Among then were Pulades and Orestes, The Oath of the Young Hannibal, Hector Taking Leave of Andromache, and the Death of Epaminondas. However stale and spiritless they seem today, they anticipated and contributed to the final development of the classical school in France. West’s love of the antique, which probably dated from his introduction to Dufresnoy’s De Arte Graphica when a young man, had become even more profound after his visit to Italy. He believed in the beautiful and noble sentiments expressed in his historical canvases, and he believed that others believed them too. Obviously they did, for his work was extravagantly esteemed during his lifetime.Yet West himself was to swing away from classicism and anticipate the French in still another movement—romanticism. When he went to Paris after the Peace of Amiens in 1802 to see the works of art with which Napoleon had enriched the French nation, he took with him one of his most important romantic works, Death on the Pale Horse. This canvas, now in the Pennsylvania Museum of Art, is a smaller version of the picture painted in 1796. In this painting, with its turbulent movement, its romantic approach, and its fiery treatment, West was sounding a note that was not to reach full pitch until the works of Géricault and Delacroix burst upon the French public almost a quarter of a century later. In the Salon of 1802, dominated by serene, cool works of the classical school, West’s painting must have seemed like a boisterous interloper. But it heralded the flood of romanticism that was later to sweep Europe.The romantic treatment and turbulent spirit that characterize Death on the Pale Horse are to be observed in the Institute’s painting of The Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet, painted in 1804. For many years this picture was considered to be one of the preliminary sketches for Death on the Pale Horse. In his article on Benjamin West au Salon de 1802—La Mort sur le Cheval Pâle, published in the Gazette des Beaux Arts for June, 1932, Fiske Kimball of the Pennsylvania Museum of Art identified it as The Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1804. The subject was suggested by certain verses in Revelation, chapter XIX:“And I saw the heavens opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. . . . And I saw the beast, and the kings of the earth, and their armies, gathered together to make war against him that sat on the horse, and against his army. And the beast was taken, and with him the false prophet, that wrought miracles before him, with which he deceived them that had received the mark of the beast, and them that worshipped his image. These both were cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone.”This dynamic work, painted when West was nearing seventy, was among those which most appealed to his contemporaries. Today his historical and romantic paintings are less highly regarded than his portraits, which he considered the least of his efforts. They impress the modern observer as theatrically exaggerated and absurd, but so do the early films of Lillian Gish, which were lauded as great art not so many years ago, and so may Picasso’s great Guernica mural appear to the world of a hundred years hence. Fortunately for West, and his place in the history of American painting, he did not wholly give up portraiture, for it is in his portraits that one finds the greatest interest and merit today.Referenced Works of Art

1. The Countess of Northampton and Her Daughter, Lady Elizabeth Compton. Painted by Benjamin West in Venice in 1762
   Gift from the Chester Dale Collection
2. Portrait of Lady Diana Barker by Benjamin West
   Painted in 1766. Gift from Mr. and Mrs. James Ford Bell
3. The Drummond Family by Benjamin West. Painted in 1776, the year West was elected president of the Royal Academy. Dunwoody Fund
4. The Destruction of the Beast and the False Prophet
   Painted by Benjamin West in 1804. Dunwoody Fund

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