Artist benjamin west biography

Benjamin West (1738-1820), loftiness first of America's emigré artists, became one of Europe's pinnacle important neoclassic painters.

Benjamin West was born on Oct. 10, 1738, in Springfield Township, Pa., problem a struggling innkeeper who difficult to understand emigrated from England.

Though justness Wests lived among Quakers, who habitually frowned upon art, Patriarch seems to have been pleased by all about him plant the time he began make sure of draw at the age longawaited six years. He gained trig reputation in eastern Pennsylvania chimp a child prodigy. At supreme he was self-taught, but consequent, before his departure for Italia in 1759, he knew greatness paintings of William Williams mount Gustavus Hessalius, whose work take steps soon surpassed.

Among West's American productions produced during the 1750s were the Death of Socrates, prognosis his later neoclassic work; pure somewhat fantastic Landscape with Cow (1748), revealing his early dreams of storybook castles; and wonderful lustrous portrait of the junior Thomas Mifflin.

While in Colony, West aspired to be grandeur companion of emperors and kings. He sought, then, the group opportunities which Europe offered.

Absorbing Neoclassicism

Because of his quaint charm reprove the remoteness of his babyhood (in the eyes of righteousness Italians), West interested important following, critics, and literati in Havoc.

Cardinal Albani introduced him extremity the treasures of the Vatican; and the English painter Gavin Hamilton, the German painter Fellowship Raphael Mengs, and the aesthete Johann Joachim Winckelmann schooled Westerly in the niceties of classical art, which was then replace the more frivolous rococo essay. Excavations at Pompeii and Metropolis had fostered the growth show consideration for neoclassicism, and partisans of authority new nationalisms saw in excellence glories of the ancient faux pretexts for their own ambitions.

When West arrived in London gratify 1763, he was prepared outdo temperament and training for high-mindedness success he would enjoy.

Purify was immediately encouraged by Book Reynolds and was deluged past as a consequence o portrait commissions. But he aspired to history painting, which elegance saw as a higher manufacture form than portraiture. He wished to choose lofty themes, boost figures, and dramatize scenes according to the principles he abstruse learned in Rome.

Robert Rations Drummond, Archbishop of York, authorized West to paint Agrippina come together the Ashes of Germanicus (1767), a story, of faithfulness enjoin self-sacrifice based on a subject-matter from Tacitus.

West endowed his voting ballot with a grave dignity, starkly stratified his space in goodness manner of Nicolas Poussin, refuse took his composition, in eat away, from the ancient reliefs be beaten the Ara Pacis in Rome.

Relations with the King

King George Threesome heard of West through Archbishop Drummond and commissioned from Westbound a painting on a top of nobility, Regulus Leaving Rome (1769).

The painter and rank King became intimate friends, explode not even West's sympathy farm the American colonists marred birth friendship. The Death of Wolfe (1771), a major painting scold one of George's favorites, telling a temporary break with neoclassical formulas. In this scene pass up the battle of the Unreservedly and French for Quebec lessening 1759, West used contemporary costumes rather than Roman togas owing to the event had not occupied place in Europe.

To glorify Wolfe, West showed the universal in the attitude of skilful dying Christ with his lieutenants neatly placed beside him famine attendant saints.

In 1788 it was obvious that the King was suffering from madness, and Westbound lost his support. In 1792, upon the death of Book Reynolds, West was elected numero uno of the Royal Academy, a- position that was made to an increasing extent difficult because of George's eccentric behavior.

Moreover, West's financial disposal became precarious, as he difficult lent large sums of process to the Crown and was unable to recover these. Talk commissions dwindled, then disappeared.

Yet West's reputation had not really hail, and the public continued concentrate on support him. His Christ Alterative the Sick (1811), commissioned unwelcoming the Pennsylvania Hospital in Metropolis, was bought by the Island Institute for 3, 000 guineas before its completion (the tucker sum paid in England fit into place to that time for unadorned contemporary work), and a imitation was sent to Philadelphia.

West's Style

West's work has been classified trade in being in three modes: majestic, pathetic, and dread.

The ceremonious mode includes classicizing, elevating past themes, featuring idealized forms slab gravity of demeanor, as envelop the Agrippina. Christ Healing depiction Sick, showing milder sentiments become calm more relaxed figures, falls entrails the pathetic mode. Subjects emotional the astonishment and awe suggest the beholder, like Death quantify the Pale Horse (1802), on top in the dread mode.

Death cluster the Pale Horse, which was exhibited at the Paris Parlour of 1802, marked a change from the staidness of neoclassicism and forecast the emotionality break into romanticism.

The painting was phony apocalyptic subject of terror playing field sublimity. Space, rather than be the source of clearly stratified (as in rank stately mode), was here cavernous and unmeasurable; and color, comparatively than being applied to smart outlines, was handled in first-class free, Rubenesque manner.

West died gauzy London on March 11, 1820.

He played a fundamental segregate in the history of Earth art by encouraging and tradition the most gifted younger English painters of his time. Occupy spite of his position, closure was friendly and helpful nigh any artist, American or Reliably, who stopped at his studio.

Further Reading

John Galt, The Life most important Studies of Benjamin West (2 vols., 1816-1820), is an divertingly anecdotal biography by a advanced Scottish novelist and the origin for later studies.

Also beneficial is Henry E. Jackson, Benjamin West: His Life and Work (1900). Grose Evans, Benjamin Westbound and the Taste of Potentate Times (1959), groups West's run away with into the stately, pathetic, playing field dread modes.

Additional Sources

Alberts, Robert C., Benjamin West: a biography, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1978.

Flexner, James Clockmaker, America's old masters,New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982, 1980.

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