The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West, Esq.

Mr. West was much surprised at this communication: but, upon interrogating Mr. Wyatt as to his authority, he found that it was not from the King; and he afterwards discovered that the orders were given at Weymouth by the Queen, the late Earl of Roslyn being present. What was the state of His Majesty's health at that time is now a matter of historical curiosity; but this extraordinary proceeding deserves particular notice. It rendered the studies of the best part of the Artist's life useless, and deprived him of that honourable provision, the fruit of his talents and industry, on which he had counted for the repose of his declining years. For some time it affected him deeply, and he was at a loss what steps to take; at last, however, in reflecting on the marked friendship and favour which the King had always shown him, he addressed to His Majesty a letter, of which the following is a copy of the rough draft, being the only one preserved: I give it verbatim: -

"The following is the Substance of a Letter I had the honour of writing to His Majesty, taken at Weymouth, by the conveyance of Mr. James Wyatt.

"To the King's Most Excellent Majesty.

"Gracious Sire, Newman St. Sept. 26. 1801.

"On the fifteenth of last month Mr. Wyatt signified to me Your Majesty's pleasure, – 'That the pictures by me now painting for His Majesty's chapel at Windsor, should be suspended until further orders.' I feel it a duty I owe to that communication, to lay before Your Majesty, by the return of Mr. Wyatt to Weymouth, a statement of those pictures which I have painted to add to those for the chapel, mentioned in the account I had the honour to transmit to Your Majesty in 1797 by the hands of Mr. Gabriel Mathias. Since that period I have finished three pictures, began several others, and composed the remainder of the subjects for the chapel, on the progress of Revealed Religion, from its commencement to its completion; and the whole arranged with that circumspection from the Four Dispensations, into five-and-thirty compositions, that the most scrupulous amongst the various religious sects in this country, about admitting pictures into churches, must acknowledge them as truths, or the Scriptures fabulous. Those are subjects so replete with dignity, character, and expression, as demanded the historian, the commentator, and the accomplished painter, to bring them into view. Your Majesty's gracious complacency and commands for my pencil on that extensive subject stimulated my humble abilities, and I commenced the work with zeal and enthusiasm. Animated by your commands, gracious Sire, I renewed my professional studies, and burnt my midnight lamp to attain and give that polish at the close of Your Majesty's chapel, which has since marked my subsequent scriptural pictures. Your Majesty's known zeal for promoting religion, and the elegant arts, had enrolled your virtues with all the civilized world; and your gracious protection of my pencil had given to it a celebrity throughout Europe, and spread a knowledge of the great work on Revealed Religion, which my pencil was engaged on, under Your Majesty's patronage: it is that work which all Christendom looks with a complacency for its completion.

"Being distinguished by Your Majesty's benignity at an early period as a painter, and chosen by those professors highly endowed in the three branches of the fine arts to fill their highest station, and sanctioned by Your Majesty's signature in their choice; – in that station, I have been, for more than ten years, zealous in promoting merit in those three branches of art, which constitutes the views of Your Majesty's establishment for cultivating their growth. The ingenious artists have received my professional aid, and my galleries and my purse have been open to their studies and their distresses. The breath of envy, nor the whisper of detraction, never defiled my lips, nor the want of morality my character, and, through life, a strict adherer to truth; a zealous admirer of Your Majesty's virtues and goodness of heart, the exalted virtues of Her Majesty the Queen, and the high accomplishments of others of Your Majesty's illustrious family, have been the theme of my delight; and their gracious complacency my greatest pleasure and consolation for many years, with which I was honoured by many instances of friendly notice, and their warm attachment to the fine arts.

"With these feelings of high sensibility, with which my breast has ever been inspired, I feel with great concern the suspension given by Mr. Wyatt to the work on Revealed Religion, my pencil had advanced to adorn Windsor-Castle. If, gracious Sire, this suspension is meant to be permanent, myself and the fine arts have to lament. For to me it will be ruinous, and, to the energetic artist, in the highest branches of his professional pursuits-a damp in the hope of more exalted minds, of patronage in the refined departments in painting. But I have this in store, for the grateful feeling of my heart, that, in the thirty-five years by which my pencil has been honoured by Your Majesty's commands, a great body of historical and scriptural compositions will be found in Your Majesty's possession, in the churches, and in the country. Their professional claims may be humble, but they have been produced by a loyal subject of Your Majesty, which may give them some claim to respect, similar works not having been attained before in this country by a subject; and this I will assert as my claim, that Your Majesty did not bestow your patronage and commands on an ungrateful and a lazy man, but on him who had a high sense of Your Majesty's honours and Your Majesty's interests in all cases, as a loyal and dutiful subject, as well as servant, to Your Majesty's gracious commands; and I humbly beg Your Majesty to be assured that

"I am,

"With profound duty,

"Your Majesty's grateful

"BENJAMIN WEST."

To this letter Mr. West received no answer; but on the return of the Court to Windsor, he went to the Castle, and obtained a private audience of the King on the subject, by which it appeared that His Majesty was not at all acquainted with the communication of which Mr. Wyatt was the bearer, nor had he received Mr. West's letter. However, the result of the interview was, that the King said, "Go on with your work, West: go on with the pictures, and I will take care of you."

This was the last interview that Mr. West was permitted to enjoy with his early, constant, and to him truly royal patron; but he continued to execute the pictures, and in the usual quarterly payments received the thousand pounds per ann.. till His Majesty's final superannuation, when, without any intimation whatever, on calling to receive it, he was informed that it had been stopped, and that the intended design of the chapel of Revealed Religion was suspended.

This was a severe stroke of misfortune to the Artist, now far advanced in life, but he submitted to it with resignation. He took no measures, nor employed any influence, either to procure the renewal of the quarterly allowance, or the payment of the balance of his account. But being thus cast off from his best anchor in his old age, he still possessed firmness of mind to think calmly of his situation. He considered that a taste for the fine arts had been greatly diffused by means of the exhibitions of the Royal Academy, and the eclat which the French had given to pictures and statues by making them objects of national conquest; and having thus lost the patronage of the King, he determined to appeal to the public. With this view he resolved to paint several large pictures; and in the prosecution of this determination, he has been amply indemnified for the effects of that poor economy that frustrated the nation from obtaining an honourable monument of the taste of the age, and the liberality of a popular king.

Without imputing motives to any party concerned, or indeed without being at all acquainted with the circumstances that gave rise to it, I should mention that a paper was circulated among the higher classes of society, in which an account was stated of the amount of the money paid by His Majesty, in the course of more than thirty years, to Mr. West. In that paper the interval of time was not at all considered, nor the expense of living, nor the exclusive preference which Mr. West had given to His Majesty's orders, but the total sum; – which, shown by itself, and taken into view without any of these explanatory circumstances, was very large, and calculated to show that Mr. West might really indeed do without the thousand pounds a-year. In order, however, to place this proceeding in its true light, I have inserted in the Appendix an account of the works executed and designed by Mr. West for the King, and the prices allowed for them as charged in the audited account, of which the King himself had approved.

Independent of the relation which this paper bears to the subject of these memoirs, it is a curious document, and will be interesting as such, as long as the history of the progress of the arts in this country excites the attention of posterity.

I have now but little to add to these memoirs. But they would be deficient in an important event, were I to omit noticing the death of Mrs. West, which took place on the 6th of December, 1817. The malady with which she had been afflicted for several years smoothed the way for her relief from suffering, and softened the pang of sorrow for her loss. She was in many respects a woman of an elevated character; and her death, after a union of more than half a century, was to her husband one of those irreparable changes in life, for which no equivalent can ever be obtained.

The last illness of Mr. West himself was slow and languishing. It was rather a general decay of nature, than any specific malady; and he continued to enjoy his mental faculties in perfect distinctness upon all subjects as long as the powers of articulation could be exercised. To his merits as an artist and a man I may be deemed partial, nor do I wish to be thought otherwise. I have enjoyed his frankest confidence for many years, and received from his conversation the advantages of a more valuable species of instruction, relative to the arts, than books alone can supply to one who is not an artist. While I therefore admit that the partiality of friendship may tincture my opinion of his character, I am yet confident that the general truth of the estimate will be admitted by all who knew the man, or are capable to appreciate the merits of his works.

In his deportment, Mr. West was mild and considerate: his eye was keen, and his mind apt; but he was slow and methodical in his reflections, and the sedateness of his remarks must often in his younger years have seemed to strangers singularly at variance with the vivacity of his look. That vivacity, however, was not the result of any peculiar animation of temperament; it was rather the illumination of his genius; for when his features were studiously considered, they appeared to resemble those which we find associated with dignity of character in the best productions of art.

As an artist, he will stand in the first rank. His name will be classed with those of Michael Angelo and Raphael; but he possessed little in common with either. As the former has been compared to Homer, and the latter to Virgil, in Shakspeare we shall perhaps find the best likeness to the genius of Mr. West. He undoubtedly possessed, but in a slight degree, that peculiar energy and physical expression of character in which Michael Angelo excelled, and in a still less that serene sublimity which constitutes the charm of Raphael's great productions. But he was their equal in the fulness, the perspicuity, and the propriety of his compositions. In all his great works the scene intended to be brought before the spectator is represented in such a manner that the imagination has nothing to supply. The incident, the time and the place, are there as we think they must have been; and it is this wonderful force of conception which renders the sketches of Mr. West so much more extraordinary than his finished pictures. In the finished pictures we naturally institute comparisons in colouring, and in beauty of figure, and in a thousand details which are never noticed in the sketches of this illustrious artist. But although his powers of conception were so superior, – equal in their excellence to Michael Angelo's energy, or Raphael's grandeur, – still in the inferior departments of drawing and colouring, he was one of the greatest artists of his age; it was not, however, till late in life that he executed any of those works in which he thought the splendour of the Venetian school might be judiciously imitated.

At one time he intended to collect his works together, and to form a general exhibition of them all. Had he accomplished this, the greatness and versatility of his talents would have been established beyond all controversy; for unquestionably he was one of those great men, whose genius cannot be justly estimated by particular works, but only by a collective inspection of the variety, the extent, and the number of their productions.

On the 10th of March Mr. West expired without a struggle, at his house in Newman Street, and on the 29th he was interred with great funeral pomp in St. Paul's Cathedral. An account of the ceremony is inserted in the Appendix.

Appendix No. I

The Account: of Pictures painted by Benjamin West for His Majesty, by his Gracious Commands, from 1768 to 1780. A True Copy from Mr. West's Account Books, with their several Charges and Dates.

From the year 1769 the whole of the above pictures to 1779 were painted and paid for by His Majesty through the hands of Mr. R. Daulton and Mr. G. Mathias.

1780. At this period His Majesty was graciously pleased to sanction my pencil with his commands for a great work on Revealed Religion, from its commencement to its completion, for pictures to embellish his intended New Chapel in Windsor Castle. I arranged the several subjects from the four Dispensations. His Majesty was pleased to approve the arrangement selected, as did several of the Bishops in whose hands he placed them for their consideration, and they highly approved the same.

His Majesty then honoured me with his commands, and did at that time, the better to enable me to carry it into effect, order his deputy privy-purse, Mr. G. Mathias, to pay me one thousand a year by quarterly payments, which was regularly paid as commanded; and the following are the subjects which I have painted from the Four Dispensations, for the Chapel, of various dimensions.

Painted for His Majesty's State Rooms in Windsor Castle the following Pictures from the History of Edward III.

This is a true statement of the numbers of pictures, cartoons, and drawings of designs, and sketches of scripture subjects, as well as historical events, British as well as Greek, Roman, and other nations, with which I had been honoured by the King's commands, from 1768, to 5th January 1801, to paint for His Majesty; and the charges I made for each was by him most graciously acknowledged, when my account was audited and allowed by Mr. G. Mathias, His Majesty's privy purse, who settled for debtor and creditor the whole amount between the above dates.

Benjamin West.

Appendix No. II

A Catalogue of thee Works of Mr. West.

Regulus.

Hanibal.

Epaminondas.

Bayard.

Wolfe, the first and second.

Cyrus and the King of Armenia with his Family, captives.

Germanicus and Segestus with his Daughter, captives.

The Apotheosis of Prince Alfred and Prince Octavius.

The picture of the Damsel accusing Peter.

The Queen, with the Princess Royal, in one picture.

Prince Ernest and Prince Augustus; Princesses Augusta, Elizabeth, and Mary, in one picture.

Prince William and Prince Edward, in one picture.

Prince Octavius.

The whole-length portrait of His Majesty in Regimentals, with Lord Amherst and the Marquis of Lothian on Horseback, in the back-ground.

The whole-length portrait of Her Majesty, with the fourteen Royal Children.

The same repeated.

The Battle of Cressy, when Edward III. embraced his son.

The Battle of Poitiers, when John King of France is brought prisoner to the Prince.

The Institution of the Order of the Garter.

The Battle of Nevil's Cross.

The Burgesses of Calais before Edward III.

Edward III. crossing the Somme.

Edward III. crowning Ribemont, at Calais.

St. George destroying the Dragon.

The design of our Saviour's Resurrection, painted in colours, with the Women going to the Sepulchre; also Peter and John.

The cartoon from the above design, for the east window, painted in the Collegiate Church of Windsor, on glass, 36 feet high by 28 wide.

The design of our Saviour's Crucifixion, painted in colours.

The cartoon from the above design, for the west window in the Collegiate Church, painting on glass, 36 feet by 28.

The cartoon of the Angels appearing to the Shepherds, ditto for ditto.

The cartoon of the Nativity of our Saviour, for ditto, ditto.

The cartoon of the Magi presenting Gifts to our Saviour, for ditto, ditto.

The picture, in water-colours, representing Hymen leading and dancing with the Hours before Peace and and Plenty.

The picture, in water-colours, of Boys with the Insignia of Riches.

The companion, with Boys, and the Insignia of the Fine Arts.

Genius calling forth the Fine Arts to adorn Manufactures and Commerce, and recording the names of eminent men in those pursuits.

Husbandry aided by Arts and Commerce.

Peace and Riches cherishing the Fine Arts.

Manufactory giving support to Industry, in Boys and Girls.

Marine and inland Navigation enriching Britannia.

Printing aided by the Fine Arts.

Astronomy making new discoveries in the Heavens.

The Four Quarters of the World bringing Treasures to the Lap of Britannia.

Civil and Military Architecture defending and adorning Empire.

The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise.

The Deluge.

Noah sacrificing.

Abraham and his son Isaac going to sacrifice.

The Birth of Jacob and Esau.

The Death of Jacob in Egypt, surrounded by his Twelve Sons.

Moses and Aaron before Pharaoh; their Rods turned into Serpents.

Pharaoh and his Host lost in the Red Sea, while Moses stretches his Rod over them.

Moses receiving the Law on Mount Sinai.

Moses consecrateth Aaron and his Sons to the Priesthood.

Moses showeth the Brazen Serpent to the People to be healed.

Moses shown the Promised Land from the top of Mount Pisgah.

Joshua crossing the River Jordan with the Ark.

The Twelve Tribes drawing Lots for the Lands of their Inheritance, 6 feet by 10.

The Call of Isaiah and Jeremiah, each 5 by 14.

David anointed King, 6 by 10.

Christ's Birth, 6 by 10.

The naming of John; or, the Prophecies of Zacharias, ditto.

The Kings bringing Presents to Christ, 6 by 12.

Christ among the Doctors, 6 by 10.

The Descent of the Holy Ghost on our Saviour at the River Jordan, 10 by 14.

Christ healing the Sick in the Temple, ditto.

Christ's Last Supper, 6 by 10.

Christ's Crucifixion, 16 by 28.

Christ's Ascension, 12 by 18.

The Inspiration of St. Peter, 10 by 14.

Paul and Barnabas rejecting the Jews, and receiving the Gentiles, ditto.

John called to write the Revelation, 6 by 10.

Saints prostrating themselves before the Throne of God.

The opening of the Seven Seals; or, Death on the Pale Horse.

The overthrowing the Old Beast and False Prophet.

The Last Judgment.

The New Jerusalem.

The picture of St. Michael and his Angels fighting and casting out the Red Dragon and his Angels.

Do. of the Women clothed in the Sun.

Do. of John called to write the Revelation. Do. of the Beast rising out of the Sea.

Do. of the Mighty Angel, one Foot upon Sea and the other on Earth.

Do. of St. Anthony of Padua.

Do. of the Madra Dolo Roso.

Do. of Simeon, with the Child in his arms.

A picture of a small Landscape, with a Hunt passing In the back-ground.

Do. of Abraham and Isaac going to sacrifice,

Do. of a whole-length figure of Thomas à Becket, larger than life.

Do. of the Angel in the Sun assembling the Birds of the Air, before the destruction of the Old Beast.

Four half-lengths.

The small picture of the Order of the Garter, differing in composition from the great picture at Windsor.

The picture of the Shunamite's Son raised to Life by the Prophet Elisha.

Do. of Jacob blessing Joseph's Sons.

Do. of the Death of Wolfe, the third picture.

Do. of the Battle of La Hogue.

Do. of the Boyne.

Do. of the Restoration of Charles II.

Do. of Cromwell dissolving the Long Parliament.

A small portrait of General Wolfe, when a Boy.

The Picture of the Golden Age.

The picture of St. Michael chaining the Dragon, in Trinity College, Cambridge, 15 by 8.

Do. of the Angels announcing the Birth of our Saviour, in the Cathedral Church at Rochester, 10 by 6.

Do. of the Death of St. Stephen, in the church of St. Stephen, Walbrook, 10 by 18.

Do. of the Raising of Lazarus, in the Cathedral of Winchester, 10 by 14.

Do. of St. Paul shaking the Viper off his Finger, in the chapel at Greenwich, 27 by 15.

The Supper, over the communion-table in the Collegiate Church at Windsor, 8 by 13.

The Resurrection of our Saviour, in the east window of the Collegiate Church at Windsor, 28 by 32.

The Crucifixion, in the window of ditto, 28 by 36.

The Angel announcing our Saviour's Birth, in ditto, 10 by 14.

The Birth of our Saviour, in ditto, 9 by 16.

The Kings presenting Gifts to our Saviour, in ditto, 9 by 16.

The picture of Peter denying our Saviour, in the chapel of Lord Newark.

The Resurrection of our Saviour, in the church of Barbadoes, 10 by 6.

The picture of Moses with the Law, and John the Baptist, in ditto, as large as life.

The picture of Telemachus and Calypso.

Do. of Angelica and Madora.

Do. of the Damsel and Orlando.

Do. of Cicero at the Tomb of Archimedes.

Do. of St. Paul's Conversion; his Persecution of the Christians; and the Restoration of his Sight, under the hands of Ananias, in one frame, divided in three parts.

Do. of Mr. Hope's Family, containing nine figures as large as life.

Large figures of Faith, Hope, Charity, Innocence, St. Matthew, St. Mark, St. Luke, St. John, St. Matthias, St. Thomas, St. Jude, St. Simon, St James the Major, St. Philip, St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. Bartholomew, St. James the Minor, Malachi, Micah, Zachariah, and Daniel.

Paul shaking the Viper from his Finger.

Paul preaching at Athens.

Elimas the Sorcerer struck blind.

Cornelius and the Angel.

Peter delivered from Prison.

The Conversion of St. Paul.

Paul before Felix.

Two whole-lengths of the late Archbishop of York's two eldest Sons.