(American, 1738 - 1820)
Williams, John
Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 x 42 3/4 inches (oval)
Signed and dated at lower left: “B. West PINXIT/1766”
RECORDED: Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986), p. 564, no. 715 (repro.)
EXHIBITED: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Benjamin West in Pennsylvania Collections (March 1- April 13, 1986)
From the time of his first professional work with the German Neoclassical painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) in Rome in the early 1760s, West sought fame in history painting, which encompassed historical, religious, and literary subjects presented as moral lessons. He painted comparatively few portraits. The portrait illustrated here was executed in 1766, the same year as his history painting Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (Yale Art Gallery, New Haven), which captured the attention of the English king and the rest of Europe, making it unnecessary for West to depend on portrait commissions to earn a living. The horizontal oval format of this painting and the sitter’s “Van Dyck” costume-named for the style of dress seen in the portraits by the Flemish artist Anthony Van Dyck who died in London nearly a hundred years before West was born-are distinctive. Although no biographical information on the sitter has been found, it is known that West painted portraits of his wife and mother-in-law in the same format, and presumably at the same time (although, of the three, only this portrait is signed and dated).
About the Artist
(American, 1738 - 1820)
The value placed on Benjamin West’s work has fluctuated greatly according to changing fashions over almost two hundred years, but his importance in both European and American art history cannot be denied. Although the Pennsylvania-born artist spent most of his life in London, for forty years almost every ambitious young American painter who had the chance traveled there to study with him including Rembrandt Peale and Thomas Sully. Almost all of West’s American students, most of whom then returned to the United States where they would lay the foundations for American art, remembered West’s generosity to them and conveyed their grateful recollections to their students. West’s long career and his prominent positions as the second president of the Royal Academy in London and history painter to George III made him an influential figure in the European movements of Neoclassicism and Romanticism.
From the time of his first professional work with the German Neoclassical painter Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779) in Rome in the early 1760s, West sought fame in history painting, which encompassed historical, religious, and literary subjects presented as moral lessons. He painted comparatively few portraits. In 1766, he painted his history painting Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus (Yale Art Gallery, New Haven), which captured the attention of the English king and the rest of Europe, making it unnecessary for West to depend on portrait commissions to earn a living.
