ARTISTS.
CANOVA.—CHANTREY.—SALVATOR ROSA.—BENJAMIN WEST.
If a rude image of the South Sea islanders be compared with one
of Chantrey’s sculptures, or a Chinese picture with some perfect
performance of Raffaelle or Claude, what a world of reflection
unfolds itself on the countless steps taken by the mind, from
its first attempt at imitating the human form, or depicturing a
landscape, to the periods of its most successful effort in statuary
or painting. The first childish essay of a great artist, compared
with one of the masterpieces of his maturity, calls up kindred
thoughts. How often must the eye re-measure an object; how often
retrace the direction or inclination of the lines by which a figure
is bounded; what an infinite number of comparisons must perception
store up in the memory, as to the resemblance of one form to another;
what repeated scrutiny must the judgment exercise over what most
delights the ideal faculty, till the source of delight—the harmony
arising from combination of forms—be discovered and understood; and
how unweariedly must the intellect return, again and again, to these
its probationary labours, before the capability for realising great
triumphs in Art be attained.
Doubtless, the mind of a young artist, like the mind under any
other process of training, exercises many of these acts with little
self-consciousness; but observation and comparison have, inevitably,
to be practised, and their results to be stored up in the mind,
before the hand can be directed and employed in accurate delineation
and embodiment of forms. Without diligence in this training, the
chisel of Chantrey would have failed to bring more life-like shapes
from a block of marble than the knife of a Sandwich islander carves
out of the trunk of a tree; and the canvas of Claude would have
failed as utterly to realise proportion, and sunlight, and distance,
as a piece of porcelain figured and coloured by a native of China.
As it is in the elaboration of Literature’s most perfect products
so it is in Art: into the mind his images must be taken; there they
must be wrought up into new combinations and shapes of beauty or of
power; and from this grand repository the statuary or painter, like
the poet, must summon his forms anew, evermore returning, dutifully,
to compare them with Nature and actual life, and sparing no effort to
clothe them with the attribute of veri-similitude.
Need it be argued, then, that without _perseverance_ the world
would have beheld none of the wonders of high Art? If the mind, by
her own mysterious power, have, first, to pencil the forms of the
outward upon her tablets within; if she have, then, a greater work of
combination and creation to perform, ere a statue or a picture of the
ideal can be realised; if the hand, in a word, can only successfully
carve, limn, and colour, from the pattern laid up in the wealth of
the trained and experienced mind, how absolute the necessity for
perseverance to enrich and perfect that mind which is to direct
the hand! That neglect of this evident truth has marked the lives
of unsuccessful artists may, too often, be seen in the records of
them: while the deepest conviction of a duty to obey its dictates
has distinguished the world’s most glorious names in painting and
sculpture. Let us glance at the steps taken by a few of these,
in their way to _triumphs_; not unheedful, meanwhile, how their
exhibition of the great moral quality of perseverance enabled them to
trample on the difficulties of actual life, as well as to overcome
obstacles in their progress to perfect art.
ANTONIA CANOVA,
The greatest of modern sculptors, was born in a mud-walled cabin of
an Alpine valley within the Venetian territories; and remained in the
care of Pasino, his grandfather, who was a stone-cutter, till his
twelfth year. Pasino, evermore employing enticement and tenderness
rather than compulsion began to instruct the child in drawing, as
soon as his little hand could hold a pencil; and even taught him
to model in clay at an early age. At nine years old, however, he
was set to work at stone-cutting; and, thenceforward, his essays in
art were but pursued as relaxations. Yet his boyish performances
were sufficiently remarkable to attract notice from the chief of
the patrician family of Falieri, for whom Pasino worked. This
nobleman took young Canova under his patronage, and placed him with
Toretto, a sculptor. His new preceptor was not very liberal in his
instructions; but the young genius secretly pursued his high bent,
and one day surprised Toretto by producing the figures of two angels
of singular beauty. His yearnings after excellence, at this period,
grew vast; but were indefinite. He often became disgusted with what
he had done; and to fitful dreams of beauty in Art succeeded moods of
despair; but he invariably returned to his models, imperfect as he
perceived them to be, and resolved to labour on from the point of his
present knowledge up to the mastery he coveted.
[Illustration: ANTONIA CANOVA]
On the death of Toretto, in Canova’s fifteenth year, Falieri removed
the aspiring boy to Venice. He was lodged in his patron’s palace;
but was too truly a man, in spite of his youth, to brook entire
dependence on another, and formed an engagement to work during
the afternoons for a sculptor in the city. “I laboured for a mere
pittance, but it was sufficient,” is the language of one of his
letters. “It was the fruit of my own resolution; and, as I then
flattered myself, the foretaste of more honourable rewards—for I
never thought of wealth.” Under successive masters, Canova acquired
a knowledge of what were then held to be the established rules of
sculpture, but made no important essay, except his Eurydice, which
was of the size of nature, and had “great merit” in the estimation
of his patron, although Canova himself thought not so highly of it.
Indeed, his genius was preparing to break away from the mannerism
of his instructors almost as soon as it was learnt. The works of
Bernini, Algardi, and other comparatively inferior artists, were then
taken for models rather than the Apollo, the Laocoon, the Venus, or
the Gladiator—the transcendent remains of ancient statuary. “The
unaffected majesty of the antique,” observes Mr. Mernes, Canova’s
English biographer, was then “regarded as destitute of force and
impression.” And as for Nature, “her simplicity was then considered
as poverty, devoid of elegance or grace.” Nature, therefore, was not
imitated by this school of sculptors; but, in the critical language
of one of their own countrymen, she was but “translated according to
conventional modes.” Canova spurned subjection to the trammels of
corrupt taste; and, after deep thought, his resolve was taken, and he
entered on a new and arduous path. He thenceforth “took Nature as the
text, and formed the commentary from his own elevated taste, fancy,
and judgment.”
The exhibition of his Orpheus, the companion-statue to his Eurydice,
in his twentieth year, gave commencement to Canova’s success and
reputation, and proved the devotion with which he had applied himself
to the study of the anatomy of life, to whatever he observed to
be striking in the attitudes of living men, in the expression of
their countenances, in “the sculpture of the heart.” (_Il scolpir
del cuore_), as he so beautifully termed it. His style was foreign
to prevailing false taste; but it was so true to Nature that its
excellence won him general admiration.
Rome, the great capital of Art, naturally became the theatre of his
ambition at this period; and, soon after his twenty-third birthday,
he enters on his career in the Eternal City, under the patronage of
the Venetian ambassador, obtained through Falieri’s friendship. With
rapture he beheld a mass of marble, which had cost what would equal
sixty-three pounds sterling, arrive at the ambassador’s palace, as an
assurance that he would have the material for accomplishing a great
work he had devised. Yet, with an overawed sense of the perfection he
now saw in the remains of ancient sculpture, and believing himself
deficient in the conception of ideal beauty, he studied deeply and
worked in secret, shutting himself up in a room of the ambassador’s
palace, after each daily visit to the grand galleries. His Theseus
and Minotaur was, at length, shown; and he was considered to have
placed himself at the head of living sculptors.
Ten successive years of his life, after this triumph, were
devoted to funeral monuments of the Popes Clement the Fourteenth
(Ganganelli), and Clement the Twelfth (Rezzonico). “They were,”
says his biographer, “years of unceasing toil and solicitude, both
as the affairs of the artist did not permit of having recourse to
the assistance of inferior workmen, and as he meditated technical
improvements and modes of execution unknown to contemporaries. Much
valuable time was thus lost to all the nobler purposes of study,
while the conducting from their rude and shapeless state to their
final and exquisite forms such colossal masses was no less exhausting
to the mind than to the body. The method, however, which was now
first adopted, and subsequently perfected, not only allowed, in
future, exclusive attention to the higher provinces of art, but
enabled this master to produce a greater number of original works
than any other of modern times can boast.” These observations show
Canova to have been one of the noblest disciples of perseverance;
slighting the readier triumphs he might have won, by exerting his
skill with the customary appliances, he aimed to invent methods
whereby gigantic works in art might be more readily achieved, both by
himself and his successors: he prescribed for himself the work of a
discoverer, and he magnanimously toiled till he succeeded.
Canova’s most perfect works were, of course, accomplished in his
full manhood. These were his Cupid and Psyche, Venus, Perseus,
Napoleon, Boxers, and Hercules and Lichas: creations which have made
so truthfully applicable to his glorious genius the immortal line of
Byron:
“Europe, the world, has but one Canova.”
Titles of honour were showered on him during his latter years; among
the rest that of “Marquis of Ischia;” but he esteemed all of them as
inferior to the triumph of his advocacy for the restoration of the
precious works of ancient art to Italy. He was commissioned by the
Pope for this undertaking, and his great name will be imperishably
united with the memory of its success.
To all who are commencing the struggle of life the moral course of
Canova demands equally close imitation, with his persevering zeal
in the attainment of artistic excellence. He ever refused pecuniary
dependence; subjected himself to great disadvantages in carrying
out his designs, rather than submit to such dependence; and when a
pension of three thousand crowns was conferred upon him, towards the
close of his career, he refused to apply any portion of it to his
own gratification of a personal kind, and systematically devoted it,
yearly, to premiums for young competitors in art, instruction of
scholars in painting and sculpture, and pensions for poor and decayed
artists. Young reader, let the words of Canova, on his death-bed,
sink deeply into your mind, that they may actuate your whole life as
fully and nobly as they actuated his own:—“First of all we ought to
do our own duty; but—_first of all_!”
CHANTREY,
[Illustration: CHANTREY]
The most eminent of our sculptors, was another noble example of
successful perseverance. From a boy, accustomed to drive an ass
laden with sand into Sheffield, he rose to the highest honours of an
exalted profession; a large proportion of the persons of rank and
distinction in his own time sat to him for busts and statues: he was
knighted, and, like Canova, left considerable wealth at his death,
to be devoted through future time to the encouragement of Art. His
father, who was a small farmer in the neighbourhood of Sheffield,
wished to place him with a grocer or an attorney; but, at his own
urgent desire, he was apprenticed with a carver and gilder in that
town. An engraver and portrait-painter, perceiving his devotion
to Art, gave him some valuable instruction; but his master did
not incline to forward his favourite pursuits, fearing they would
interfere with his duties as an apprentice. Young Chantrey, however,
resolved not to be defeated in his aims, and hired a room for a few
pence a week, secretly making it his studio. His apprenticeship to
the carver and gilder having expired, he advertised in Sheffield to
take portraits in crayons; and two years afterwards announced that he
had commenced taking models from the life. Like Canova, but untaught,
he began to model in clay when a child; and, at two-and-twenty, he
thus began to realise his early bent. Yet patronage was but scanty at
Sheffield, and he successively visited Dublin, Edinburgh, and London,
working as a modeller in clay. But neither in these larger arenas of
merit did he immediately succeed according to his wish. Returning to
Sheffield, he modelled four busts of well-known characters there as
large as life, one of them being the likeness of the lately-deceased
vicar. This was a performance of such excellence that he was offered
a commission, by a number of the deceased clergyman’s friends, to
execute a monument to the same reverend personage for the parish
church. Chantrey had never yet lifted chisel to marble; and it,
therefore, required all the courage which consciousness of genius
alone could give to undertake such a task. It was the great turning
point of his life. He accepted the commission, employed a marble
mason to rough-hew the block, set about the completion himself, and
finished it most successfully. Thenceforward his course was open
to the excellence he displayed in giving life-like expression to
historic portraits, as in his marble statue of Watt in Westminster
Abbey, and his bronze statue of Pitt in Hanover Square; and, above
all, in infusing poetry into marble, as in his exquisite sculpture of
the Lady Louisa Russell at Woburn Abbey, and his unsurpassed group,
“the Sleeping Children,” in Lichfield cathedral.
[Illustration: Sleepin children]
In the lives of the great Michael Angelo himself, of Benvenuto
Cellini, and others, may also be found inspiring records of the
tameless and tireless energy which has secured to us many of the
great triumphs of sculpture. Our limits demand that we devote the
remainder of a brief chapter to a glance at the struggles of painters.
SALVATOR ROSA,
[Illustration: SALVATOR ROSA]
One of those high names which are everlasting monuments of the
success with which true genius bids defiance to the hostilities of
poverty and envy might be claimed, with pride and fondness, by either
of the sister arts of Poetry and Music, were it not that his greatest
triumphs were won in Painting. The wildness and sublimity of his
canvas had their types in the scenery of his birth-place—the ancient
and decayed villa of Renella, within view of Mount Vesuvius, and near
to Naples. His father was a poverty-stricken artist, and descended
from a family to whom poverty and painting had been heirlooms for
generations. Determined to avert the continuance of this inauspicious
union of inheritances in the life of his child, he took counsel
with his wife, and they resolved to dedicate him to the service of
the Church. He was, accordingly, taken to the font in the grand
church pertaining to the “Monks of the Certosa,” and piously named
“Salvatore,” as a sign and seal of the religious life to which his
parents had vowed to devote him. But the method they took to bind
him down to religious lessons was not wise, though their meaning was
no doubt good; and the boyish Rosa often became a truant, wandered
away for days among the rocks and trees, and frequently slept out in
the open air of that beautiful climate. His worship of the sublime
scenery with which he thus became familiar was soon evinced in the
fidelity of numerous sketches of picturesque he drew upon the walls
of one of the rooms in the large old house his father inhabited.
Unchecked by the reprehension of his parents, who dreaded nothing
more than the event of their child becoming an artist, he one day
entered the monastery of the Certosa, with his burnt sticks in his
hand—his only instruments of design—and began, secretly and silently,
to scrawl his wild sketches upon such vacant spaces as he could find,
on walls that abounded in the most splendid decorations of gold
and vermilion and ultra-marine. The monks caught him at his daring
labour, and inflicted upon him a severe whipping; but neither did
this subdue his thirst to become an artist.
The perplexity of Salvator’s parents was now very great, and they
saw no chance of restraining the wayward spirit of their boy but in
confiding him to other tutelage; not reflecting that he had displayed
talents which it was peculiarly in their own power to direct and
foster into a perfection, the result of which might have been their
own relief and their child’s happiness. He was, at length, sent to a
monastic school; and “Salvatoriello,” the nickname his restlessness
and ingenious caprices had gained him, was thenceforth clad in
the long gown of a monk, in common with his young schoolfellows.
Repulsive as confinement might prove to his vehement disposition, it
was at this period that his mind received the solid culture which
enabled it to produce claims to literary distinction at a future
time. So long as his lessons were confined to Homer, Horace, and
Sallust, he manifested no disquiet in his restraint; but when the
day came that he must enter on the subtleties of the scholastic
philosophy, all his youthful rebelliousness against the forced and
injudicious religious tasks imposed on him by his own parents rose
up, and he was expelled the school of the monastery for contumacy.
The grief of his father and mother, at beholding their boy, in his
sixteenth year, thus sent back in disgrace to his indigent home, may
be easily conjectured. Yet this heavier disaster does not, in the
slightest degree, appear to have opened their eyes, as to the want
of judgment they had displayed in their child’s training: the mother
grew increasingly passionate in her desire that “Salvatoriello”
should be a churchman; and the father resolved, let the cast-out
schoolboy take whatever stamp he might, he should not, by his
parents’ help, become a painter.
The occurrence of his eldest sister’s marriage to Francanzani, a
painter of considerable genius, opened, in another year, the way
for Salvator’s instruction in the art to which nature so strongly
inclined him. He had already essayed his powers in poetry and music,
having composed several lyrics, and set them to airs dictated by his
own imagination, feeling, and taste. These were great favourites with
the crowds of Naples, and were daily sung by the women who sat to
knit in the sunshine. His devotion to the composition of canzonets
was, however, ardently shared with the novel lessons of the studio,
as soon as the house of his sister’s husband was opened to him for
an asylum from the harshness of his parental home. To the teaching
of Francanzani he speedily added the copying of nature in the wilds
of his truant childhood: and often, when he returned from the
mountains with his primed paper full of sketches, his teacher would
pat him on the shoulder encouragingly, and say, “Rub on, rub on,
Salvatoriello—that is good!” The great painter often related to his
friends, in the after days of his fame, what energy he had derived
from those simple words of friendly approbation.
Having learnt the elements of his profession, the young Rosa set out
to take his _giro_, according to the custom of all young painters at
that period. He did not, however, take his way through the cities of
Italy most famous for their galleries of Art, like other youthful
artists; but yielding to the bent of his natural genius struck up,
adventurously, into the mountains of the Abruzzi and the wilds of
Calabria. Here he was taken prisoner by banditti, and suffered
great hardships. Whether he escaped from them, or was, in the end,
liberated, is not clear; but when he returned to Naples, his mind was
full of the wondrous pictures of wild volcanic and forest scenery,
and striking forms and features of mountain robbers, which he,
forthwith, began to realise.
New and more severe difficulties than he had ever yet had to
encounter fell to his lot, at his return. His father died in his
arms; a few days after, his brother-in-law, Francanzani, was
overwhelmed with poverty, and Salvator was left to struggle for
the support of his mother and sisters. Yet his strong spirit did
not sink. He laid aside music and poetry, and although too poor to
purchase canvas, began to depict his wild conceptions on primed
paper; and, at night, used to steal out and sell his sketches to some
shrewd Jew chapman for a vile price. His gains were pitiful, but he
strove, by redoubled industry, to swell their amount for a sufficient
supply of the family’s necessities.
An accident served to bring into notice the genius whose high merit
had hitherto met with no public recognition. Lanfranco, the artist
who, with the courtly Spagnuoletto, shared the patronage of the rich
in Naples, stopped his equipage, one day, in the “Street of Charity,”
and called for a picture to be brought to him which arrested his
eye in the collection of one of the _rivendotori_, or second-hand
dealers. It was a masterly sketch of “Hagar in the Wilderness,” and
the obscure name of “Salvatoriello” was subscribed at the corner of
it. Lanfranco gave orders that all sketches which could be found
bearing that name should be bought for him. Rosa immediately raised
his prices; but, although this high acknowledgment of his merit
brought him the acquaintance of several influential names in his
profession, he was speedily so deeply disgusted with the jealousy and
envy of others, that he strapped all his fortune to his back, and at
the age of twenty set out on foot to seek better treatment at Rome.
There he studied energetically, worshipping, above all, the kindred
genius of Michael Angelo; but meeting with a renewal of neglect,
and taking a fever from the malaria, once more returned to Naples.
The misery in which his family was plunged was still greater than
at his departure; and another period of keen life-combat followed.
This repeated struggle did not depress him; but it gave his mind
that bitter tendency which he afterwards displayed in his poetical
“Satires.”
At twenty-four, under the humble patronage of a domestic of the
Cardinal Brancaccia, he again went to Rome; and through the
friendship of the same plain acquaintance had a large and lonely
apartment provided for him, as a studio, in the cardinal’s palace.
Dependence nevertheless revolted his lofty spirit, and he again
returned to Naples, but engaged to send his pictures to his friend
for public exposure in Rome. His “Prometheus” was the first of his
pictures exhibited at one of the annual shows in the Pantheon, and
the public voice adjudged it to be the greatest. He obeyed a renewed
invitation to Rome, but it was still to meet with disappointment.
The next carnival furnished his versatile genius with an occasion
for winning, by humorous stratagem, the attention denied to his
more sterling merit. He put on a mask, and played the charlatan
and _improvisatore_ in the public streets, among a crowd of such
exhibitors as abound in Rome at such seasons; but soon eclipsed them
all by the splendour of his wit. Curiosity was raised to the highest
pitch, at the close of the carnival, respecting the identity of this
unequalled exhibitor; and when he was proclaimed to be the painter of
the “Prometheus” the admiration was unbounded. Salvator, now, for
some successive months, gave himself up to conversaziones, wherever
invited; and there, by his wit, his lute, and canzonettes, paved the
way for his greater acceptance as a painter.
Jealousy, in that age of corrupt patronage and jealous artists, still
pursued him; but his genius, thenceforth, rose above all opposition.
His landscapes were in every palace, and he soon rose to affluence.
Yet the remainder of his life was chequered with difficulties into
which the vehemence of his nature perpetually plunged him. That
nature was unsubduable amidst all vicissitudes. The magnificent
creations of his “Socrates swallowing Poison,” “Purgatory,” “Prodigal
Son,” “St. Jerome,” “Babilonia,” and “Conspiracy of Catiline,”
with an almost innumerable catalogue of lesser pieces, flowed from
his pencil, during a life alternately marked by devotion to each
of the sister Arts, and, during one portion of it, to political
contest—for he flew to Naples, with all the ardour of patriotism,
and joined Masaniello, in his sincere but short-lived effort to
rescue his countrymen from a crushing despotism. His participation
in the celebrated fisherman’s conspiracy placed him in danger of the
Inquisition on his return to Rome; but, on retiring to Florence, he
became the favourite of the Grand Duke, Cosmo the Third, and entered
on a career of opulent success, which attended him to the end of life.
The life-passages of Salvator Rosa, by injudicious thwarting of his
nature, were rendered thorny beyond those of the great majority of
men, and the amazing versatility of his talents, combined with
almost volcanic ardour of spirit, defied common rules; but the
strength of his judgment so completely gave him the victory over
influences that might have destroyed him, as to lead him to seek
the memorable “Triumphs of Perseverance” he secured by his supreme
devotion to that Art, in which there is reckoned no greater name for
sublimity and originality, and none of greater general excellence
than those of Raffaelle and Michael Angelo. Let the brief sketch of
Salvator Rosa be compared with the much more “even tenor” of the life
of another, that it may be seen how clearly, in spite of contrast,
many of the same valuable lessons are deducible from it.
BENJAMIN WEST,
[Illustration: BENJAMIN WEST]
An American Quaker by birth, was the youngest of a family of ten
children, and was nurtured with great tenderness and care; a prophecy
uttered by a preacher of the sect having impressed his parents with
the belief that their child would, one day, become a great man.
In what way the prophecy was to be realised they had formed to
themselves no definite idea; but an incident, which occurred in young
West’s sixth year, led his father to ponder deeply as to whether
its fulfilment were not begun. Benjamin, being left to watch the
infant child of one of his relatives while it was left asleep in the
cradle, had drawn its smiling portrait, in red and black ink, there
being paper and pens on the table in the room. This spontaneous
and earliest essay of his genius was so strikingly truthful that it
was instantly and rapturously recognised by the family. During the
next year he drew flowers and birds with pen and ink; but a party
of Indians, coming on a visit to the neighbourhood, taught him to
prepare and use red and yellow ochre and indigo. Soon after, he heard
of camel-hair pencils, and the thought seized him that he could make
use of a substitute, so he plucked hairs from the tail of a black
cat that was kept in the house, fashioned his new instrument, and
began to lay on colours, much to his boyish satisfaction. In the
course of another year a visitant friend, having seen his pictures,
sent him a box of colours, oils, and pencils, with some pieces of
prepared canvas and a few engravings. Benjamin’s fascination was now
indescribable. The seductions presented by his new means of creation
were irresistible, and he played truant from school for some days,
stealing up into a garret, and devoting the time, with all the
throbbing wildness of delight, to painting. The schoolmaster called,
the truant was sought, and found in the garret by his mother. She
beheld what he had done; and instead of reprehending him fell on his
neck and kissed him, with tears of ecstatic fondness. How different
from the training experienced by the poor, persecuted and tormented
“Salvatoriello!” What wonder, that the fiery-natured Italian
afterwards drew human nature with a severe hand; and how greatly
might his vehement disposition have been softened, had his nurture
resembled that of the child of these gentle Quakers!
The friend who had presented him with the box of colours some time
after took him to Philadelphia, where he was introduced to a painter,
saw his pictures, the first he had ever seen except his own, and
wept with emotion at the sight of them. Some books on Art increased
his attachment to it; and some presents enabled him to purchase
materials for further exercises. Up to his eighteenth year, strange
as the facts seem, he received no instruction in painting, had to
carve out his entire course himself, and yet advanced so far as to
create his first historical picture, “The Death of Socrates,” and
to execute portraits for several persons of taste. His father,
however, had never yet assisted him; for, with all his ponderings
on the preacher’s prophecy, he could not shake off some doubts
respecting the lawfulness of the profession of a painter, to which
no one of the conscientious sect had ever yet devoted himself. A
counsel of “Friends” was therefore called together, and the perplexed
father stated his difficulty and besought their advice. After deep
consideration, their decision was unanimous that the youth should be
permitted to pursue the objects to which he was now both by nature
and habit attached; and young Benjamin was called in, and solemnly
set apart by the primitive brethren for his chosen profession. The
circumstances of this consecration were so remarkable, that, coupled
with the early prophecy already mentioned, they made an impression
on West’s mind that served to strengthen greatly his resolution for
advancement in Art, and for devotion to it as his supreme object
through life.
On the death of his affectionate mother he finally left his father’s
house, and, not being yet nineteen, set up in Philadelphia as a
portrait-painter, and soon found plenty of employment. For the
three or four succeeding years he worked unremittingly, making his
second essay at historic painting within that term, but labouring
at portraits, chiefly with the view of winning the means to enable
himself to visit Italy. His desire was at length accomplished, a
merchant of New York generously presenting him with fifty guineas as
an additional outfit, and thus assisting him to reach Rome without
the uneasiness that would have arisen from straitness of means in a
strange land.
The appearance of a Quaker artist of course caused great excitement
in the metropolis of Art; crowds of wonderers were formed around him;
but, when in the presence of the great relics of Grecian genius,
he was the wildest wonderer of all. “How like a young Mohawk!” he
exclaimed, on first seeing the “Apollo Belvidere,” its life-like
perfection bringing before his mind, instantaneously, the free
forms of the desert children of Nature in his native America. The
excitement of little more than one month in Rome threw him into a
dangerous illness, from which it was some time before he recovered.
He visited the other great cities of Italy, and also painted and
exhibited two great historical pictures, which were successful, ere
the three years were completed which he stayed in that country. He
would have returned to Philadelphia; but a letter from his father
recommended him first to visit England.
West’s success in London was speedily so decided, that he gave up all
thoughts of returning to America. For thirty years of his life he was
chiefly employed in executing, for King George the Third, the great
historical and scriptural pictures which now adorn Windsor Palace
and the Royal Chapel. After the abrupt termination of the commission
given him by the King, he continued still to be a laborious painter.
His pictures in oil amount to about four hundred, and many of
them are of very large dimensions and contain a great number of
figures. Among these may be mentioned, for its wide celebrity,
the representation of “Christ healing the Sick,” familiar to every
visitor of the National Gallery. If polished taste be more highly
charmed with other treasures there, the heart irresistibly owns the
excellence of this great realisation by the child of the American
Quaker. He received three thousand guineas for this picture, and his
rewards were of the most substantial kind ever after his settlement
in England. He was also appointed President of the Royal Academy,
on the death of Sir Joshua Reynolds, and held the office at his own
death, in the eighty-second year of his age.
Though exposed to no opposition from envy or jealousy at any time of
his career, and though encouraged in his childish bent, and helped by
all who knew him and had the power to help him, without Perseverance
of the most energetic character Benjamin West would not have
continued without pattern or instruction to labour on to excellence,
nor would he have sustained his prosperity so firmly, or increased
its productiveness so wondrously.
[Illustration: Decoration]