CHAPTER III.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 mindunder 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 withoutperseverancethe 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 experiencedmind, 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 totriumphs; 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.
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 hispatronage, 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.
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.” Canovaspurned 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 eachdaily 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, accomplishedin 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.”
“Europe, the world, has but one Canova.”
“Europe, the world, has but one Canova.”
“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
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 inHanover 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.
Sleeping 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
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 andsublimity 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 sleptout 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 produceclaims 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 ofthe 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 hisgiro, 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, andSalvator 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 therivendotori, 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 arenewal 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 andimprovisatorein 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 admirationwas 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 versatilityof 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
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 theroom. 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 toexecute 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 uneasinessthat 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 widecelebrity, 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.