Benjamin West, John Galt, and the biography of 1816

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

Perhaps such questions have seemed difficult to raise about an indispensable source of information for West's youth, despite the transparent fable it presents. In Galt's account, nature inspired West and served as his true teacher. The writer underscored the point in a remark following his account of how West was taught by Indians to make paints: "The mythologies of antiquity furnish no allegory more beautiful; and a Painter who would embody the metaphor of an Artist instructed by Nature, could scarcely imagine any thing more picturesque than the real incident of the Indians instructing West to prepare the prismatic colours." (13) Galt's story of the American innocent had a powerful, if curiously underac knowledged, effect on West's reputation, rehabilitating him as an American artist. That may not have been precisely, or at any rate wholeheartedly, West's intent. Over the course of his professional life, his readiness to be considered American proved inconsistent. Publicly, and for good reason, he was capable of nearly complete denial, a posture laid bare in the pre-Galt biographical accounts that West endorsed. This essay explores his apparent change of heart and the role in that turnabout played by a writer who was, it appears, something more than an amanuensis to the famous artist.

An Insistent Englishman

Lucky timing, modest talent, and nerve: these were West's advantages at the outset of his career in England. For a while it seemed possible to believe that West--heralded as a "long expected, wish'd for Stranger"--might become "a great Painter, the first in his walk our Country [that is, Great Britain] has produced." (14) The bar was not set terribly high. As one writer acknowledged in 1773, simply being "one of our first History Painters" qualified West as "one of our first Painters: for History Painting is universally acknowledged to be the noblest branch of the art." (15) By 1788, though few could deny that West had "dedicated [his] life, to inform future times of the heighth of the British School of History," the durability of his reputation as a painter seemed in question. (16) Even so, his privileged relationship with George III kept West at the forefront of British art, his stature greatly augmented by his unanimous election to head the Royal Academy in 1792.

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

West's prominence made him a ready target. In "Ode to the Academic Chair, on the Election of Mr. West to the Presidency," the satirist "Peter Pindar" (John Wolcot) took aim at both king and painter:

  I like West's works--he beats the Raphael school--
  I never like'd that Reynolds--'twas a fool--
  Painted too thick--a dauber--'twon't, 'twon't pass--
  West, West, West's pictures are smooth as glass:
  Besides, I hated Reynolds, from my heart
  He thought that I knew naught about the art.
  West tells me that my taste is very pure--
  That I'm a connoisseur, a connoisseur:
  I like, I like, I like the works of West. (17)