?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 2,000 - $ 3,000
BENJAMIN WEST Figure Studies (Studies for Saint Michael and the Dragon).
Black chalk on laid paper, circa 1797. 228x255 mm; 9x10 inches.
Provenance: Estate of the artist; by descent; Claire Francis, descendent of Benjamin West; likely sold Christie's, London, March 14, 1967, (Francis sale); Christopher Powney, Kent; E. Maurice Bloch; private collection, Los Angeles; thence by descent to current owners, private collection, Los Angeles.
In 1797 West (1738–1820) was commissioned by the flamboyant collector William Beckford (1760-1844) to design stained glass windows for his neo-Gothic house in Wiltshire, England (Beckford was an exceptional collector, many of his Italian Renaissance masterpieces went to the National Gallery in London). West painted Saint Michael and the Dragon, for which the current drawing is a study, perhaps referencing Beckford's personal identification with the subject. On Beckford's 21st birthday and the feast day of Saint Michael, September 29, 1787, Beckford wrote in his diary, "I assisted with apparent devotion, but could not help feeling all the while more sympathy for the old Dragon than becomes a pious Catholic. Alas, we are both fallen angels!" referring to his own pariah status after his two romantic relationships with men were discovered. Both Saint Michael and the Dragon and West's other design for Wiltshire, St. Thomas à Becket are in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio.
Born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in a house that now sits on the campus of Swarthmore College, West was among the most prominent, pre-Revolutionary, 18th-century American artists. With financial assistance from wealthy Philadelphia businessmen, he traveled to Italy in 1760 to pursue his artistic training and study the old masters, eventually arriving in England in 1763, where he established himself as a painter of historical scenes and portraits. Over the next few decades, West ascended to the upper echelons of the English art hierarchy. He was appointed an official court painter by King George III in 1772 and became the second president of the nascent Royal Academy in London, following the inaugural presidency of Joshua Reynolds, in 1792. West's most famous painting The Death of General Wolfe, 1771, is now in the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
