Two studies for 'Hagar and Ishmael (recto and verso)

The present drawing relates to West's painting Hagar and Ishmael (Metropolitan Museum, New York), which was painted for Thomas Dawson, Lord Cremorne (1725-1813) and exhibited at the Royal Academy in both 1776 and 1803 after it had been retouched by West. A preliminary drawing is in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York and a more finished study in chalks, signed and dated 1776, which is closer in composition to the present work, is in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Two further drawings of the subject exist, one signed and dated 1788 at the Addison Gallery of American Art and another sketch which was included in the 1968 exhibition at the Bernard Black Gallery, New York (see R. Kraemer, Drawings by Benjamin West and his son Raphael Lamar West, New York, 1975, p. 8, no. 9).