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Lot Essay
Benjamin West was born in a rural Quaker community in Springfield, Pennsylvania. West's artistic ambitions soon outgrew the constraints of colonial America, and in 1760 he left for Italy. After three years of study, and the guidance of Mengs and Gavin Hamilton, West moved to London. His timing was opportune, and his ambitious neoclassical history paintings soon won him wide reknown and a near-monopoly on royal patronage. West was a founding member of the Royal Academy, and from 1772 he was History Painter to the King. His output was prolific, and his fame international.
This present work is the earliest known version of The Women at the Sepulchre or The Angel at the Tomb of Christ, a subject treated by West on at least eight other occasions throughout his career (see von Erffa and Staley, op. cit., nos. 372-9). Although West exhibited pictures bearing this title at the Royal Academy in 1792, 1800, 1805 and 1818, it is not clear from the early sources whether the present work was among them. A compositional drawing for the present work is preserved in the collection at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
This present work is the earliest known version of The Women at the Sepulchre or The Angel at the Tomb of Christ, a subject treated by West on at least eight other occasions throughout his career (see von Erffa and Staley, op. cit., nos. 372-9). Although West exhibited pictures bearing this title at the Royal Academy in 1792, 1800, 1805 and 1818, it is not clear from the early sources whether the present work was among them. A compositional drawing for the present work is preserved in the collection at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.