Benjamin West, P.R.A.

Sold directly by the artist to Captain (possibly George Charles) Agar, 1808;

Mrs. DeLancey Kountze, New York;

With Newhouse Galleries, New York;

By whom anonymously sold, New York, Parke Bernet, 28 February-1 March 1945, lot 73;

Where acquired by Renaissance Galleries, New York;

With Victor Spark, New York;

John Petalli Amati, Philadelphia, 1965;

By whom anonymously sold, London, Sotheby's, 23 November 1966, lot 52;

With M. Bernard Galleries, London, 1967;

With The Sporting Gallery, Middleburg, Virginia;

Robert Scott Wiles, Washington, D.C., 1969;

From whom acquired by the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Sciences, Norfolk, Virginia, 1970;

With Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York;

From whom acquired by a private New York collector,1985;

By whom anonymously sold ("Property from a Private New York Collection"), New York, Sotheby's, 29 January 2015, lot 380;

Where acquired by the present collector.

London, Royal Academy of Art, 1798, no. 145 (as Cupid);

Norfolk, Virginia, Chrysler Museum, Three Hundred Years of American Art in the Chrysler Museum, 1976. 

"A Correct Catalogue of the Works of Mr.West...Mr. West's House at Windsor. Pictures painted by Mr. West for his own Collection...In the Gallery", in Public Characters of 1805, 1805, p. 567 (as Cupid letting loose two Pigeons);

"A Correct Catalogue of the Works of Benjamin West, Esq.,,,Mr. West's House at Windsor. Pictures painted by Mr. West for his own Collection...In the Gallery", in La Belle Assemblée, IV, Supplement, 1808, p. 18;

J. Barlow, The Columbiad, A Poem, 1809, p. 401;

"A Correct Catalogue of the Works of Benjamin West, Esq.", in The Portfolio VI, 1811, p. 552;

J. Galt, Esq., "Appendix", in The Life, Studies, and Works of Benjamin West, Esq., London 1820, vol. II, p. 230;

A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, London 1905-6, vol. VIII, p. 216;

D. Hall, Walpole Society, vol. XXXVIII, London 1962, pp. 59-122, 100;

J. Dillenberger, Benjamin West, The Context of his Life's Work, San Antonio 1977, p. 178, cat. no. 391, p. 194;

H. von Effra and A. Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven and London 1986, cat. no. 127, pp. 136 and 232, reproduced in color. 

A native of colonial Pennsylvania, Benjamin West's path to becoming the official history painter to George III would appear not obvious, but by his death in 1820, West had effectively invented a new pictorial language in British art, emerging as one of the most beloved public figures in his adopted country. Prior to his arrival in England in 1763, West spent time in Venice, where he met Richard Dalton, George III’s librarian and an important dealer and antiquarian, who encouraged West to paint works for an English audience. West obliged, and his earliest pictures to be shown in England, at the exhibition in Spring Gardens in 1764, were Cymon and Iphigenia and Angelica and Medoro. George III, who admired the pictures, commissioned from the artist an episode from Roman history, the Departure of Regulus from Rome (1769; Royal Collection). It was after the presentation of this work that George officially appointed West as court history painter, a post which paid an annual stipend of £1000, and at which West would paint no less than 60 paintings between 1768 and 1801. In addition, West was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy of Arts. With encouragement and financial support from George III, West, along with Joshua Reynolds (who would serve as its first president), established the organization, meant to rival earlier European schools of history painting. Upon Reynolds' death in 1792, West served as the Academy's second president, a post he would fill until 1805. 

This immaculately preserved panel was begun in 1798, and is among West's finest mythological pictures, of which he painted no less than 48 eight throughout his career.¹ Cupid, shown here in over life size, releases two doves—a classic mythological symbol of love— into the world by means of a pink sash in his right hand, while in his left he grasps a wooden staff adorned with leaves and flowers. The motif of Cupid holding two harnessed birds appears earlier in West's work, notably in his Venus Relating to Adonis the Story of Hippomenes and Atalanta (Private Collection), and he returns to this general figure type in his large scale Omnia Vincit Amor, or the Power of Love in the Three Elements (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; fig. 1).

Although he exhibited the painting at the Royal Academy in 1798, West subsequently revised it on two later occasions, a practice he regularly engaged in after 1800. In the present work, he carefully denotes various adjustments to the work, adding the dates in which he returned to the picture—1803 and 1808—in the lower left corner. The most dramatic change can be seen in his placement of Cupid's left wing, the original orientation for which can still be seen upper left. In response to critics who expressed concern over his practice of re-entering these "edited" pictures into the Royal Academy exhibition, West responded, "how anxious I have been to leave the few works I have done as perfect as was in my power to make them".²

1. Efra & Staley 1986, cat. nos. 112-158. 

2. Efra & Staley 1986, p. 138.