Old Master Paintings
Old Master Paintings
Property from a British Private Collection
Benjamin West, P.R.A.
Queen Elizabeth going in procession to Saint Paul's Cathedral after the destruction of the Spanish Armada
Lot Closed
April 6, 02:34 PM GMT
Estimate
6,000 - 8,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
Property from a British Private Collection
Benjamin West, P.R.A.
Springfield, PA 1738 - 1820 London
Queen Elizabeth going in procession to Saint Paul's Cathedral after the destruction of the Spanish Armada
signed and dated lower right: B. West 1792
oil on canvas
unframed: 43.5 x 65.5 cm.; 17⅛ x 25¾ in.
framed: 70.5 x 93 cm.; 27¾ x 36⅝ in.
By whom sold, London, Robins, 22-25 May 1829, lot 70, for £63 to Bone;
Joseph Neeld, M.P., Grittleton House, Wiltshire, by 1833;
By family descent until sold, London, Christie's, 13 July 1945, lot 172;
With Vose Galleries, Boston;
From whom acquired by L. Gerard Paine, Boston, in 1964;
In the present collection for at least 8 years.
J. Dillenberger, Benjamin West: The Context of His Life's Work, with Particular Attention to Paintings with Religious Subject Matter..., San Antonio 1977, p. 174, no. 358;
R. Strong, Painting the past: the Victorian painter and British history, London 2004, pp. 33-34, reproduced fig. 15;
H. van Erffa and A. Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven And London 1986, p. 204, no. 82, reproduced.
Born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, Benjamin West arrived in London in the summer of 1763, having spent three years in Rome studying under Anton Raphael Mengs, and quickly established himself as the leading history painter in England. In 1792, the same year this picture was executed, he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy. West has been described as 'the first American artist to achieve an international reputation and to influence artistic trends in Europe'.1 In this picture, West has employed his powers as a history painter to create an image inspired by a seminal event in British History – the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Roy Strong has suggested (see Literature) that for the image of the Queen, West used Francis Delaram’s engraving of circa 1617 (London, British Museum) after a lost portrait by Nicholas Hilliard.2
1 R.C. Adams in J. Turner, ed., The Dictionary of Art, London 1996, vol. XXXIII, p. 90.
2 https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1849-0315-1