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West, Copley, and Eighteenth-Century American Provincialism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 January 2009
Extract
It is a common notion that American painting in the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries was derivative and provincial. It was an artistic period marked by failure and frustration during which the promising artist, usually after a study tour in Europe, was met with indifference or misunderstanding. He either just managed to scrape a living, often by having to compromise his talents in search of an audience, or was forced to abandon painting altogether and turn to other pursuits. The only successful American painters, in this view, were those who became established in Europe; and they somehow no longer seem to be American. The best of the group were Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley, whose European careers have been consistently misunderstood, until very recently, through geographical and historical myopia. European art historians have given them short shrift because they were, after all, provincial painters with the good fortune to practise in a European capital. American art historians have neglected their European work because (from the American point of view) it was English art they practised.
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References
1 The American careers of John Trumbull and John Vanderlyn are good examples of the former. Trumbull was greatly disappointed by lack of recognition of his art. Vanderlyn was forced to produce travelling panoramic exhibitions. The artist with no aspiration to the “higher reaches” of art, like Gilbert Stuart, could do well enough as a portrait painter. Samuel F. B. Morse and Robert Fulton are examples of the latter.
2 During the lives and immediately after the deaths of West and Copley English Critics treated their works fairly. Both painters were increasingly misunderstood or neglected during the nineteenth Century. West has always been reasonably treated by the French for reasons obvious in the essay. His reputation in certain English circles began to rise again in the late 1930s.
3 Views of West and Copley have become increasingly balanced during the present Century, but most treatments of eighteenth-century American art dwell upon “American-ness” at the expence of the significance of the European experience.
4 Poussin's Roman work, much Italian Renaissance work in relation to classical models, and much English architecture, from Inigo Jones to Robert Smirke, could be called provincial in this light.
5 Rourke, Constance, The Roots of the American Culture (New York, 1942), p. 3Google Scholar. I am unable to locate the source of this quotation.
6 Flexner, James Thomas, America's Old Masters, revised edition (New York, 1967), p. 40Google Scholar.
7 Ibid. p. 119.
8 The Letters and Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham (hereafter Copley–Pelham Letters), The Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914Google Scholar; reprinted (New York, 1970), p. 65.
9 Copley to Greenwood, Boston, 25 01 1771, Copley–Pelbam Letters, p. 105Google Scholar.
10 Charles Alphonse Dufresnoy's De Arte Graphica appeared posthumously in France translated by de Piles, Roger as L' Art de peinture (Paris, 1668)Google Scholar. Williams no doubt gave West the slapdash prose translation by John Dryden (London, 1695); Richardson, Jonathan, An Essay on the Theory of Painting (London, 1725)Google Scholar; Vasari, Giorgio, Lives of the Artists (Florence, 1550Google Scholar; revised and enlarged edition Florence, 1568).
11 Galt, John, The Life and Studies of Benjamin West, Esquire, P. R. A., composed from materials furnished by himself, Vol. 1 (London, 1816), Vol. 2 (London, 1820)Google Scholar. Galt's account tends to mythologize the painter and needs to be used carefully.
12 Flexner, , America's Old Masters, pp. 34–35Google Scholar for a fuller discussion see Flexner, 's “Benjamin West's American Neo-classicism,” appendix to America's Old Masters, pp. 315–340Google Scholar. West's “Death of Socrates” is based on the frontispiece to Rollin, 's Ancient History (1749)Google Scholar which West had from Smith.
13 Prown, Jules David, John Singleton Copley, 2 volumes (Cambridge, Mass.: 1966)Google Scholar. Prown suggests the 1743 translation of Cours de peinture as a possibility. I think it almost certain.
14 The books were Genga, Bernardino and Lancini, Giovanni Maria, Anatomy Improved and Illustrated (Rome, 1691; London, 1723)Google Scholar, and Van Der Gracht, Jacob, Anatomie der wtterliche deelen van bet Menschelick Lichaem (The Hague, 1634; Rotterdam, 1660)Google Scholar. There was probably a third source as well. Flexner, , America's Old Masters, p. 114Google Scholar, Prown, , Copley, p. 19Google Scholar.
15 Prown, Copley contains a comprehensive collection of illustrations.
16 J. J. Winckelmann published both his Anmerkungen ueber die Baukunst der Alten and his letter from Naples, , Sendschreiben von den Heraculanischen Entdeckungen, in Dresden (1761)Google Scholar. These were followed (1763) by his Abhandlung von der Faehigkeit des Empfindung des Schoenen in der Kunst. Meng, R.'s Gedanken ueber die Schoenheil und der Geschmack in der Mahlerey was published in Zürich (1762)Google Scholar.
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19 West's direct influence on contemporary French painters was profound. Pécheux, Lépicié, Vincent, Beaufort and Renou all based particular paintings upon works by West. See Locquin, Jean, La Peinture d'histoire en France de 1747 à 1785; (Paris, 1912), pp. 114–57Google Scholar.
20 For a discussion of the sources of “The Death of Wolfe” see Wind, Edgar, “The Revolution of History Painting,” Warburg Journal, 2 (1938), 116–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wind, Edgar, “Penny, West, and ‘The Death of Wolfe,’” Warburg Journal, 10 (1947), 159–62Google Scholar; Mitchell, Charles, “Benjamin West's ‘Death of General Wolfe’ and the Popular History Piece,” Warburg Journal, 7 (1944), 20–33Google Scholar.
21 Le Brun, Charles, Traité des passions (Paris, 1698)Google Scholar. The body of ideas is cartesian: each passion is distinctly expressed and could be fixed by academic rule. The Traité is based on a lecture given in 1667 at the Académie Royale and published in Félibien, André, Conférences de l' Acadimie Royale de peinture et de sculpture pendant l'année 1667 (Paris, 1669)Google Scholar.
22 Le Brun's sixth lecture, given 5 November 1667, Félibien, Conférences. Le Brun discusses this temporal quality in Poussin's “Gathering of the Manna in the Wilderness.” West's quotation, if it is one, seems more closely related to Poussin's “Adoration of the Golden Calf” in the National Gallery, London, with the figure of Moses in the left background.
23 Uccello's battle scenes employ some historically accurate dress, Velasquez's “Surrender of Breda” does the same, as does Rembrandt's so-called “Night Watch.” Indeed, there were two earlier English treatments of Wolfe's death, by Penny and by Eckstein, which also showed the dying hero of the battle for Quebec in contemporary uniform. See note 20.
24 Reynolds, Joshua, Discourses on Art (London 1797)Google Scholar. The lectures were delivered to students at the Royal Academy between 1769 and 1790 and were published immediately. By the end of 1771 Reynolds had delivered the first four discourses. Discourse Four, delivered on 10 December 1771, after the exhibition of “The Death of Wolfe,” is partly concerned with history painting in the grand style, and asserts traditional rules that are opposed to West's achievement.
25 Félibien, Conférences.
26 Reynolds, “Discourse One,” delivered at the opening of the Royal Academy, 2 January 1769.
27 De Piles, Roger, Cours de peinture par principes (Paris, 1708)Google Scholar. For a discussion of the French background see my “Mechanism, Music and Painting in 17th Century France,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism (Spring 1982)Google Scholar.
28 de Piles, , Cours, pp. 30–37Google Scholar.
29 Wind concludes his otherwise excellent discussion of West with such an argument in “The Revolution of History Painting,” p. 124
30 Copley to Pelham, London, 17 August 1774, Copley–Pelham Letters, p. 241.
31 Ibid., p. 240. Copley to Pelham, Paris, 2 September 1774: “possess Sr. Josa. Reynolds lectures as soon as you can, some of the Book Deallers will send for them for you – and they will tell you how to proceed in the management of those great subjects.” Copley you to Pelham, Rome, 14 March 1775: “I hope you will procure Sir. Josh. Reynolds's Lectures; they are the best things that have yet appeared of the kind; I am sorry I did not send them to you when I was in London.”
32 Copley to Pelham, Rome, 14 March 1775 Ibid., p. 305
33 Hogarth, William, The Analysis of Beauty (London, 1753), p. viiGoogle Scholar.
34 Copley–Pelham Letters, p. 305.
35 Copley to Ainslie, Boston, 25 February 1765, Ibid., p. 33
36 Prown, , Copley, p. 274Google Scholar.
37 For a discussion of the episode see Prown, , Copley, pp. 276–77Google Scholar.
38 Prown, , Copley, p. 283Google Scholar. Prown's addendum in parentheses.
39 The American Earls, The William Benton Museum of Art, The University of Connecticut, 1972Google Scholar.
40 Trumbull, John, “The Saga of Tom Brainless” from The Progress of Dulness, 1772Google Scholar.