Identifier: americanpainters00sher (find matches)
Title: American painters of yesterday and today
Year: 1919 (1910s)
Authors: Sherman, Frederic Fairchild
Subjects: Painting, American Painters, American
Publisher: New York, Priv. print.
Contributing Library: New York Public Library
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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iety where at the timethere was the only chance of profitable employmentas an historical painter.* The reference, of course,is to Wests favor with the King, for whom he paintedalmost exclusively during the period from 1768 to1781 inclusive, producing a series of large religiousand historical compositions for which, includingseveral portraits and groups of the royal family,he received a total of over forty thousand pounds.While it is true that he is responsible for the substi-tution of realism in the historical painting of thetime which was stultified by an absurd but generallyapproved fashion of representing figures alwaysin the classic costume of antiquity, it is his mis-fortune to have been possessed by a passion forgrandiose subjects and pictures of almost impossibledimensions. As a youth in Philadelphia and New York, Westbegan by painting portraits exclusively, and if thefew he did in after years are any criterion of his earlyabilities he must have started out with a remarkable 64
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Benjamin West: John Sedley Collection of Mr. Walter Jennings, New Tork THF. NK.V \UKK PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOK, LENOX ANDTILDEN FOUNDATIONS aptitude for incorporating in his likenesses just those elusive indications of personality that are common to all that is notably true and fine in portraiture.It would not be possible to maintain that he was ever a great portrait-painter in the sense that several of his contemporaries unquestionably were, but it is quite evident that in the realm of male portraiture at least he was the equal of some of them. One of the gratifying results of the present revival of interest in the early American portrait-painters is the fact that it has brought to our shores a number of excellent examples by West, acquainting us with that phase of his art which he almost entirely neglected at the height of his powers and during the period of his unprecedented popularity. Their suavity as well as their sincerity, their fine color as well as their technical excellence, inevitably p

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