Copyright by Stephen Mark Caffey 2008
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Copyright by Stephen Mark Caffey 2008 The Dissertation Committee for Stephen Mark Caffey certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: An Heroics of Empire: Benjamin West and Anglophone History Painting 1764-1774 Committee: Susan Rather, Co-Supervisor Janice Leoshko, Co-Supervisor Michael Charlesworth Mia Carter Syed Akbar Hyder William Roger Louis An Heroics of Empire: Benjamin West and Anglophone History Painting 1764-1774 by Stephen Mark Caffey, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2008 For Patricia Burnham Acknowledgments I wish to thank the following individuals for their generous support, without which this dissertation would have never materialized. I cannot articulate the magnitude of my appreciation of and admiration for co-supervisors Susan Rather and Janice Leoshko. They made a perfect team, gently guiding me back to the track when I derailed and offering just the right blend of criticism and encouragement. Committee members Michael Charlesworth, Akbar Hyder, Mia Carter and William Roger Louis brought a wealth of experience and expertise that helped me to broaden and deepen the scope of the project. I also benefited greatly from coursework and conversation with John Clarke, Penelope Davies, Joan Holladay, Estelle Lingo, Richard Shiff, Ann Reynolds, Linda Henderson, Cherise Smith, Steve Bourget and Persis Berlekamp. I am especially grateful to Neil Kamil, for so warmly welcoming me across campus and across disciplines; to Jeffrey Chipps Smith, whose well-timed dinner invitation in London spared me the ravages of malnutrition; and to Glenn Peers, whose sympathetic ear and calm optimism served as beacons of hope when I felt discouraged. I feel fortunate to have had Sigrid Knudsen’s help with visual resources. I am grateful to Foster Foreman for her enthusiastic interest in my topic. Among the myriad supporters from within the University of Texas, Ken Hale, Laura Schwartz, Allie De Leon, Amanda Butterfield and Maureen Howell made scholarly life much easier than it would have been without their help. Colleagues Rowena Houghton-Dasch, James v Lawrence, Katie Edwards, Lea Cline and Vanessa Paumen offered friendship and inspiration. Individuals and groups at various institutions facilitated my research. Those to whom I wish to express my sincerest gratitude include Pat Fox at the Harry Ransom Center; Sally Brooks at the Museum of London Library; Margaret Gray at Powis Castle; the students and faculty of Jadavpur University, Kolkata; Mark Pomeroy at the Royal Academy of Arts Library; Helen George at the British Library Asia Pacific and African Collections Prints and Drawings Department; Susan Stronge and Nick Barnard at the Victoria and Albert Museum; and the Viscount and Lady Windsor, Oakly Park. I also wish to extend my thanks to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their generous support of my work in London. For easing and enriching my time at the Courtauld Institute of Art, I wish to thank Deborah Swallow, Matthew Hunter, Sarah Monks, John Chu and Timothy Huw Davies. I am especially grateful to David Solkin, whose influence and inspiration defy quantification. Isolin Jorgensen, Simon Vaughan-Davies, Guy Cooper, Gordon Taylor, Janet Connell and Alex Connell brought many unexpected pleasures of friendship to my time in the United Kingdom. The opportunities afforded me by the Terra Foundation for American Art in funding a summer residency in Giverny gave my work a much-needed boost. I wish to thank Elizabeth Glassman and the other members of the Terra Foundation board and selection committee and Elizabeth Rossi for getting me to Giverny. Once there, I had the great honor and joy of meeting and working with a number of scholars and artists to vi whom I remain indebted in ways too numerous to express. Artists Elise Adibi, Karrie Hovey, Bertrand Derel, Veronika Tzekova and Anne and Patrick Poirier taught me so much about the heroism of making art. I am grateful to fellow historians Jessica Lee May, Jody Patterson, Rebecca Reynolds, Mathilde Arrivé and Jaime Correa for their insightful commentary and many difficult questions. Marc Simpson, Mignon Nixon and François Brunet offered invaluable guidance. For the generosity of spirit with which Barbara Zucker addressed my questions and righted my thinking, my gratitude abounds. Ewa Bobrowska-Jakubowksi’s help was invaluable, Miranda Fontaine guided and aided at every turn; I thank them both for their wonderful assistance. And for her time and attention and inspiration, I owe to Veerle Thielemans an incalculable debt of gratitude. Family and friends for whose encouragement and support I feel humbly grateful include Craig Hella Johnson, Kathleen Rice, Camille Cruz, Marie Krebs, Ian Fagerstrom, Eli Fagerstrom, Emma Lee Fagerstrom, Donna Thomas, Jacque Conn, Chris Cregeen, Russell Knotts, Mike Green, Dennis Ciscel, Adrian and Shirley Bailey, Kevin and Lynn Bailey, Michael and Andrea Bailey, Kayley Bailey, Brittany Bailey, Whitney Bailey and Mikey Bailey. Most especially, I want to thank Wayne Bailey for his unwavering patience, love and support throughout this process. vii An Heroics of Empire: Benjamin West and Anglophone History Painting 1764-1774 Publication No. Stephen Mark Caffey, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2008 Co-Supervisors: Susan Rather and Janice Leoshko This dissertation interrogates correlations between imperial expansion and the history paintings produced for London audiences by the American-born artist Benjamin West (1738-1820) during his first decade in England (1764-1774). Within that ten-year span, Grand Manner academic history painting shaped and reflected the imperial anxieties that elite Britons experienced as a result of dramatic territorial gains, consolidations and losses in North America and South Asia. To follow the trajectory of history painting’s rise, relevance and obsolescence is to track Britons’ negotiation of their global status as a “free though conquering people.” As England’s pre-eminent history painter, West secured for himself a place within the discourses of the imperial self- imaginary by developing two types of iconographic program. First, the selective appropriation of narratives from classical antiquity allowed West and his patrons to inculcate their audiences with visual models for British imperial virtue. Advancing the viii cause of imperial self-ratification through classical narrative, West cast the English as the natural heirs to the Roman empire. The resulting images paralleled and buoyed contemporary textual discourses of empire and intersected with antiquarian collecting practices, both of which were based on the notion of modern British proprietorship of classical antiquity. Second, developing and refining a model introduced by Francis Hayman (1708-1776) at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in 1761, West contrived a pictorial format which introduced persons living and recently dead into a realm of visual expression formally reserved for characters from biblical and classical textual sources. Invoking some of history painting’s most familiar compositional and figural conventions, West recombined history painting, portraiture, landscape and genre to formulate the iconographically hybrid heroics of empire, complete with its own set of pictorial motifs through which West and his followers styled their subjects exemplars of classical imperial virtue. Imperial anxiety afforded history painting its short-lived relevance among English-speaking audiences during the second half of the eighteenth and first quarter of the nineteenth centuries, and imperial self-acceptance rendered that most highly-esteemed of artistic genres obsolete. Through the visual heroics of empire, Benjamin West established history painting as a viable form of Anglophone cultural production during his first decade in London. ix Table of Contents List of Illustrations xi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 – West’s First Heroics of Empire History Painting 33 Chapter 2 – Selective Appropriation: Classical and Renaissance Predicates for Modern Imperial Martial Virtue 95 Chapter 3 – Royal Patronage, Royal Academy, Modern Subjects 193 Chapter 4 – The Visual Heroics of Empire in the Private Realm 253 Conclusion 366 Illustrations 381 Appendix 445 Bibliography 465 Vita 543 x Illustrations Figure 1. Benjamin West, The Death of General Wolfe (1770) oil on canvas, 59 1/2” x 84 in” (151 x 213.5 cm). National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. 381 Figure 2. Benjamin West, William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians (1771-1772) oil on canvas, 75 1/2” x 107 3/4” (192 x 273 cm). Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. 381 Figure 3. Benjamin West, The Death of Lord Nelson (1806) oil on canvas, 70” x 96” (178 x 244 cm). Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. 382 Figure 4. Benjamin West, Christ Healing the Sick (1811) oil on canvas, 108” x 168” (274 x 427 cm). Tate Britain, London. 382 Figure 5. Benjamin West, Lord Clive Receiving from the Mogul the Grant of the Duanney (1774) oil on canvas, c. 115” x 180” (292 x 457 cm). Earl of Plymouth, Oakly Park, Shropshire. 383 Figure 6. Benjamin West, General Johnson Saving a Wounded French Soldier from the Tomahawk of a North American Indian (1764) oil on canvas, 51” x 42” (129.5 x 106.5 cm). Derby Museum and Art Gallery, Derby. 383 Figure 7. Francis Hayman, Modello for The Surrender of Montreal to General Amherst (c. 1760) oil on canvas, 27 7/8” x 36” (70.8 x 91.4 cm). Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick. 384 Figure 8. Francis Hayman, Modello for Lord Clive Receiving the Homage of the Nabob (c. 1761) oil on canvas, 40” x 50” (101.6 x 127 cm). National Portrait Gallery, London. 384 Figure 9. Apollo Belvedere, Roman copy of Greek original (late 4th century BCE) marble, 88” (223.5 cm) height. Vatican Museum, Rome. 385 Figure 10. Benjamin West, General Johnson Saving a Wounded French Officer from the Tomahawk of a North American Indian, detail. 385 Figure 11.