An illustrative supplement to Pilkington's Dictionary of painters ... principally taken from the Anecdotes of painting, etc / by Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford. Consisting of biographical sketches, and 139 portraits.

  • Walpole, Horace, 1717-1797.
Date:
1805
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An illustrative supplement to Pilkington's Dictionary of painters ... principally taken from the Anecdotes of painting, etc / by Horatio Walpole, Earl of Orford. Consisting of biographical sketches, and 139 portraits. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    THE LIFE OF BENJAMIN WEST, ESQ. PRESIDENT OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY Benjamin WEST, Esq. was born in 1738 at Springfield, in America. His an- cestors were a branch of the family of that name which distinguished itself in the wars of Edward III. During the reign of Richard II. they settled at Long Cranden Buckinghamshire, where they resided till about 1667, when they embraced quakerism, which was then only in its infancy, and in 1699 the greater part of the family removed with William Penn to Pennsylvania. In 1714 Mr. John West joined his relatives there and married, and his son, the present Benjamin West, is the youngest of ten children. His talents for painting showed themselves very early, and at the age of sixteen he embraced it as a profession. From that time until his twenty-first year he painted several portraits and historical subjects in Lancaster town, Pennsylvania, and in the cities of New-York and Philadelphia, with considerable success. In 1760, having amassed a sufficient sum of money and the desire of acquiring ex- cellence in historical painting having gained the ascendancy in his mind, he embarked at Philadelphia for Leghorn, and thence to Rome. After being twice compelled by sickness to quit Rome, he complied with the advice a pf