In 176S, only five years after his arrival in London, \Vest was already so prominent that lie was one of the four artists selected to submit to the king a plan for a great art-institution to be called the Royal Academy; the scheme received the royal sanction. In 1772 he was appointed histori cal painter to the king, and entered on the execution of a series of por traits of the royal family and of paintings for Windsor Castle illustrative of events in English history. In 1790 lie was appointed surveyor of the royal pictures, and in 1792 was elected to succeed Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy; but he declined the honor of knight hood offered at the time. During this period he was also engaged in paint ing many portraits. After a long career of prosperity, Benjamin \Vest died in IS2o, in his eighty-second year.
From a business standpoint few painters have been more successful. From the king lie received thirty-four thousand one hundred and eighty seven pounds; his Christ healing the Sick brought three thousand guineas; while the works remaining in his studio after his death were sold for upward of nineteen thousand guineas. He was offered, and declined, eight thousand guineas for his Christ Rejected. These were large sums for those times, when money had greater purchasing-value than it now has. When we consider the artistic merit of the work of West, we are forced to the conclusion that his success was due as much to his business capacity and great industry as to his talent. During his long career lie painted more than four hundred important works, besides sketches and portraits. Rarely is such facility combined with real genius; and in West's case the combination certainly did not exist.
The subjects \Vest selected were ambitious and in harmony with the spirit of the period. In only one instance do we find him attempting orig inality: this was in his painting of the Death of General lUoIfe, one of his best works, and a composition of considerable merit, in which, contrary to the advice of his colleagues and the conventionalism of the time, lie portrayed the figures in their real costume instead of habiting them in classic armor. The success of this painting did much to destroy the affectation and conventionalism into which history-painting had fallen. Another well-known by this artist is Penn's Tre'aii. it'ith the Indians (pl. 7o, jig. 1). There was much spirit in the drawing of West's compositions, but little can be said in favor of his color; indeed, we may almost assume that to a certain degree lie was color-blind, for all his paintings are pervaded by a wholly unnatural brick-tint. While it is difficult to understand the immense popularity once accorded to the paintings of West, there is no reason to question the genuine character of the regard awarded to them by the artists of the period. It should
be recorded to his honor that he used his great influence to benefit others, and was ever ready to lend a helping hand to the young artists who came over from America and sought his aid and advice.
James Barry, a contemporary of the preceding, and, like him, a his tory-painter, presents in his career a remarkable contrast to West. Far superior to the latter as an artist, his life, uncheered by the smiles of kings, was one long and bitter struggle, ending in poverty and neglect. These contrasts doubtless give picturesqueness to the general views of humanity, but they are hardly appreciated by those who are selected by Fortune to represent the dark in this checkered prospect. Barry was born at Cork in 1741, the son of a bricklayer and builder. A painting of a ship called the Neptune, which he made on one side of his father's sign, and of the god of that name, on the other side, first indicated his talents. At the age of twenty-two he was enabled, through means derived from his early productions, to go to Dublin, where he exhibited the painting, The Baptism of the King of Cashel, which first brought him into public notice and gained him the friendship and patronage of Edmund Burke.
Through the liberality of Burke and other friends Barry was enabled in 1765 to go to Italy, where he applied himself earnestly to study. In 1771 he settled in London and exhibited his Adam and Eve and Venus rising from the Sea, which caused his election as associate, and then as member, of the Royal Academy. But these works brought more fame than money; he was forced to advertise for pupils, and even then but few came. After many struggles, he undertook a work which estab lished his reputation as one of the first history-painters of Great Britain, although the pecuniary reward was moderate, considering the effort ex pended and the sums paid to artists of far inferior merit. We refer to the acceptance by the Society of Arts of his proposal in 1777 to decorate their reception-hall with a series of six colossal paintings, semi-historical and semi-allegorical, entitled Human Culture. These superb pictures are forty-two feet long and eleven feet six inches high, and are crowded with groups of carefully-studied figures which include portraits of the leading men of the world. This immense task was completed in six years and established his fame, but all he realized from the gigantic undertaking was seven hundred pounds.