BENJAMIN WEST 1738-1820
The Sepulchre, 1782
Gouache on paper, 18 1/2 X 14" (46.99 X 35.56 cm.)
Signed, lower left
Museum purchase, 968-W-122
 

Pennsylvania-born Benjamin West settled in London in 1763, where he became a key contributor to the establishment of history painting in Britain. From about 1780 on, he also became Britain's most energetic promoter of biblical subjects painted on an epic scale. His most important such commission came from George III in 1779 to furnish paintings for the Royal Chapel at Windsor Castle, "for the purpose of displaying a pictorial illustration of the history of revealed religion." Notable in West's religious subjects after 1779 was his continued depiction of moments of divine revelation. In this West proved England's acknowledged master. The expressive potential of such subjects was obvious; the mystery of Divine power offered the viewer an intensity of emotional experience that subjects from classical history and literature could not match.
The Sepulchre is not a working drawing but a finished composition, which may have served as a presentation to a client for a proposed painting. The drawing illustrates Matthew 28:1-8, in which an angel of the Lord, dressed in a white robe, with a face "like lightning" rolled away the stone of Christ's empty tomb and sat on it before the astonished women who arrived there to anoint Christ's body. West painted the subject of the women at the sepulchre of Christ at least seven times between 1768 and 1818. The first version, dated 1768, does not survive, but an engraving from the work shows an elaborate, dark, vertical composition in a wooded setting, with soldiers by an open tomb entrance along with three women and an angel. The immediate precedent for the Butler Institute's drawing is a large, three-part work that West painted to serve as a design for another royal commission, a stained glass window in a lower chapel at Windsor Castle. The central Resurrection (c. 1782, Ponce Museum of Art, Puerto Rico) was paired with two side windows, one of which, The Three Marys Going to the Sepulchre (c. 1782, National Trust, Tatton Park, Cheshire), depicted the women described in Luke 24:1-8, who return to the tomb with spices and ointments at the first sign of dawn. In The Sepulchre, West constructed a new picture from elements of his window design. He arranged the three women and a blond-haired angel as in The Resurrection, against a landscape background, much like that of his other side picture, Saints Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre (c. 1782, location unknown).
The Sepulchre was evidently not made into a large painting. However, in 1792 West painted the women at the tomb again, adapting the composition of the gouache drawing to a horizontal format. Each time he repeated the composition, he made the poses more animated and the scene more dramatic. The angel became progressively more brightly lit and more active, and the work's expressiveness was increasingly concentrated in the figures themselves. West, demonstrating his skill at giving new life to previously used motifs, owed his prolific lifetime production largely to this practice.
The Sepulchre shows West's characteristic tendency to combine Neoclassical elements with the more exuberant motifs of Italian seventeenth- century painting. The revived enthusiasm for classical antiquity to which West was introduced while studying in Rome from 1760-1763 remained part of his style after he settled in London and turned increasingly to subjects outside classical history and literature. Here, a nod to Neoclassical taste can be seen in the firm contours, sharp profiles, silvery palette, and the classical urns and fillet. And, like other artists of his generation, West became interested in the techniques of the Italian seventeenth -century painters, exemplified here by the landscape setting, the brilliant color of Mary Magdalene's orange-yellow dress, and by the radiant angel astride the entrance of the empty tomb. More importantly, the visionary character of Italian art of the Counter Reformation made a lasting impression on West's religious art.

DIANA STRAZDES