Volume 1

The Farington diary / edited by James Greig.

  • Joseph Farington
Date:
[1922?-1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Farington diary / edited by James Greig. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    69/464 (page 29)
    I793 Boswell and Benjamin West December 16.—Smirke came in, when we conversed on the subject of the Academy Commemoration [of its 25th anniversary]. They are strenuously against an Exhibition, or a speech from the President, and think it most prudent to have only a dinner of the Members. [A dinner was afterwards agreed to and fixed for December 31.] Boswell* called to speak on the subject we were agitating. He said he had been with Mr. Westf this morning, and learnt from him that the plan he meant to propose is to have an Exhibition and Ode, and himself to make a speech, containing a review of what has been done in consequence of the institution and by the Members. He told Mr. West he understood many of the Members of the Body were decidedly against an Exhibition, and that should this part of the plan be adopted perhaps it would be most prudent to exhibit only the works of deceased Members. Mr. West did not approve this distinction. Boswell said- the Exhibition was a pretty thing in fancy though perhaps not prac¬ ticable in the way that could be wished. He thought the safest proposal would be to have a dinner in the Royal Academy confined to Members, that an address on the occasion should be signed and presented to his * Boswell’s right to a place in the Academic Galere was due to his position as Secretary for Foreign Cor¬ respondence, which made him a life member. t Benjamin West who figures prominently throughout the period covered by the Diary, was born in America on October ioth, 1738, of an English Quaker family. He studied Art in Italy and came to England in 1763, and was introduced to George III., who took a liking to the handsome, sedate young man, and favoured him so much that he became a victim of the envy and calumny of his fellow artists. West succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy in 1792, and, except for a brief interval, held the office until 1820. On his election the King wished to honour him with knighthood, but he tactlessly replied that he wanted a baronetcy and a pension, and rightly got neither. On the whole he was popular, though colourless, and silent, his silence being mistaken for latent wisdom, as Cunningham says. He was generous, and considering the troubles he had to contend against, particularly in 1803-05, he seldom lost his temper. He died on March nth, 1820. As an artist, he was scholarly, with a God-given conceit in himself, rather than imaginative. It has been said of West that nothing came amiss to him. His mistaken faith in himself was so great that he would have “undertaken to illustrate anything on earth below or in Heaven above . . . yet he could do nothing but what he had seen, and that he could do supremely well.” West is not represented to-day at the National Gallery, although that institution owns the “ Christ Healing the Sick,” a canvas measuring 9 feet high by 14 feet wide. West had a pension of £1,000 a year from the King (some of the artist’s best works are in the Royal Col¬ lections), but ultimately owing to his Majesty’s illness it was stopped, and West’s “ occupation was gone.” He was attacked and slandered. The Press sought to prove that he had “ plundered the King to the amount of £34,000.” West answered “ calmly triumphant, that he had indeed received money amounting approxi¬ mately to that sum, but it was earned by thirty-three years of untiring labour.”