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Shown from about the ribcage up, a cleanshaven man with pale skin sits with his elbow resting on the arm of his chair so the back of those fingers brush his chin in this vertical portrait painting. His body and face are angled to our right almost in profile so he looks at us from the corners of his brown eyes under dark, arched eyebrows. He has a straight nose, and his pale coral-pink lips are closed. His nickel-gray hair is curled along his ears and pulled back with an olive-green bow at the nape of his neck. His large hat is pushed back over his forehead, away from us, so its wide brim creates a dark circle around his face. The lapels of his steel-blue, tight-fitting jacket are folded back over a high, white collar. The edge of the white shirt also shows at the cuff of his right hand. The elbow closer to us rests on what might be a piece of light gray paper or piece of fabric, over a cranberry-red cloth or the arm of the upholstered chair. His left hand, farther from us, is propped on a wood frame or board, to which a small, white, square cloth appears to be affixed or draped. The light falls strongly from our upper left so his profile is brightly lit against the dark shadows on the far side of his face. The background darkens from light, slate blue to our left to coffee brown to our right.
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Shown from about the ribcage up, a cleanshaven man with pale skin sits with his elbow resting on the arm of his chair so the back of those fingers brush his chin in this vertical portrait painting. His body and face are angled to our right almost in profile so he looks at us from the corners of his brown eyes under dark, arched eyebrows. He has a straight nose, and his pale coral-pink lips are closed. His nickel-gray hair is curled along his ears and pulled back with an olive-green bow at the nape of his neck. His large hat is pushed back over his forehead, away from us, so its wide brim creates a dark circle around his face. The lapels of his steel-blue, tight-fitting jacket are folded back over a high, white collar. The edge of the white shirt also shows at the cuff of his right hand. The elbow closer to us rests on what might be a piece of light gray paper or piece of fabric, over a cranberry-red cloth or the arm of the upholstered chair. His left hand, farther from us, is propped on a wood frame or board, to which a small, white, square cloth appears to be affixed or draped. The light falls strongly from our upper left so his profile is brightly lit against the dark shadows on the far side of his face. The background darkens from light, slate blue to our left to coffee brown to our right.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Benjamin West

after Benjamin West

Date
c. 1776
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 75.8 x 63 cm (29 13/16 x 24 13/16 in.) framed: 102.9 x 89.5 x 10.2 cm (40 1/2 x 35 1/4 x 4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1942.8.39
Credit line
Andrew W. Mellon Collection
Time span
1776 to 1800
Department
CAB
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • American
  • self
  • portrait
  • American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century
  • West, Benjamin
Provenance

(Tooth Brothers, London), sold 15 May 1919 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[1] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1942 to NGA. [1] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of _Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke_, Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). Correspondence about the sale was with G. Stanley Sedgwick, who seems to have had a business arrangement with the Tooth Brothers and with Clarke. His letters of 14 and 24 April and 5 May 1919 precede the shipping notice from Hensel, Bruckmann & Lorbacher dated 13 May 1919, announcing the arrival of the painting in New York (NGA curatorial files). Additional correspondence indicates that Sedgwick hoped to locate other works by Gilbert Stuart for Clarke's collection and was searching for _The Skater_ [NGA 1950.18.1] and portraits of the Hartigans [NGA 1942.8.16], Luke White [NGA 1942.8.28], and the Pollocks [NGA 1942.8.18 and 1942.8.19] (NGA Clarke collection files).

NGA object ID 1133. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.