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Lot 26*
Benjamin West(Pennsylvania 1738-1820 London)A Flower Girl and Child
4 December 2024, 14:00 GMT
London, New Bond Street£4,000 - £6,000
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Poppy Harvey-Jones
Head of Sale
Lisa Greaves
Head of Department
Benjamin West (Pennsylvania 1738-1820 London)
A Flower Girl and Child
pen, bistre ink and bistre and blue wash on laid paper
39.1 x 26.3cm (15 3/8 x 10 3/8in).
pen, bistre ink and bistre and blue wash on laid paper
39.1 x 26.3cm (15 3/8 x 10 3/8in).
Footnotes
Provenance
Possibly the Collection of S Leigh by whom sold
Possibly, sale, Sotheby's London, 1 June 1889, lot 60
Lady Mount Stephen (1864-1933)
Elsie Reford (1872-1967) and by descent to the present owner
Literature
H. von Erffa and A.Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven and London, 1986, p. 416, under cat no. 444 (the engraving ill., as The Flower Girls)
Engraved
R. Hunt, as The Flower Girls
In their entry for A Flower Girl and Child in the West monograph, the authors note that a drawing on paper of the subject was sold by West's younger son in 1839, described as 'outline, in bistre, washed with the same', (S. Leigh, Sotheby's, London, 1 June 1839, lot 60). While we do not know the dimensions of the drawing, it seems highly probable that the present work is that sketch. In addition to the bistre wash that is mentioned there are also touches of blue, a technique we see in other genre sketches by the artist such as A rustic family (British Museum, 1871, 0610.760) and The three sisters (Yale Center for British Art, B1985.32).
West embarked on a series of small-scale oils of genre subjects in the early 1790s and told his fellow artist Joseph Farington that it was not his intention to sell them despite the fact that he exhibited them; in fact most were retained in his personal collection until he died. A Flower Girl and Child is thought to date from around 1793, and it is interesting to draw parallels between West's romanticised depiction of a low-life subject and Wheatley's Cries of London, six of which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1792.