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Benjamin West - Death on the Pale Horse (Second version, Detroit Institute of arts)

The Painting by Benjamin West, Death on the Pale Horse, is the title of three different versions. The first of these, is a large drawing, which West executed in 1783. This version was and still is exhibited at the Royal Academy of Art in London, since 1784. The second version was made in 1796, and for a short term it was also showed at the Royal Academy. Nonetheless it was acquired by the Detroit Institute of Art in 1979, and still remains there. The third version is a 25-foot wide painting that West exhibited in 1817 in a special gallery on the street of Pall Mall, where he charged admission for visitors who wished to see it. This version was later acquired by the the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, during the year of 1835. All three versions of Death on The Pale Horse are inspired by an apocalyptic imagery from the Book of Revelation. They are also significant examples of the Sublime in British painting.

Background

Benjamin West

Benjamin West (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820), was a British-American painter considered one of the world's most recognizable artists, an honor well-deserved given he held two significant roles; first, he was the President of the Royal Academy of Arts, and second, he was also an official painter at the Court of St. James. These roles, were given to West only after he had already made various successful paintings, including famous The Death of General Wolfe, The Departure of Regulus from Rome, and Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that all these paintings were created and published during the decisive years of West's career (between 1765 and 1772), allowing him to gain significant traction on the public sphere which created a wider audience for Death on The Pale Horse.

Inspiration

The subject of these versions comes from the first eight verses of the sixth chapter of The Revelation of St. John the Divine (also known as the Apocalypse, the final book of the New Testament). In general, for West's work, during the years of 1754 to 1755, various artists influenced his style and subject matters. One particular influence comes from German-born Moravian artist, John Valentine Haidt, who painted New Testament subject matters.These often include complex narratives from various religious passages, portraying religious symbols and a specific subject. Additionally, American educator William Smith claims to have encouraged West toward spiritual pursuits and introduced him to the knowledge of "The Ancients." Later, during the last years of the 18th century, William Beckford, "England's wealthiest son," became West's patron, who loved West's depiction of apocalyptic subject matter. All these artists and patrons have had a huge impact on West's career.

Death on The Pale Horse in particular, is a radical departure from West's earlier paintings of Neoclassical style which celebrated heroic human behavior. Various reasons can be accounted for the change in subject matter. One of these reasons for change is due to fashion and taste at the time. West became a pioneer in depicting subjects of horror and violence in a quest for sublimity. The term of the Sublime in artistic language employs the thrill of experiencing something that would otherwise be dangerous or frightening at a safe distance. A “delightful horror. Nonetheless, West's inclusion of Death on The Pale Horse as a biblical subject reflect a deeper motive than fashion and taste can explain. West's biblical subject was not common in England since the Middle Ages. The painting seems to evoke a renewed piety from the 19th century rather than a previous rational appeal from the 18th century. All these reasons which account for West departing from his previous neoclassical style allows Death on The Pale Horse to be considered a 19th century historic painting.

As for the predecessors, it seems that there is one explicit predecessor who painted the original Death on The Pale Horse. This version was painted by John Hamilton Mortimer (1740-1779), and was exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1775, Britain. The painting is not only the most influential of many violent images produced later by the artist, but also a valuable representation of a "Gothic" time which emerged in British Art during the late 18th century. As for Mortimer's predecessor which have a direct impact on West's Death on The Pale Horse, there is little doubt that The Four Horsemen was the iconographic precedent for the horse. This painting, which belongs to the apocalyptic visions of the Middle Ages, is a wood engraving by the artist Albrecht Durer. Sufficient similarities in the wood engraving suggest both Mortimer and West had seen the art and incorporated it to Mortimer's first painting and West's first version of Death on The Pale Horse. It is clear that Mortimer's painting served as a source for inspiration for his contemporary, Benjamin West.

First Version

Royal Academy of Arts

Titled The Triumph of Death, this version was executed in 1783 and exhibited in the Royal Academy in 1784. West, inspired by Mortimer's Death on a Pale Horse drafted a picture which is considered the first version. However, he took Mortimer's "intensely private vision" into an extravagant, spectacle reminiscent of the art of the Rubens. This version is considered the beginning of a departure from West's "earlier paintings of classical subjects celebrating virtuous and heroic human behavior." Although West seems to be departing from neoclassical styles, he is not the only one. West was one of the several artists who in the 1770's turned to subjects of "violence and horror in a quest for sublimity as it had been defined by Edmund Burke in a famous essay published in 1757." Given this, it is rational to believe West was just following a trend, the fashion and taste of the public sphere in the late 18th century, such as other artists like James Barry and Henry Fuseli were also doing. On the contrary, John Galt, West's biographer, claims the opposite. Galt argues the effect of this painting had something beyond artistic fashion or contemporary trends. Such an undertaking, "unprecedented England since the Middle Ages, seems to belong much more to the renewed piety of the 19th century." This was later exemplified with the following versions.

Second Version

Benjamin West - Death on the Pale Horse (Second version, Detroit Institute of arts)

Oil on canvas: 59.5 x 128.5 cm. This painting was also exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London during 1796, under the title The opening of the four seals (vide Revelation); a sketch for His Majesty's Chapel, Windsor. Back in 1784, West had exhibited this version in London under the title The triumph of Death from the Revelation; a design for a picture for His Majesty's Chapel in Wind. By 1979, it was acquiered by the Detroit Institute of Art. This version was also exhibited in the Salon at Paris, during the short-lived peace of Amiens in 1802. During 1793 and 1814, English artists were allowed to visit France, hence, critical reaction at the time was mixed.

This version illustrates the biblical passage fairly literally. The central figure is Death, riding a pale horse, who appears upon the opening of the fourth seal, followed by monstrous creatures from Hell. Additionally, to the left, there are scenes of killing by the sword, famine, by pestilence (although the text in the King James version of the Bible does not contain the word "pestilence," it is used to understand the word "death" in the passage), and by wild beasts. To the right, there are the riders on the white, red, and black horses, who are seen folliwng the first three seals. The proposed painting for the chapel at Windsor was expected to illustrate a series of biblical passages from the Book of Genesis through the Book of Revelation.

This version was a project conceived in 1780 by King George III, who was a huge supporter of West since 1786. This painting was supposed to be the King's most bountiful act of patronage. This point in life was also the central undertaking in West's career, where he contributed eighteen large pictures and various small paintings for the King's chapel. Nonetheless, to West's disappointment, this version was never completed. By August 1801, he was instructed by the King to stop working on the painting, and the order to continue was never recieved. Since the project was never completed, there seems to be a confusion about the place of the subjects from the Book of Revelation within the scheme of the chapel. It also creates confusion about how many works were intended to be made for the chapel, although it was known that "Death on the Pale Horse was the only apocalyptic subject intended for the chapel to reach an exhibitable stage." Also, it is known that the completed paintings for the chapel were following a biblical sequence, and not a single subject from the Revelation was listed in the collection. This indicates Death on The Pale Horse was an important picture painted for the King himself, implying maybe West had omitted painting about the Revelation before deliberetely, and there is a belief that West was also aware of King George III's dislike for acopalyctic subjects.

Third Version

Death on The Pale Horse, third version

The last version of this painting has always been referred as Death on the Pale Horse. This was the last major painting of his long career. The canvas is made of brown ink and wash, heightened with white: 57 x 112 cm. This version was exhibited at the Salon in Paris in 1802.

The imagery is basically the same to the second version except for some differing details that West incorporates. In this final version, West changed the "rider on the white horse from a fierce warrior shooting a bow and arrow from the second version, to version of Christ, who carries a bow in his left hand while gazing beatifically toward a heavenly vision of white-robed figures in the sky at the right end of the painting." The inclusion of Christ contrasting the satanic figures of Death in the painting give this version rather a more optimistic outlook than the first and second versions, where horror seems unleashed by the rider of the pale horse with no salvation at sight. Another differing detail occurs in the upper left sky, where a few eagles are painted attacking a heron. This attack does not appear in the second version, but is visible in an engraving by West after the Detroit version. The addition of these figures, which appeared after the opening of the fifth seal, enlarge the subject from the previous version (The opening of the four seals) to a new title: The opening of the five seals.

Critics

Contemporary responses to West's three versions are indicative of changing attitudes as the 18th century turned into the 19th. In the first version, little to no reaction was received from the exhibition in 1784.

As for the second version (the Detroit sketch of 1796), it was widely praised and admired by connoisseurs of art at that time. Critics included patrons such as Beckford, Leicester, and Egremont, who responded positively to Death on The Pale Horse. During 1804, a discussion in the Journal Des Arts, was highly favorable towards West as well. On the other side, it was not admired by King George III, the most important patron. He did not enjoy the second version of Death on The Pale Horse and even used the word "Bedlamite" to describe it. It is thought that the king suffered with his own attacks of insanity and struggles which can explain his reaction towards the apocalyptic subject. Additionally, Death on The Pale Horse is a radical departure from previous West's paintings, who tended to focus on Neoclassical styles. We see West refering back to the Middle Ages rather than to the Urban Neclassical of the 18th century. It is a painting of "turbulent conflict recalling Baroque hunting pictures." This version as a project assigned by the King himself for his Chapel, but as mentioned above, to the Kings dislike, West was asked to stop painting it.

The final version had mixed critical opinions as well. West was considerably lionized in Paris due to its high position in the Royal Academy of Arts, and was criticized by the general public that such a position guaranteed his painting was automatically well-known to English Artist and easily exhibited in places of artistic tribute such as Paris. According to West's fellow artist, Joseph Farington diary, Jacques-Louis David considered Death on The Pale Horse a "caricature of Rubens," but that same artist (Farington) recorded that even a more important visitor, Napoleon Bonaparte, had enjoyed it. Its exhibition in America, also came with mixed critics. Reviews such as the Mirror Art critics, which considered pleasure the main purpose of art, reviewed West's third version of Death on The Pale Horse as having pleasure be their most important effect, beyond any moral or philosophic message. They admired the tone of coloring as well as the "mysterious gloom" which surrounds the Pale Horse adding pleasure, making it a picture that strikes at first sight." This review classified West's Death on The Pale Horse as an Aesthetic painting. Opposing this, New York and Boston patrons did not view the painting which much enthusiasm. Art patronage in America was in the midst of shifting toward historical painting (ordered landscapes as icons) as part of a cultural refinement. West was painting something on the other hand of the realm, portraying rather an apocalyptic subject with a gothic style, which would explain the lack of amusement from audiences in America.

Effect

It has been rumored that the appearance of Death on The Pale Horse triggered the rise of French Romantic paintings. Others believe, however, that we should see West's influence on younger French artists in the early nineteenth century not as a revelation of unimagined possibilities, but rather as a confirmation of the viability of what they were already starting to do.

Even more specifically, during the year of 1796, the wealthy and eccentric William Beckford began building Font-hill Abbey, an enormous monument of Gothic Revival Architecture. For it, he commissioned a series of paintings from West based on the Book of revelation. It seems probable that Beckford's patronage of West was sparked by seeing the second version of the painting in 1796. Nonetheless, West did not sold Death on The Pale Horse to Beckford at that time, under the justification that it would serve as the basis for a large picture which would later be the third and final version of the painting. Years later, Beckford continued buying apocalyptic pictures, and among them was a young artist called Francis Danby, who based on the same chapter of the Revelation as Death on the Pale Horse, painted An Attempt to Illustrate the Opening of the Sixth Seal, currently at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin. Much later, this would be the inspiration for the painting titled The Great Day on His Wrath (Tate Gallery, London), painted by John Martin, on the same chapter of the Revelation.

West's apocalyptic works influenced other English painters as well. One was Phillip James de Loutherbourg, who painted two years later The Opening of the Second Seal (Tate Gallery, London), using the pale white horse in The Death of The Pale Horse as a clear model. Less direct, West's apocalyptic subjects resembles artists William Blake's watercolors based on the Book of Revelation.

Being an American born Artist, West also produced an effect on America's eminent millenarian groups, especially Mormonism.At the time of the third version, the 19th century had just begun. "America in the early nineteenth century was drunk on the millennium." A common belief at the time involved the Second Advent and millennial era: a period of one thousand years during which Satan will be bound and peace will prevail on the earth. Even though any connection between West and the millennium is inconclusive, there are reasonable connections to assume so.

After West's death in 1820, the Annual Register commented that the third version (1817) could "justly be considered as one of the finest productions of modern art." When the painting arrived in New York in 1836, the Weekly Register took note, saying: ""[T]his picture has long been regarded as the chef d'oeuvre of our distinguished countryman. As Americans we feel proud that this great work of art is permanently to remain in this country, and as Philadelphians we are gratified that such a treasure has been added to the already large and valuable collection of works of arts belonging to one of our public institutions."

Symbolism

West's message is that man's fate is important and pathetic against the forces over which he has no control. The painting depicts destructive energy as well as violence. Recent connection between Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime (1757), has seen as a connection to Wests Death on The Pale Horse. There seems to be a detailed parallelism between the painting and Burke's theory that one may assume West was trying to incorporate Burke's 'terrible sublime' into one of his paintings.