Ftartgallery - Benjamin West Part 37

On December 6, 18.17, his wife died. Soon West himself was confined to bed, suffering from decay rather than a specific malady. He had himself placed on a sofa in his studio and there, surrounded by his own works and his important collection of old masters, he spent quiet days studying two volumes of Fra Bartolommeo's drawings. When he became too weak to hold them, they were laid on a settee beside him. Sometimes he called for his pencil, and worked on the composition of the next canvas he was going to paint, the biggest, the most beautiful of all: Christ Looking at Peter after the Apostle's Denial, One day his son did not bring him the newspaper, and when West asked for it said it was mislaid. West understood at once what had happened. "I am sure the King is dead," he whispered, "and I have lost the best friend I ever had in my life." All the bitterness was forgotten.

old man grew weaker, and shortly before one a.m. on March 11, 1820, his heart stopped beating. His body was enthroned in state in the great room of the Royal Academy, and it was regarded as almost miraculous that his right hand even in death kept the position of holding a brush. An eager worshipper took a cast of it, and for years the cast was regarded as one of the holy relics of art.

After a flurry during which the churchmen refused to receive his body because there was no evidence that he had ever been baptized, West was buried with great pomp in St. Paul's, next to Sir Joshua Reynolds. His death was regarded as a national calamity; peers, bishops, statesmen, and commoners jostled one another to get into the church. The undertaker's bill was almost a thousand pounds.

When the American's body had found its resting place with the bodies of Britain's great, West's old servant Robert walked sadly back to the studio and looked over the empty benches where so many eager students had sat. In his mind's eye he saw Constable there and Stuart, Peale, and Lawrence. "Ah, sir," he cried, "where will they go now?"