The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (510 page)

(1738–1820)
. American history and portrait painter who spent almost all his career in England. After early success as a portraitist in New York, he sailed for Italy in 1760. He spent three years studying there, chiefly in Rome, and in 1763 he settled in London. Here he soon repeated the professional and social success he had enjoyed in Italy, in part due to the novelty value of his being an American (a blind cardinal enquired whether he was a Red Indian). He became a founder member of the
Royal Academy
in 1768 (in 1792 he succeeded
Reynolds
as President) and in 1772 he was appointed historical painter to George III, with whom he had a long and lucrative association. Initially West had set up as a portraitist in London, but it was as a history painter that he made his mark. In Rome he had been in contact with the circle of Gavin
Hamilton
and
Mengs
, and his early work is in a determined but rather flimsy
Neoclassical
style (
Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus
, Yale Univ., 1768). With his famous
Death of Wolfe
(NG, Ottawa, 1770), however, he made a radical innovation by depicting the figures in contemporary costume. At first he was attacked for breaking with the conventions of the
Grand Manner
, but his idea was soon adopted by other artists, most notably his countryman
Copley
, and it marks an important turning-point in taste. As his style grew away from Neoclassicism, West was in the vanguard of the
Romantic
movement with paintings such as the melodramatic
Saul and the Witch of Endor
(Wadsworth Atheneum; Hartford, 1777), and his
Death on a Pale Horse
(Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1802) has been hailed as a forerunner of
Delacroix
. Following
Kent
, he was also one of the pioneers of medieval subjects; in 1787–9 he produced a series of paintings for Windsor Castle showing events from the life of Edward III. West's historical importance far outweighs the quality of his work, which (in spite of its modernity in ideas) is generally pedestrian. He was the first American painter to achieve an international reputation and his influence on his successors, such as
Trumbull
, was great.

 
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(1765–1836).
English painter and graphic artist. His history paintings (he contributed to
Boydell's
Shakespeare Gallery) are typical of the work of a second-class artist of the generation that was trained in the 18th-cent. tradition and lived to adapt itself to the
Romanticism
of the new century. He was more successful in pastoral scenes and particularly in book illustration, in which field he was one of the most prolific artists of the day. As a watercolourist he was noted for his unusually rich colour effects.

 
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(1775–1856)
. English
Neoclassical
sculptor. The son of a sculptor also called
Richard
(1747–1808), he trained first under his father and then in Rome under
Canova
(1793–7). After his return to London, he soon had a very large practice, second only to
Chantrey
. His best-known work is the huge
Achilles
statue (unveiled 1822) in Hyde Park; it honours the Duke of Wellington and is made of bronze—33 tons—from captured French cannon! At the time the figure's conspicuous nudity was considered shocking or amusing, especially considering it had been paid for by a group of lady subscribers. Westmacott also did the pediment sculpture on the British Museum (finished 1847). His work is dignified but often rather pedestrian and dead in handling. He was Professor of Sculpture at the
Royal Academy
from 1827 to 1854. Two of his brothers,
George
(active 1799–1827) and
Henry
(1784–1861), were sculptors, as was his son, another
Richard Westmacott
(1799–1872).

 
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(1399/1400–64)
. The leading Netherlandish painter of the mid-15th cent. In spite of his contemporary celebrity (his work was appreciated in Italy as well as north of the Alps), his reputation later faded, and there is little secure knowledge about his career. There are, in fact, no paintings that can be given to him indisputably on the basis of signatures or contemporary documentation, but several are mentioned in early sources, and the style these show is so distinctive that a coherent
œuvre
has been built up around them. His early career is still somewhat problematic, however. In 1427 a certain Rogelet de la Pâture entered the workshop of Robert Campin at Tournai and left as Maistre Rogier in 1432. It is generally accepted that this is Rogier van der Weyden (the French and Flemish forms of the name both meaning ‘Rogier of the Meadow’), although it is uncertain why he should have started his apprenticeship so late. There are no documented pictures surviving from Campin's hand, but he is generally agreed to be identical with the
Master of Flémalle
, so the whole question of Rogier's relationship with his master is based on stylistic analysis. Some scholars have assumed that the Master of Flémalle should be identified with the young Rogier rather than with Campin , but the prevailing opinion is now that Rogier's work shows a development from the powerfully naturalistic and expressive style of his master towards greater refinement and spirituality. Rogier's celebrated
Deposition
(Prado, Madrid), for example, is close to the Master of Flémalle's
Crucified Thief
fragment (Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt) in its dramatic power and use of a plain gold background, but it has a new poignancy and exaltedness.
The Deposition
, like all of Rogier's works, is undated, but it must be earlier than 1443, when a copy was made.
By 1436 Rogier had moved to Brussels and been appointed official painter to the city. Apart from making a pilgrimage to Rome in 1450, he is never known to have left Brussels again. His work for the city included secular work—four large panels (destroyed in 1695) on the theme of justice for the court room of the town hall, for example—but all his surviving paintings are either religious pictures or portraits. He was extremely inventive
iconographically
and compositionally, and was a master of depicting human emotion. Unlike Jan van
Eyck
he seems to have had a large workshop with numerous assistants and pupils, and many of his compositions are known in several versions. His influence was strong and widespread; in his own lifetime his paintings were sent all over Europe, and his emotional and dramatic style found more followers than the quiet perfection of van Eyck. Rogier's portraits, usually refined and aristocratic, were also much imitated, influencing Netherlandish art until the end of the 15th cent.

 
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