Portrait of Benjamin West

Lawrence's Portrait of Benjamin West (1818 or later) at the Cleveland Museum depicts the American-born painter who had succeeded Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy and who had dominated official British art through the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. West and Lawrence had a complex relationship — West was Lawrence's predecessor and in some ways his institutional obstacle — and the portrait, painted after West's death or in his final years, serves as a monument to the previous generation of British painting rather than a competitive assessment of a contemporary. The work's quality of elegiac respect reflects Lawrence's awareness of his own inheritance of the role West had occupied.

Lawrence portrays the aged West with dignified restraint, using warm flesh tones and soft modeling to convey the sitter's venerable character. The brushwork is confident but respectful, with the dark costume and background focusing attention on the expressive, intelligent face.