See West, Young Man

The most pleasingly instructive art exhibition that the U.S. tourist can turn off the turnpike to see this summer is on show in Allentown, Pa.

Allentown gets its name from a celebrated chief justice of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, who in 1761 sent off a letter to his agents in Leghorn directing that -L-100 be advanced to a young Pennsylvanian who was passing through on his way to study in Rome. "From all accounts," wrote William Allen, "he is like to turn out a very extraordinary person in the painting way, and it is a pity such a genius should be warped for want of a little cash." The faith of Justice Allen--the New World's first important art patron--was justified; for young Benjamin West did indeed turn out to be extraordinary "in the painting way." He was not only, along with John Singleton Copley, one of America's first two major painters; he was a dominating influence across the Atlantic as well.

To celebrate its 200th anniversary, Allentown is fittingly showing "The World of Benjamin West'' (see color}. In addition to 55 works by West, the show includes canvases by older painters who influenced him, paintings by a number of distinguished contemporaries and by all of West's better-known students.

Pictures to Doff Hats At. West's climb from poor innkeeper's son to historical painter for King George III is a remarkable success story in itself, but the happiest part of it was West's relationship to his students. When he settled in London after completing his studies in Rome, the art world was turning back to antiquity. The Allentown show includes samples of the writings of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, for it was he who gave the movement its rallying cry: "There is but one way for the moderns to become great, and perhaps unequaled; I mean, by imitating the ancients." In his early years, West took his themes largely from mythology and, like the Greeks, sought not only to portray beauty but also to explore the realm of the ideal. He advised his students to seek the ideal measurements of the human figure and to make their own paintings conform.

To modern taste, which feels uneasy in the presence of any kind of heroics, West's highly polished portraits are apt to seem his most appealing work. But as he wrote to his pupil Charles Willson Peale, "I am not friendly to the indiscriminate waste of genius in portrait painting." He wanted to "dignify man," to pass on lessons of "religion, love of country and morality." To the classic pursuit of the ideal, he added a romantic love of exalted sentiment. And this suited Georgian England perfectly: when men passed West's dramatic Death of Lord Nelson, they doffed their hats.

Painters to Be Proud Of. West succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as second president of the Royal Academy, and though he made no secret of his sympathy for the American Revolution, he retained the friendship of George III for most of his life. West was the gentlest of men, and his wife testified that in 40 years of marriage, she had never seen him "in a passion." He was infinitely patient with a somewhat overbearing young student named Gilbert Stuart. He rescued John Trumbull when he landed in jail as an American revolutionary, encouraged him to become the painter of the Revolution.

He strongly influenced John Constable and Washington Allston, and he might have made something special "in the painting way" out of Robert Fulton and Samuel F. B. Morse had not the impulse to invent the steamboat and the telegraph taken priority with them. When he died in 1820, a few weeks after George III, the new King, George IV, wanted to banish all his father's Wests to the lumber room of Windsor Castle. He backed down only when another eminent West student intervened. The man was Sir Thomas Lawrence, who in that same year started his own loving portrait of the benign old master.

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