The Woman Clothed with the Sun Fleeth from the Persecution of the Dragon by BENJAMIN WEST

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The Woman Clothed with the Sun Fleeth from the Persecution of the Dragon
The Woman Clothed with the Sun Fleeth from the Persecution of the Dragon ( England c. 1798 )
BENJAMIN WEST P.R.A. (1738-1820)

Medium

Oil with pen and ink on canvas

Dimensions

28.60cm wide 39.50cm high (11.26 inches wide  15.55 inches high)

Description / Expertise

This previously unrecorded mixed-media study on canvas is a reparatory work for one of four pictures commissioned in 1797 by William Beckford for a planned but never-realized ‘Revelation Chamber’ at Fonthill Abbey. It was among West’s most important commissions.
This is a particularly beautiful example of his fully realized studies
and displays the artist’s fluid pen-work combined with a careful
handling of paint. It is unusual for West in being executed directly onto
a lightly primed canvas rather than on paper subsequently faced onto
a canvas support.