Benjamin West's General Johnson and representations of British imperial identity, 1759-1770. An empire of mercy?

British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Volumn 27, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 37-59

  Conlin, Jonathan ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 27144543495     PISSN: 0141867X     EISSN: 17540208     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1754-0208.2004.tb00277.x     Document Type: Article

References (59)

1. There is no mention of it in Anna Uhry Abrams, The Valiant Hero: Benjamin West and Grand-Style History Painting (Washington, DC 1985)
2. or Robert C. Alberts, Benjamin West: A Biography (Boston 1978). Nor does it appear to have been addressed in any periodical. The two main biographies of William Johnson do not refer to the painting either
3. Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven 1986), no.92
4. Quoted in Erffa and Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, no.92
5. David Solkin, Painting for Money (New Haven 1992), p. 181
6. Kathleen Wilson, The Sense of the People. Politics, Culture and Imperialism in England, 1715-1785 (Cambridge 1995)
7. Fred Anderson, Crucible of War. The Seven Years War and the Fate of Empire in British North America (London 2000), p.333
8. For a detailed account of this battle and the siege of Fort Niagara, see Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Siege: 1759 (Youngstown, NY 1996)
9. Dunnigan, Siege: 1759, p. 97.
10. This letter subsequently appeared in the Pennsylvania Gazette, 6 August 1759
11. Quoted in Dunnigan, Siege: 1759, p.98
12. Diary entry for 27 July 1759. The Papers of Sir William Johnson, ed. Alexander C. Flick, 14 vols (Albany, NY 1921-1965), xiii.115
13. Dieskau recounted this story to Diderot in 1760, who included it in his Memoirs. Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, 2 vols (London 1884), i.319-22
14. The London Chronicle, 8-11 November 1759, p.242-43
15. Public Advertiser 10 and 11 September 1759
16. London Gazette, 4-8 September 1759
17. Horace Walpole to Horace Mann. 13 September 1759. Wilmarth S. Lewis, Yale Edition of the Correspondence of Horace Walpole, 48 vols (New Haven 1932-1983), xxi.326
18. Horace Walpole to Henry Seymour Conway, 13 September 1759. Correspondence of Horace Walpole, xxxviii.27
19. West's earliest British patrons were Anglican Bishops. Dr William Smith had spent the years 1762-1764 touring Britain appealing to senior Anglican church figures for funding for his college, He may well have brought West (a former student of the same college) to their attention at the same time. See Abrams, The Valiant Hero, p.108
20. See J. C. H. King, 'Woodland artefacts from the collection of Benjamin West', American Indian Art Magazine (Winter 1991 ), p.35-47 (p.40, 44)
21. He toyed with the idea of painting a scene from General John Forbes' campaign to recover the remains of Braddock, a campaign in which his brother Samuel took part. Abrams, The Valiant Hero, p.51
22. The Royal Magazine, December 1759. p.319-20
23. Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire and the World 1600-1850 (London 2002), p. 102
24. Wilson, The Sense of the People, p. 178-85.
25. Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires, ed. George Stephens. 11 vols (London 1978), iii (part 2), p.1227, no.3885
26. Quoted in Gentleman's Magazine 31 (1761), p.462-63
27. See Seneca, Moral and Political Essays, ed. and trans. John M. Cooper and J. F. Procopé (Cambridge 1995), p.117-64
28. and Sabine Rochlitz, Das Bild Caesars Ciceros 'Orationes Caesaranae' Untersuchungen sur 'clementia' und 'sapientia Caesaris' (Frankfurt 1993).
29. Alberts, Benjamin West, p. 17.
30. and Reynolds' 1789 Continence of Scipio
31. see Charles Mitchell, 'Three Phases of Reynolds' Method', Burlington Magazine 80 (1942). p.35-40
32. Anna Abrams also notes that the figures in the wood-engraving correspond with figures in West's colonial sketchbook. Abrams, The Valiant Hero, p. 61-63
33. Erffa and Staley, Benjamin West, no. 143
34. For this incident, see Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe, i.506-509
35. Anderson, Crucible of War, p. 542-43.
36. A Journal of Lieutenant Simon Stevens [...] with an Account of his Escape from Quebec (Boston, MA 1760), p.12
37. Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism (London 1987), p. 217
38. The latter work only survives as a 1769 engraving by Richard Earlom and John Hall. Abrams, The Valiant Hero, fig.74
39. This incident, rather like those surrounding West's childhood 'among the Indians', possesses a legendary quality in the hagiography of the painter which renders its veracity somewhat suspect. See John Galt, The Life, Studies and Works of Benjamin West. Esq. Part Two (London 1820), p.46ff
40. Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge 1999), p.92
41. Colley, Captives, p. 174.
42. David Hume, An Essay Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Cambridge 1998), p.43
43. See also Joseph Wharton, An Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope (London 1764), p. 219
44. For the Vauxhall paintings see Brian Allen, Francis Hayman (New Haven 1987)
45. Solkin, Painting for Money, p. 190-99
46. Anon., Description of Vaux-hall (London 1762), p.26
47. 'Ode to General Townshend', Salisbury journal, 14 January 1760
48. Anon., Description of Vaux-hall, p.24-26
49. Charles P. Moritz, Travels, Chiefly on Foot, through Several Parts of England, in 1782 (London 1795), p.37
50. Bodleian Library, Oxford. G. A. Surrey c.21. f.62
51. David Mallet, Elivira: A Tragedy (London 1763), p. 1
52. Robert Gilbert, Britain Revived, and Under the Smiles of Mercy. Summoned to the Work of Praise (London 1759), p.32
53. Gilbert, Britain Revived, p. 36.
54. Horace Walpole to Strafford, 13 September 1759. Correspondence of Horace Walpole, xxxv.294
55. Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie (Oxford 1976), p.185
56. Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments, p. 74.
57. Fania Oz-Salzberger in the Introduction to Adam Ferguson, An Essay of the History of Civil Society (Cambridge 1995), p.xvi
58. Christopher Berry, The Idea of Luxury: A Conceptual and Historical Investigation (Cambridge 1994), p. 162
59. 'A lover of his country' [William Smith], An Historical Account of the Expedition Against the Ohio Indians (London 1766), p. 27-28