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Home>Collection>The Sortie Made by the Garrison of Gibraltar

Provenance

Presented 1788 to Benjamin West [1738-1820], London;[1] (his estate sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1 July 1820 and following days [this lot 6 July 1820], no. 97, bought in); (his family's sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 18-19 March 1898, 2nd day, no. 149, as The Siege and Relief of Gibraltar by J.S. Copley);[2] Murray, probably for William Cleverley Alexander [1840-1916], London.[3] W.A. Liston, Plymouth, England. (Hammer Galleries, New York); purchased 1966 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2014 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] The British owners (West, Alexander, Murray, and Liston) are listed either on the Hammer Galleries invoice for the painting, or on various Corcoran documents, all in NGA curatorial files. John Trumbull's Notebook of Paintings records the following: "Sortie from Gibraltar, a small Study say 14 by 20 Inches. Given to Mr. West & hung by him in a Room where it [has] scarcely ever been seen since. --when known it will find its just level.--finished in 1787" (quoted in Theodore Sizer, "An Early Check List of the Paintings of John Trumbull," Yale University Library Gazette 22, no. 4 [April 1948]: 9). See also the letter of 31 May 1788, John Trumbull to Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin West, Trumbull-Silliman Letters, Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford, quoted by Irma B. Jaffe, John Trumbull, Boston, 1975: 321. The Hammer Galleries invoice suggests that ownership of the painting passed from West to John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), but this is doubtful, particularly since the painting appears to have remained in the West family until the 1898 sale. The confusion could have arisen because the painting was attributed to Copley in the 1898 sale catalogue (see note 2).

[2] An incomplete label, formerly on the painting's stretcher and now in NGA curatorial files, records information referencing this sale.

[3] Annotated copies of the sale copy give "Murray" as the buyer. This might possibly be Charles Fairfax Murray (1849-1919), an artist and dealer in London, whose name is one of the British owners listed on the Hammer Galleries invoice. A label on the stretcher reads: "Alexander Esq. 22/3/98." Alexander was a wealthy banker, collector of western paintings and Chinese porcelains, and a patron of James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Exhibition History

1966
Past and Present: 250 Years of American Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 24 January - 4 April 1966, unpublished checklist.
1976
Zweihundert Jahre amerikanische Malerei 1776-1976, Rheinisches Landesmuseum, Bonn; Museum of Modern Art, Belgrade; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome; National Museum of Polan, Warsaw, 30 June 1976 - 10 December 1976, no. 3.
1980
Benjamin West and His American Students, National Portrait Gallery, Washington; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 16 October 1980 - 19 April 1981, unnumbered catalogue.
1982
John Trumbull: The Hand and Spirit of a Painter, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, 28 October 1982 - 16 January 1983, no. 10, repro.
1990
Loan to display with permanent collection, Detroit Institute of Arts, 13 January - 25 June 1990.
1993
Picturing History: American Painting 1770-1930, IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New York; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; Dallas Museum of Art; Center for the Fine Arts, Miami; Phoenix Art Museum, 28 September 1993 - 19 February 1995, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

Bibliography

2011
Cash, Sarah, ed. Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Washington, 2011: 320, repro.

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