Attributed to Benjamin West, P.R.A.

In 1780, King George III commissioned Benjamin West to produce a series of paintings for a new private chapel at Windsor Castle; however, the chapel was never renovated and the project never fully came to fruition. At present, there are thirteen known, extant works from this series, a number of which have arched tops, such as The Ascension, which is now in the War Memorial Chapel at Bob Jones University¹ alongside six others from the series. A number of oil sketches on paper depicting biblical subjects have been tentatively associated with the commission, including one of The Ascension, at the Newark Museum of Fine Art, which Allen Staley suggested may have been a sketch for a canvas to replace the aforementioned painting.² The oil on paper Ascension is almost identical in dimensions to this Transfiguration study, a not insignificant fact, given that it is not a typical eighteenth-century format. While Staley identified the Newark sketch with that which remained in the artist’s studio and was sold at auction by the his sons in 1826, lot 27, as ‘The Ascension of our Saviour’, it is plausible that this instead refers to the present sketch. It is also possible that this is one of two sketches exhibited at the Royal Academy under ‘The Resurrection of our Saviour; a sketch’, either in 1808 or 1819, since sketches of The Ascension, The Resurrection and The Transfiguration have historically become confused.

¹ Accession no. P.63.320; oil on canvas, 536 x 290 cm.; https://www.si.edu/object/ascension-our-lord-painting%3Asiris_ari_204824

² H. von Erffa and A. Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, New Haven and London 1986, p. 378, no. 384; see also p. 377, under no. 384; inv. no. 59.412; oil on paper mounted on canvas, 28 x 20.5 cm; https://collections.newarkmuseumart.org/objects/13352/study-for-the-ascension?ctx=db11afbd27ea9c7daf5f7146983d450cc1eb801f&idx=1