Paintings from the West Foundation Collection

GMOA recently acquired two significant American paintings from the West Foundation Collection of Atlanta, Ga. The foundation gave Benjamin West’s “Portrait of Captain Christopher Codrington Bethell” (1769) and John Linton Chapman’s “Via Appia” (1867) to the museum in honor of our director, Bill Eiland, and in anticipation of the reopening.

Benjamin West, a native of Springfield, Pa., was a founding member of the Royal Academy in England and taught important American artists, including Samuel F.B. Morse and Washington Allston. The portrait by West (below) is now the earliest American painting in the museum’s collection.

John Linton Chapman was born in Washington, D.C., but was a longtime resident of Italy. He painted the Via Appia, the section of the Roman road that led to southern Italy, several times. This version (below) shows the view along the road looking back toward Rome. The painting was part of the museum’s award-winning 2004 exhibition “Classic Ground: Mid-Nineteenth-Century American Painting and the Italian Encounter” and is also on the cover of the exhibition catalogue.

“Both paintings, important additions to the museum’s already strong collection of American art, will be on display in the new permanent collection galleries when GMOA reopens on January 29,” says Paul Manoguerra, GMOA’s curator of American art. “We are grateful to the West Foundation for giving these two excellent paintings in celebration of the new galleries and the work of our director.”