Mrs Benjamin West II with her son Benjamin West III

"This painting is signed and dated 1805; it was acquired by Charles Fairfax Murray at a West family sale, and it is reasonable therefore to assume that it represents a family member. The records tell us that the wife of the artist’s younger son, also called Benjamin, was ‘in a state likely to add to the family’ in 1804, making it extremely likely that this fashionable and pretty woman seated in a modish Grecian chair is the artist’s daughter-in-law.

In form, the painting is a secular Madonna and Child, with the child’s bonnet standing in for a halo, the spinning-top clutched in the child’s hand reminiscent of Christ’s attributes in such paintings - traditionally goldfinch or coral.
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