Alexander's Confidence with his Physician Philip

Benjamin West · c. 1770

Medium

Brush and brown and black wash, with tan gouache, heightened with white gouache, with incising, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid card

Original size

Primary support: 21.8 × 30 cm (8 5/8 × 11 13/16 in.); Secondary support: 30.1 × 36.9 cm (11 7/8 × 14 9/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

This preparatory study by Benjamin West captures one of antiquity's most compelling moments of loyalty — Alexander the Great drinking his medicine while simultaneously handing his physician Philip the letter accusing him of treachery, his gaze steady and unafraid. West was the foremost history painter of the Anglo-American world in the eighteenth century, a founding member of the Royal Academy and court painter to George III. His gift lay in giving classical subjects a psychological weight that went beyond mere illustration, and this drawing demonstrates that quality with remarkable economy. Working in brown and black wash with white gouache on laid paper, he constructs the scene through light and shadow rather than colour, giving the composition a sculptural tension that would inform his finished canvases. The subject comes from Plutarch's account in his Life of Alexander, one of the most celebrated anecdotes of trust between a ruler and his companion, and West returned to it more than once across his career. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates West's luminous tonal study into the warm depth of oil on canvas, preserving the drama of the original's light while bringing the full weight of the painted surface that a drawing on paper can only suggest.