@mastersthesis {12103,
	title = {Benjamin West{\textquoteright}s Nelson Memorial: Neoclassical Sculpture and the Atlantic World, ca. 1812},
	year = {2015},
	school = {Delaware},
	abstract = {This dissertation closely examines Benjamin West{\textquoteright}s Grand Model of Neptune giving up the Body of Nelson, with the Dominion of the Sea into the Arms of Britannia, a significant pediment designed by West, executed in Coade stone, and erected at the Royal Navy{\textquoteright}s Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich in 1812. My work re-positions West and this work within a local London backdrop of sculpture, architecture, and space, as well as a global, imperial contest for British cultural, industrial, and political power. I argue that West{\textquoteright}s efforts to realize the Nelson pediment helped him to secure his artistic and pedagogical legacy for posterity while simultaneously positioning London as the preeminent creative center of the modern, industrialized world.
The second chapter of the dissertation explores West{\textquoteright}s involvement with the project of contemporary British history painting and asks how canvases like The Death of General Wolfe (1770) and The Death of Nelson (1806) worked to advance emergent nationalistic ideologies in turn-of-the-century London. The third chapter of the project explores Benjamin West{\textquoteright}s early nineteenth-century homage to Horatio Nelson, The Grand Model of Neptune giving up the Body of Nelson, with the Dominion of the Sea into the Arms of Britannia (1810-1812). I contend that West attempted to reconcile the goals of the British project of history painting with an emergent need for an innovative, formal language for public monuments through this pediment. By closely examining the formal components of the pediment, this chapter demonstrates that the visual cues and forms in West{\textquoteright}s pediment, much like those seen in his well-received history paintings, connected his monument to some of the most revered artists and artworks of all time. Building from our understanding of the pediment{\textquoteright}s form and iconography, the fourth chapter of the dissertation investigates how West{\textquoteright}s choice to use Coade stone as his primary construction material actually made the realization of a project of this magnitude possible.
This project builds upon the work of several key scholars of sculpture and material culture including Joan Coutu, Malcolm Baker, and Douglas Fordham. Linda Colley and John Barrell{\textquoteright}s work on the reception of art and objects in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century Britain provided an excellent underpinning for investigating themes of British imperialism, economics, and populism. The work of David Solkin and Rosie Dias was especially illuminating for understanding period modes of exhibition and presentation.
This dissertation expands upon existing American and British art historical scholarship by integrating West{\textquoteright}s designs for heroic sculptures into a scholarly dialogue about transatlantic neoclassicism circa 1812. Broadening the methodological base of American sculpture, it reconciles West{\textquoteright}s sculpture by positioning the pediment within significant Anglo-American space(s) of reception, remembrance, and nationalistic sentiment. Further, this project considers how an object like The Grand Model of Neptune - at once British and American - resisted a static assignment of nationalistic meaning by virtue of its authorship, viewership(s), and fixed location at Greenwich. Ultimately, the dissertation works toward an integration of discussions of the significance of sculpture in the radiating rings of architecture, landscape, spatiality, and the Atlantic world.},
	keywords = {Nineteenth-Century Art, North America},
	author = {Wood Kirchhoff, Mary Catherine Lee}
}
