Oil paint on canvas
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
Works with images
Works on display
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/benjamin-west-594" aria-label="More by Benjamin West" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Benjamin West</a>
Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II King Sparta
Presented by W. Wilkins 1827
actions: expressive
actions: postures and motions
adults
architecture
child
children
classical
classical
Cleombrotus
clothing and personal items
comforting
domestic
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
exile
government and politics
grief
group
groups
helmet
history
interior - non-specific
interiors
king
Leonidas II, King of Sparta
man
military
named individuals
objects
people
periods and styles
royalty and social rank
shield
sitting
society
soldier
Sparta
standing
weapons
woman
work and occupations
<p>Benjamin West showed this painting at the second exhibition of the newly formed Royal Academy. After several years in Italy, West had established himself in London as the leading painter of subjects from classical history. His example, and the Academy’s teaching, encouraged numerous young British artists to study in Italy.</p><p>His subject is an incident from ancient Greek history. Leonidas, king of Sparta, was usurped by his son-in-law, Cleombrutus. When Leonidas returns looking for revenge, his daughter pleads for her husband’s life. Leonidas is moved by her tears, and commutes Cleombrutus’s death sentence to banishment.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2004</em></p>
painting oil paint canvas
10 March 2003 – 12 July 2004
2004-07-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-03-10
Royal Academy
Collection based display
11 July 2005 – 6 November 2007
2007-11-06
11 July 2005
2005-07-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2005-07-11
Grand Manner
Collection based display
12 November 2007 – 17 October 2010
2010-10-17
12 November 2007 – 17 October 2010
2010-10-17
2007-11-12
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-11-12
Grand Manner
Collection based display
29 November 2010 – 30 May 2011
2011-05-30
29 November 2010 – 14 February 2011
2011-02-14
2010-11-29
Musée du Louvre (Paris, France)
20 March 2011 – 30 May 2011
2011-05-30
2011-03-20
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (Houston, USA)
http://www.mfah.org
2010-11-29
Néoclassicisme
Loan-out
2 December 2011 – 29 July 2012
2012-07-29
2 December 2011 – 29 July 2012
2012-07-29
2011-12-02
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2011-12-02
Atlantic Britain
Collection based display
29 November 2012 – 24 July 2022
2022-07-24
1 December 2012
2012-12-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2012-11-29
Gallery 15
Collection based display
9 June 2015 – 13 September 2015
2015-09-13
9 June 2015 – 13 September 2015
2015-09-13
2015-06-09
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-06-09
Fighting History
Exhibition
26 September 2022
26 September 2022
2022-09-26
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2022-09-26
Gallery 15
Collection based display
Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta
support: 1384 × 1854 mm
frame: 1480 × 1935 × 77 mm
Presented by W. Wilkins 1827
<div class="para1">
<span class="text14">Benjamin West showed this <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> at</span><span class="text1"> </span><span class="text13">the second exhibition of the      newly formed Royal Academy. After several years in Italy</span><span class="text1">, West had established himself in London as the leading painter of      subjects from <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/classicism" title="Glossary definition for 'Classicism'"><span>classical</span></a> history. His example, and the </span><span class="text14"><a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a>’s teaching, encouraged</span><span class="text1"> </span><span class="text13">numerous young British artists to study</span><span class="text1"> </span><span class="text14">in Italy.</span><span class="text1">
<br/>
</span>
</div>
<div class="para1">
<span class="text13">His subject is an incident from ancient Greek history.      Leonidas, king of Sparta, </span><span class="text16">was usurped by his      son-in-law,</span><span class="text15"> Cleombrutus</span><span class="text1">. When Leonidas returns looking for revenge, his daughter pleads </span><span class="text13">for her husband’s life. Leonidas is moved</span><span class="text1"> </span><span class="text13">by her tears, and commutes      Cleombrutus’s</span><span class="text1"> </span><span class="text14">death      sentence to banishment.</span><span class="text1">
<br/> </span>
</div>

Display caption
2004-09-08T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<div class="text">
<p>
<b>Benjamin West</b> 1738–1820 </p>
<p>
<b>Leonidas Ordering into Banishment Cleombrotus</b>
<br/>1768<br/>Oil paint on canvas <br/>1384 x 1854 mm<br/>Presented by W. Wilkins 1827<br/>Inscribed by the artist ‘B West PINXIT / 1768’ in paint bottom right.<br/>N00121<br/>
<a href="http://tdc-javanet/servlet/ViewWork?workid=16095&amp;searchid=10297&amp;tabview=image%22 \o %22Benjamin West Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta 1768"></a>
<br/>
<b>Ownership history</b>
<br/>Probably purchased from the artist in 1770 by Samuel Smith (1727—1798) of Clapham or by William Lock (1732–1810) of Norbury; recorded as with Samuel Smith by 1791; his son, William Smith, MP (1756–1835), London, from whose collection sold at Christie’s, London, 8 June 1819; bought by John Bartie; …; William Wilkins, RA (1778–1839), London, who presented it to the British Museum, London, 1827; passed to the National Gallery and given an inventory number (121) 1827; transferred to the National Gallery, London, 1856, but considered by the Trustees of The British Museum to be their property until they formally relinquished their interest in 1868; transferred to the Tate Gallery 1929.</p>
<p>
<b>Exhibition history</b>
<br/>
</p><div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1768</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Special exhibition in honour of the King of Denmark, Society of Artists of Great Britain, London, 30 September – ? 1768 (122).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1770</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Royal Academy, London 1770 (197, as ‘Leonidas and Cleombrotus’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>2010</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">
<i>L'Antiquité rêvée: Innovations et résistances au XVIIIe siècle</i>, Musée du Louvre, Paris, 2 December 2010–14 February 2011 (63); as <i>Antiquity Revived: Neoclassical Art in the Eighteenth Century</i>, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 20 March–30 May 2011 (42, as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’).</div>
</div>
<p>
<b>References</b>
<br/>
</p><div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1770</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Lodovico Dolce, <i>Aretin, </i>trans. William Brown<i>,</i> London 1770, p.xii (as ‘Cleombrotus’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1805</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">‘A Correct List of the Works of Mr West’, <i>Public Characters for 1805</i>, London 1804, p.563 (as ‘Leonidas ordering Cleombrotus into Banishment with his Wife and Children<i>’</i>).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1805</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">‘Biographical Sketch of Benjamin West, Esq’, <i>Universal Magazine</i>, vol.3, no.19, June 1805, p.529 (as ‘Leonidas ordering Cleombrotus into Banishment with his Wife and Children<i>’</i>).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1807</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Joel Barlow, <i>The Columbiad: A Poem</i>, Philadelphia 1807, p.433 (as ‘Leonidas exiling Cleombrotus and family’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1808</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">‘A Correct Catalogue of the Works of Mr West’, <i>La Belle Assemblée</i>, vol.4, no.32, July 1808, p.15 (as ‘The picture of Leonidas ordering Cleombrotus into banishment with his Wife and Children’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1820</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">John Galt, <i>The Life and Works of Benjamin West, Esq</i>, London 1820, p.223.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1826</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">William Young Ottley, <i>A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery</i>, London 1826, p.101 (as ‘Cleombrotus Banished by Leonidas’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1834</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">
<i>Library of the Fine Arts</i>, vol.4, 1834, p.49.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1836</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">J.D. Passavant, <i>Tour of a German Artist in England, </i>2 vols, London 1836, vol.1, p.55.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1838</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Gustav Friedrich Waagen, <i>Works of Art and Artists in England,</i> 3 vols, London 1838, vol.1, p.236 (as ‘Cleombrotus Banished by Leonidas’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1842</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Anna Jameson, <i>A Handbook to the Public Galleries in and Near London</i>, 2 vols, London 1842, vol.1, pp.132–3 (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1845</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">George Foggo, <i>The National Gallery: Its Pictures and their Painters</i>, London 1845, p.43 (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1854</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Gustav Friedrich Waagen, <i>Treasures of Art in Great Britain</i>, 3 vols, London 1854, vol.1, p.366 (as ‘Cleombrotus Banished by Leonidas’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1866</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">‘The Fine Arts Year’,<i> London Review</i>, 6 January 1866, p.37.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1879</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">John Sherer, <i>The Gallery of British Artists</i>, 2 vols, London and New York 1879–80, vol.1, p.95 reproduced.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1912</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Jean Loquin, <i>La Peinture d'histoire en France de 1747 à 1785</i>, Paris 1912, p.154.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1967</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Robert Rosenblum, <i>Transformations in Late Eighteenth Century Art</i>, Princeton 1967, p.66, reproduced (as ‘Leonidas and Cleombrotus’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1977</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">John Dillenberger, <i>Benjamin West: The Context of his Life’s Work with Particular Attention to Paintings with Religious Subject Matter</i>, San Antonio 1977, p.159 (no.209).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1979</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">
<i>The Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion</i>, London 1979 (reprinted 1986), p.22, reproduced (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1980</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">R.L. Liscombe, <i>William Wilkins 1778–1839</i>, Cambridge 1980, pp.182, 223.</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1982</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Philip W. Martin, <i>Byron: A Poet Before his Public</i>, Cambridge 1982, p.136, reproduced (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1986</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, <i>The Paintings of Benjamin West</i>, New Haven and London 1986, no.13, reproduced (as ‘Leonidas and Cleombrotus’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1990</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Simon Wilson, <i>Tate Gallery: An illustrated Companion,</i> London 1990, p.30, reproduced (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1993</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">David H. Solkin, <i>Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth–Century England</i>, New Haven and London 1993, p.186 (as ‘Leonidas and Cleombrotus’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>1995</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Michael H. Duffy, ‘West’s <i>Agrippina, Wolfe</i> and the Expression of Restraint’, <i>Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte</i>, vol. 58, no.2, 1995, pp.215–6, reproduced (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>2010</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Guillaume Faroult, Christophe Leribault and Guilhem Scherf (eds.), <i>L’Antiquité rêvée: Innovations et résistances au XVIIIe siècle</i>, exhibition catalogue, Louvre, Paris 2010, no.63, reproduced (as ‘Léonidas et Cléombrote’).</div>
</div>
<div class="tabbed-list-item">
<div class="left-block">
<b>2011</b>
</div>
<div class="right-block">Guillaume Faroult, Christophe Leribault and Guilhem Scherf (eds.), <i>Antiquity Revived: Neoclassical Art in the Eighteenth Century</i>, exhibition catalogue, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Houston 2011, no.42 reproduced (as ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’).</div>
</div>
<p>The subject is taken from ancient Greek history, related by the classical author Plutarch (c.50–120 AD) in his ‘Life of Agis’. The setting is the interior of a temple, with Leonidas II, King of Sparta, challenging his son-in-law, Cleombrotus, who had briefly usurped him. Leonidas is shown standing towards the centre of the composition, his arms outstretched stiffly before him. Leonidas is shown seated, his head covered by his cloak, in anxious reflection. He is accompanied by his wife, Chelonis, who leans against him and holds the first of their two children by the hand. To the left of the composition, and to the far right, a range of bystanders bear witness: a crowd of soldiers and two older men to the left; two robed gentlemen to the right.</p>
<p>The painting is executed in a range of muted colours, with the blues, reds, greens, pink, flesh tones and yellows all tending to a pallid greyness. The painted surface appears restrained and uniform, built up with small, controlled brushstrokes with few visible traces of the manipulation of paint, and conveying a greater concern with relaying tonal shifts than the specific qualities of different surfaces: flesh, stone and fabric are rendered in a similar fashion. The thirteen figures seen whole or in part in the composition are ranged across a shallow plane set some way into pictorial space, but against a flat architectural backdrop. Given the number of figures contained within a relatively small extent of canvas and the evident resolve with which they have been painted, West must have planned this composition carefully through preparatory drawings and paintings. A ‘Sketch, in oil, of Leonidas Ordering Cleombrotus into Banishment, on paper’ is noted in early nineteenth-century lists of works on show in the artist’s gallery in Newman Street, London, but the location of this work is currently unknown.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_1" name="endnote_back_1">1</a> A chalk drawing of the figure of Leonidas posed and dressed almost exactly as depicted in the final picture is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London (DYCE.1776)</p>
<p>As related in a contemporary magazine,<i> Literary Register</i>, the full story is as follows:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>Leonidas, King of Sparta, suspecting a conspiracy was forming against him, fled to the temple of Minerva for shelter, whereupon Cleombrotus, his son in law seized the government. When Leonidas was informed of this he made his escape, taking his daughter with him, who chose rather to fly with her father than reign with her husband. Some time after Leonidas being restored to the throne, he advanced at the head of a band of soldiers to the temple where Cleombrotus, upon this change of affairs, had himself fled for refuge. He there reproached him with great warmth for assuming the regal power, in violation of the ties of affinity between them, and for expelling him from his own country in so ignominious a manner. Cleombrotus, who had nothing to answer to these approaches, continued seated in a profound silence, and with an aspect which sufficiently testified his confusion. His wife Chelonida [Chelonis] stood near with her two children at her feet. She had been equally unfortunate as a wife and a daughter: but was equally faithful in each of those capacities, and had always adhered to the unfortunate side. All those who were then present melted into tears at so moving a sight, and were struck with admiration at the virtue and tenderness of Chelonida, and the amiable force of conjugal love.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_2" name="endnote_back_2">2</a>
</blockquote>
<p>By treating a serious moral theme from ancient literature in a restrained pictorial style redolent of the most prestigious artistic models (notably the seventeenth–century artist Nicholas Poussin), the painting was designed to occupy the highest rank in the hierarchy of artistic genres promoted by the traditions of academic art theory. West, who was American by birth and had first spent a period in Italy in the mid–1760s studying art before coming to London in 1763, was a pioneering figure in the creation of a British ‘grand manner’. The painting was first exhibited at a special exhibition of the Society of Artists in 1768, and again at the Royal Academy’s second annual exhibition of contemporary British art in 1770. These exhibitions, and the foundation of the Royal Academy itself in 1768, made public the high aspirations of a group of artists, including West, who were seeking to secure royal patronage and to elevate themselves from the larger community of metropolitan practitioners by affiliating themselves to the most rarefied and high–minded traditions of art. Given the longstanding shortage of Church, state or royal patronage for history painting in Britain, and a tradition of critical antipathy towards the more abstract and idealistic modes of art, this development was both adventurous and contentious. For West these years marked a moment of rapid professional ascent, based on the production of serious classical paintings and leading to royal patronage and (in 1772) the title of Historical Painter to the King. In 1771 he wrote back to an artist friend in America (using his typically idiosyncratic spelling and grammar):</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>The Exhibitions hear have drove men to pursue difirent departments of the art of painting … I have Imbark’d in Historical painting. by which means I have rimoved that long received Opinion that. That was a department in the art that never would be incourage in this Kingdom. But [<i>illegible</i>] I have been so fare Successfull in it that I find my pictures sell for a prise that no liveing Artist ever received before’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_3" name="endnote_back_3">3</a>
</blockquote>
<p>After the exhibition of 1770, a contemporary commentator naming this picture counted West among the ‘several English artists’ who had ‘in our last and other late exhibitions … made it evident, that some of the principal merits of historical painting (in particular design and composition) may be comprised in the space of a cabinet picture’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_4" name="endnote_back_4">4</a> The serious subject matter (taken from ancient history), moral content (turning on themes of loyalty and rebellion), and the composition and pictorial style of this picture, derived very directly from the example of Nicolas Poussin and emphasising narrative clarity and compositional order, conformed to the highest expectations of traditional academic art theory, as formulated in seventeenth–century France and Italy. But while West’s immediate model, the Scottish painter Gavin Hamilton (1723–1798), produced such scenes on a large scale with figures approaching life-size (for example, his <i>Agrippina Landing at Brindisium with the Ashes of Germanicus</i> 1765–72; <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hamilton-agrippina-landing-at-brindisium-with-the-ashes-of-germanicus-t03365" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T03365</span></a>), the American painter has rendered the composition on a Poussinesque scale, with figures about the third of life-size. The connoisseur Horace Walpole, writing in response to the annual art exhibitions of 1770 and therefore probably in reference specifically to this painting, referred to, ‘One West, who paints history in the taste of Poussin, gets £300 for a piece not too large to hang over a chimney’ while also noting, ‘He has merit, but is hard and heavy, and far unworthy of such prices’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_5" name="endnote_back_5">5</a>
</p>
<p>Arguably, the sentiment of the picture offers a similar concession to modern day values. The art historian David Solkin has identified this work as among several produced by West in the 1760s which foreground female characters and the role they might play in softening masculine virtues, in line with the shifting gender values of the era. So, in this picture, ‘the pleading mother … is cast in the role of a beautiful agent who mollifies the hard brutality of a dominant male, as she solicits her royal father’s mercy on behalf of her traitor husband’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_6" name="endnote_back_6">6</a> The narrative could function both in relation to the most severe, conventionally masculine values, as well as this new culture of sensibility: while the subject of Cleombrotus was evoked by the high–minded political writer Edward Montagu in his discussion of the severe political virtues demanded of the right-thinking statesman in 1769, it could at the same time be evoked in the context of a literary magazine as offering moral lessons for ordinary domestic life, and even the sorts of emotional pleasure associated with the culture of sentiment rather than of the harsh tales of Spartan antiquity. In the <i>Literary Register</i> (1769), as quoted above, the story of Cleombrotus was given as an ‘Example’ to illustrate ‘Conjugal Affection’: ‘A good wife makes the cares of the world sit easy, and adds a sweetness to its pleasure’.</p>
<p>The very early history of the painting is uncertain. It was in the collection of the wealthy wholesale grocer Samuel Smith (1727–1798) by 1791, according to a catalogue reference to a drawing after the original painting on show at the Boydell Shakespeare Gallery in that year, and the painting itself was seen by the diarist and Royal Academician Joseph Farington during a visit to Smith’s son, the dissenting MP William Smith (1756–1835) in 1797.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_7" name="endnote_back_7">7</a> Not knowing of the record of the painting’s location in 1791, the authors of the modern catalogue raisonné of West’s work Helmut Von Erffa and Allen Staley pointed out that William Smith was only a child when the painting was originally exhibited and could not therefore have acquired it directly from the artist.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_8" name="endnote_back_8">8</a> In light of this apparent discrepancy, the same authors refer to a single early nineteenth-century source, which relates that the painting was bought by William Lock (or Locke) of Norbury (1732–1810), and this leads them to suggest that he was the original purchaser.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_9" name="endnote_back_9">9</a> This claim is otherwise unsubstantiated, although there is evidence suggesting that other works by West passed from Lock to Smith and the reference made by Walpole to West selling ‘history in the taste of Poussin’ for £300 in 1770 might be interpreted as reporting the sale of this particular work, although whether this was to Lock or to Samuel Smith is not currently known.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_10" name="endnote_back_10">10</a> The mezzotint reproduction of the painting by Charles Howard Hodges (1764–1837) published by John and Josiah Boydell in 1789 does not mention in the inscription the owner of the original painting.</p>
<p>The picture remained with Smith until 1819 when it appeared for sale from his collection at Christie’s, listed as ‘An Historical Subject from the History of Cleombrotus and Chelonis, designed in correct and classical taste’. It was bought by John Bartie for the low price of £31.10. The picture subsequently passed to the architect William Wilkins (1778–1839). He gave it in 1827 to the British Museum, at a time when plans were in development for a new building to house the National Gallery. Given Wilkins’s profession, he would have known and taken an interest in these proposals (and in 1832 was, indeed, appointed the architect of a newly combined National Gallery and Royal Academy in Trafalgar Square, the building we know today). The direction of Wilkins’s gift was, perhaps, as his modern biographer has proposed, to test ‘the seriousness of the alternate proposal to install the National Gallery in the British Museum’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_11" name="endnote_back_11">11</a> In the event, it was transferred immediately to the National Gallery, and was noted as being on display there in a guidebook with the published date of 1826.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_12" name="endnote_back_12">12</a> Although displayed at the National Gallery since its acceptance as a gift to the nation, the picture was among the large group of pictures (as many as seventy-two) that continued to be viewed by the Trustees of the British Museum as their property even after a parliamentary act of 1856 granted the Gallery greater independence. The removal of the painting to South Kensington in 1859, for instance, had to be reported to the British Museum and approved by their Trustees.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_13" name="endnote_back_13">13</a> In 1868 the Trustees of the British Museum finally relinquished their claim on this and the other National Gallery pictures transferred from their collection. The picture was transferred, once again, to the Tate Gallery in 1929, by which time it appears to be already on loan to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, where it remained until at least 1947.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_14" name="endnote_back_14">14</a>
</p>
<p>The painting featured prominently in the displays at the National Gallery in the nineteenth century and often attracted published commentary, usually in relation to the other three paintings by West then in the national collection. While there was much admiration for the picture, there were also reservations about the subject matter and the restrained style, even compared to the other works on show by the same artist. Several commentators classed it with <i>Pylades and Orestes</i> (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/west-pylades-and-orestes-brought-as-victims-before-iphigenia-n00126" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00126</span></a>) as an early work in a ‘cold’ style, while preferring, if only marginally, the latter work. In one of the earliest guidebooks to the Gallery, the connoisseur and amateur artist William Young Ottley complained that as ‘the most interesting feature in the story’ involved a speech which ‘could not be painted’ the painter ‘has not evinced his usual discrimination in the choice of his subject’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_15" name="endnote_back_15">15</a> An art journalist in 1834 assessing West’s several paintings at the National Gallery heaped praise on the <i>Christ Healing the Sick</i>, remarking that, ‘The other pictures in the Gallery, consisting of ‘The Last Supper,’ ‘Cleombrotus,’ and ‘Pylades and Orestes,’ do not affect the mind in an equal degree, – from the less interesting nature of the subjects, – although the latter picture contains much beauty of colouring and composition’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_16" name="endnote_back_16">16</a> The German art tourist Passavant called it ‘cold and stiff in conception, as in colour’<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_17" name="endnote_back_17">17</a> and Anna Jameson proclaimed it was in the artist’s ‘best style’ but ‘flat and tame in point of colour and general effect, and inferior to the Pylades and Orestes’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_18" name="endnote_back_18">18</a> Another German art chronicler, Gustav Friedrich Waagan, was complimentary about the ‘noble and simple’ qualities of West’s early works, but also complained of this picture<i> </i>that the ‘the tone is cooler, the composition less decided’ than that of <i>Pylades and Orestes</i>.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_19" name="endnote_back_19">19</a> The artist George Foggo, writing in 1845, was more forthright:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>A poor specimen of Mr West’s talent for composition, and very tame of execution. Cleombrotus is too old and his wife is too large and much lessb interesting than would be expected: the drawing and colour are also not at all above mediocrity.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_20" name="endnote_back_20">20</a>
</blockquote>
<p>Modern art historians have perhaps been more attentive to the picture than the critics of the nineteenth century, even to the relative neglect of the once much-favoured <i>Christ Healing the Sick</i> (written off after damage incurred in the flood of the Tate’s basement in 1928). It has been evoked repeatedly as an exemplar of the so-called neoclassical style in painting, even anticipating the more celebrated innovations of the French artists Jaques-Louis David. It received an honourable mention in the pioneering study of the revival of history painting in France at the end of the eighteenth century by Jean Locquin (1912).<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_21" name="endnote_back_21">21</a> The art historian Robert Rosenblum, taking a wider European perspective in his influential study <i>Transformations in Late Eighteenth–Century Art</i> (1967), positioned West’s <i>Leonidas</i> in relation to the politicised classicism of David and the sentimental painting of Jean Baptiste Greuze: ‘prophecying the emotional cleavage of families so conspicuous in David’s work, the moral virility of the father, at the left, is contrasted to the Greuzian sorrow, at the right, of his daughter, who, nevertheless, was virtuously to follow her husband into banishment.’<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_22" name="endnote_back_22">22</a>
</p>
<p>Much recent art historical commentary has followed this positioning of the picture as the model of Neoclassicism’s ‘severely disciplined world of measured spaces, where retribution is tempered with moral restraint’.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_23" name="endnote_back_23">23</a> It has, accordingly, featured in published introductions to the Tate Gallery collection as a means of representing the grand style of history painting in the eighteenth century, and in 2010–11 it was one of a handful of British paintings included in the major exhibition <i>L'Antiquité rêvée </i>organised by the Musée du Louvre, Paris.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_24" name="endnote_back_24">24</a> Outside of the field of art history, the painting has been put to use as an exemplary case of ‘the neo-classic rendering of the <i>exemplum virtutis</i>’ with parallels in literary culture of the period.<a class="endnote-link" href="#endnote_25" name="endnote_back_25">25</a>
</p>
<p>The original exhibited title of <i>Leonidas Ordering into Banishment Cleombrotus </i>is here restored to the painting. This was the title originally chosen by West and, arguably, reflects the narrative and pictorial weight given by the artist to the figure of Leonidas. It was also the title used in early nineteenth-century lists of West’s work, in reference both to the finished painting to the lost oil sketch on paper for the composition. It has, though, previously been catalogued at the Tate under the title of ‘Cleombrotus Ordered into Banishment by Leonidas II, King of Sparta’, while von Erffa and Staley list it as ‘Leonidas and Cleombrotus’, under which title the painting had been exhibited for a second time, in 1770. The mezzotint published in 1789 by Josiah Boydell was titled simply ‘Leonidas’, while it was engraved in the mid-nineteenth century by Thomas Garner (1789–1868) with the inscribed title ‘The banishment of Cleombrothus’. Other slight variations on these several titles have appeared in the literature.</p>
<p>Martin Myrone<br/>August 2013</p>
<p>
<b>Notes</b>
</p>
<div class="endnotes">
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_1" name="endnote_1">1</a><span> Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, <i>The Paintings of Benjamin West</i>, New Haven and London 1986, no.14.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_2" name="endnote_2">2</a><span><i> Literary Register, </i>vol.1, 1769, p.292.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_3" name="endnote_3">3</a><span>  Letter from Benjamin West to John Green, 10 September 1771, Benjamin West Collection, 1771–c.1879,  Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_4" name="endnote_4">4</a><span>William Brown trans., Lodovico Dolce, <i>Aretin</i>, London 1770, p.xii.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_5" name="endnote_5">5</a><span> Horace Walpole to Horace Mann, 6 May 1770, in W.S. Lewis ed., <i>The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence</i>, 48 vols, New Haven 1937–1983, vol.23, pp.201–11. At p.211 n.13 the editors refer to <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/west-cleombrotus-ordered-into-banishment-by-leonidas-ii-king-of-sparta-n00121" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N00121</span></a> and Walpole’s reference to the painting as, ‘solemn and good though hard and heavy’ in his annotated copy of the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue of 1770.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_6" name="endnote_6">6</a><span>David H. Solkin, <i>Painting for Money: The Visual Arts and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century England</i>, New Haven and London 1993, p.186.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_7" name="endnote_7">7</a><span> John Boydell’s <i>Catalogue of the pictures &amp;c in the Shakespeare Gallery, Pall-Mall</i> London 1791, p.158, lists among the ‘Pictures and Drawings’ on display, ‘West … Leonidas. In the collection of S. Smith, Esq. Clapham. J.B. <i>d</i>.’, The ‘S.Smith’ must be Samuel Smith of Clapham, while ‘J.B. <i>d.</i>’ would be ‘delineated’ (drawn) by Josiah Boydell (1752—1817), indicating that what was on display was a reduced-size drawn copy of the original painting prepared as a model for Charles Howard Hodges’s mezzotint print published by the Boydells in 1789. For the location of the painting in 1797 see Kenneth Garlick, Angus Macintyre et al. eds, <i>The Diary of Joseph Farington, </i>16 vols, New Haven and London 1978–84, vol.3, p.480, diary note of 17 May 1797: ‘Mr Smiths I went to this morning with Bourgeois and saw his collection of pictures ... Cleombrotus by West’. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_8" name="endnote_8">8</a><span> von Erffa and Staley 1986, no.13.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_9" name="endnote_9">9</a><span> Ibid; the source is the list of West’s works in <i>La Belle Assemblée</i>, vol.4, no.32, July 1808, p.15.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_10" name="endnote_10">10</a><span>  Von Erffa and Staley 1986,<i> </i>no.371. For Walpole’s letter see above, note 5. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_11" name="endnote_11">11</a><span> R.L. Liscombe, <i>William Wilkins 1778–1839</i>, Cambridge 1980, p.182. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_12" name="endnote_12">12</a><span> William Young Ottley, <i>A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery</i>, London 1826, p.101. The reference to West’s picture comes in the third part of this publication, presumably issued in 1827 or later. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_13" name="endnote_13">13</a><span> National Gallery archive, NG 6/2 Letter Book 1851–1861, p.231, Ralph Wornum to Antonio Panizzi, 2 February 1859. On the history of the transfer of paintings from the British Museum to the National Gallery see Marjorie Caygill, ‘The First National Gallery: The British Museum Collection of Oil Paintings’, lecture at the National Gallery History Group, 21 February 2006; typescript at National Gallery archive. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_14" name="endnote_14">14</a><span> The location of the work at Liverpool is noted in the official collection catalogues of 1924 through to 1947.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_15" name="endnote_15">15</a><span> Ottley 1826, p.101.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_16" name="endnote_16">16</a><span> <i>Library of the Fine Arts</i>, vol.4, 1834, p.49.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_17" name="endnote_17">17</a><span> <i>Tour of a German Artist in England</i>, 2 vols, London 1836, vol.1, p.55.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_18" name="endnote_18">18</a><span> <i>Handbook to the Public Galleries of Art in and near London</i>, 2 vols, London 1842, vol.1, p.133.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_19" name="endnote_19">19</a><span> Gustav Friedrich Waagen, <i>Treasures of Art in Great Britain</i>, 3 vols, London 1854, vol.1, p.366.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_20" name="endnote_20">20</a><span> George Foggo, <i>The National Gallery: Its Pictures and their Painters</i>, London 1845, p.43.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_21" name="endnote_21">21</a><span> Jean Loquin, <i>La Peinture d'histoire en France de 1747 à 1785</i>, Paris 1912, p.154.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_22" name="endnote_22">22</a><span> Robert Rosenblum, <i>Transformations in Late Eighteenth-Century Art</i>, Princeton 1967, p.66.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_23" name="endnote_23">23</a><span> William L. Pressly, <i>The Artist as Original Genius</i>, Newark 2007, p.21.</span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_24" name="endnote_24">24</a><span> Tate Gallery introductions include: <i>The Tate Gallery: An Illustrated Companion</i>, London 1979 (reprinted 1986), p.22; Simon Wilson, <i>Tate Gallery: An illustrated Companion,</i> London 1990, p.30. The recent survey exhibition referred to here was Guillaume Faroult, Christophe Leribault and Guilhem Scherf (eds), <i>L’Antiquité rêvée: Innovations et résistances au XVIIIe siècle</i>, exhibition catalogue, Louvre, Paris 2010. </span>
</div>
<div>
<a class="endnote-number" href="#endnote_back_25" name="endnote_25">25</a><span>  Philip W. Martin, <i>Byron: A Poet Before his Public</i>, Cambridge 1982, p.138 (alluding to the illustration of <span>N00121</span> on p.136).</span>
</div>
</div>
</div>

Catalogue entry
2013-11-15T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: expressive actions: postures and motions adults architecture child children classical classical Cleombrotus clothing and personal items comforting domestic emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas exile government and politics grief group groups helmet history interior - non-specific interiors king Leonidas II, King of Sparta man military named individuals objects people periods and styles royalty and social rank shield sitting society soldier Sparta standing weapons woman work and occupations