Brian Allen will discuss Benjamin West’s King Alfred dividing his last loaf with a Pilgrim owned by the Stationers’ Company, London, since it was painted in 1779. He will examine the context of the artist’s career and the rise and development of history painting in 18th-century Britain. It is likely the first reunion of both the Stationers’ painting and the grisaille of 1778 by West - on loan from the Collection of Stiles Tuttle Colwill to Ben Elwes Fine Art’s exhibition One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution – since their conception.
Brian Allen was Director of Yale University's Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London for twenty of the thirty-six years of his employment there before joining the Old Master dealers Hazlitt Ltd in 2012. He has taught courses in the history of art at a number of universities and was Adjunct-Professor of Art History at Yale University for twenty years. He has published widely on the history of British art, especially of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and over the past forty years has held numerous public appointments in the museum and university worlds. He was Chairman of the UK's largest private art charity, The Art Fund, between 2002 and 2004; served as Chairman of the Compton Verney Collection Settlement Trust; as Chairman of the Hermitage Foundation UK; as a trustee of the British Sporting Art Trust and as a trustee and former Chairman of Modern Art Press. He was a trustee of the National Portrait Gallery from 2012 to 2020 and a trustee and Deputy-Chairman of the Holburne Museum, Bath from 2011 to 2020. Other past appointments include trusteeships at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury; the Foundling Museum in London, the Strawberry Hill Collection Trust, Dr Johnson’s House and the Buildings Book Trust. He was a member of the Advisory panel of the National Heritage Memorial Fund from 2012 to 2021 and served on the Arts Council's Acceptance-in-Lieu panel between 2012 and 2021.