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|  Active in Philadelphia as a portrait painter, Samuel West exhibited at the Philadelphia Academy of Art in 1818 and 1829-30. | |
Biography from Dixon-Hall Fine Art:
| Samuel S. West lived in Philadelphia in 1818 and his address in 1830 was at 50 N. 4th Street. He exhibited a Virgin and Child after Corregio at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1818, followed by 4 works, all portraits, in 1829. In 1830 he exhibited 7 portraits at the Academy, 2 of gentlemen and 5 of ladies. In all likelihood this portrait may have been one of the latter.
The subject of this portrait is most likely the same as that painted by West in 1831 of Sara Pyle Bush (1804-59) recorded in the Smithsonian Inventory of American Paintings, # 63000849 (sold at Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, sale # 4784, January 28, 1982, lot 95). The difference in the two is that this portrait is larger and more elaborate in content, indicating that it was probably one of the 7 portraits of a lady exhibited at the Academy in 1830. Sara Pyle married George Bush of Wilmington, Delaware. Their daughter, Annie (1832-1911) married Thomas Barksdale Thruston (1827-1879) who served in the State Department before moving to Greenville, South Carolina. |
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