ABSTRACT
The rococo cuteness of Storm in a Harvest flirts with the Delicate Sublime; it did accord, however, with Knight's notions of aesthetic beauty. But if Knight liked Westall's fearful but stylized laborers, others criticized them, not unfairly, for having 'the air of persons in a higher rank in life'. There are five artists who created significant portraits of Byron during his years in England: George Sanders, Thomas Phillips, Richard Westall, James Holmes, and George Henry Harlow. Phillips's Byron portraits puzzled most of the poet's friends. Dallas described the expression in the cloaked version as 'one of haughtiness and affected dignity never once visible to those who ever saw him. The news of Byron's death at Missolonghi on April 19, 1824, reached London too late for Westall to show his portrait at that year's Royal Academy exhibition. In 1825, with the Academy show again beckoning and no competing portraits of the poet announced, Westall must have felt confident of success.
