8.1955.208: Study for Belshazzar's Left Hand, for "Belshazzar's Feast;" verso: Belshazzar's Robe

Identification and Creation

Object Number

8.1955.208

People

Washington Allston, American (Georgetown, SC 1779 - 1843 Cambridge, MA)

Title

Study for Belshazzar's Left Hand, for "Belshazzar's Feast;" verso: Belshazzar's Robe

Classification

Drawings

Work Type

drawing

Date

1820 - 1828

Culture

American

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/305683

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Black and white chalk on blue-gray wove paper

Dimensions

24.1 x 31.8 cm (9 1/2 x 12 1/2 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

To the artist's wife Martha Dana Allston at his death, 1843; to the Washington Allston Trust, 1862.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Loan from The Washington Allston Trust

Object Number

8.1955.208

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

• Edgar P. Richardson, Washington Allston, 1779-1843, a loan exhibition of paintings, drawings and memorabilia, exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, MI, 1947), no. 55, p. 10
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, "Allston in Cambridge Port", Publications of the Cambridge Historical Society, Cambridge Historical Society (Cambridge, MA, 1948), vol. XXIX, p. 60
• Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr., American Drawings, Shorewood Publishers Inc. (New York, NY, 1965), p. 31, repr. p. 51 as pl. 19
• David Carew Huntington, Art and the Excited Spirit: America in the Romantic Period, exh. cat., ed. Robert A. Yassin (Ann Arbor, MI, 1972), p. 31, cat. 8, pl. 5
• William H. Gerdts, "Allston's 'Belshazzar's Feast' ", Art in America (May-June 1973), vol. LXI, no. 3, pp. 60-65; reproduced in b/w p. 60
• The Paintings of Washington Allston, exh. cat., Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL, 1975), p. 24, cat. 34
• Kenyon Castle Bolton, III, "The Drawings of Washington Allston: A Catalogue Raisonné" (Ph.D. Diss., Harvard University, 1977), no. 54A, reproduced in b/w fig. 130; verso, no. 53B, fig. 129
• William H. Gerdts and Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr., "A Man of Genius": The Art of Washington Allston (1779-1843), exh. cat., Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston, MA, 1979), p. 235, cat. 96, ill.
• Kenyon Castle Bolton, III, "Washington Allston and Benjamin West", Drawing (1981), vol. III, no. 3, reproduced p. 64
• Morton D. Paley, The Apocalyptic Sublime, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT and London, England, 1986), p. 131, fig. 64
• David Bjelajac, Millennial Desire and the Apocalyptic Vision of Washington Allston, Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC and London, 1988), p. 108, fig. 29
• Richard H. Saunders, Horatio Greenough: An American Sculptor's Drawings, exh. cat., Middlebury College Museum of Art (Middlebury, VT, 1999), repr. in b/w p. 34, fig. 21
• Jane Turner, The Encyclopedia of American Art before 1914, Macmillan Publishers Limited (London, England, 2000), p. 9
• Nathan Goldstein, Figure Drawing: The Structure, Anatomy, and Expressive Design of Human Form, Pearson Prentice Hall (Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2004), repr. as fig. 2.15 on p. 45

Exhibition History

• Washington Allston, 1779-1843: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings and Memorabilia, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, 05/11/1947 - 06/15/1947; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 07/17/1947 - 08/24/1947
• Art and the Excited Spirit: America in the Romantic Period, University of Michigan Museum of Art
• The Paintings of Washington Allston, Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami, Coral Gables, 03/06/1975 - 04/13/1975
• American Master Drawings and Watercolors: A History of Works on Paper from Colonial Times to the Present, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, 09/01/1976 - 10/26/1976; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 11/23/1976 - 01/23/1977; California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, 02/20/1977 - 04/17/1977
• "A Man of Genius": The Art of Washington Allston (1779-1843), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 12/12/1979 - 02/03/1980; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 02/28/1980 - 04/27/1980

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