A ROCKY COAST WITH BANDITTI

As a young artist, Washington Allston experimented with landscapes. In his A Rocky Coast with Banditti he created an evocatively sublime scene based on the seventeenth-century Italianate tradition of artists like Salvator Rosa (1615-1678). Allston, the son of Rachel Moore Allston (1757-1839) – whose portrait by Henry Benbridge (1743-1812) is in the MESDA collection – was living in Charleston before setting off for London where he exhibited this work and several other (now lost) landscapes. He spent much of his career in London where he studied with Benjamin West (1738-1820) and later became an associate of the Royal Academy. While Allston painted a number of landscapes throughout his career, his real love was for history painting and he is best remembered for a number of ambitious works based on Biblical themes.