Robert Walter Weir, N.A. (American, 1803-1889), "Columbus before the Council of Salamanca", oil on wood panel, signed and dated "1877" lower right, 8 7/8 in. x 12 in., framed. E7000-10000 Provenance: By inheritance, through the family of the artist; purchased from a descendant by the present owner. Published: G. W. Sheldon, "An Artist at Home", New York Evening Post, October 1, 1877 ("On his easel was his latest work almost finished, 'Columbus before the Council of Slamanca'..."). G.W. Sheldon, American Painters: with...Examples of their Work Engraved on Wood, D. Appleton & Co., New York, [1st ed.; enlarged ed. 1881, this painting published as engraving opp. p. 162. Exhibited: National Academy of Design, New York, annual exhibition, 1878, no. 536. Note: This significant rediscovery is the principal preliminary version of Robert Weir's masterpiece, "Christopher Columbus Arguing for a Western Route to the Indies, before the Council of Clerics and Scholars at Salamanca" (inscribed with the same form of signature as this panel), an oil on canvas dated "1884" (29 1/4 in. x 40 1/8 in.), in the West Point Museum Art Collection, U. S. Military Academy. That same collection also holds an intermediate preparatory drawing for the larger canvas (ink on paper, unsigned, 13 ¬ in. x 17 « in.), adumbrating some of the changes introduced in that version: the relocations of certain figures, and the substitution of a "Stoning of St. Stephen"-the first Christian martyr, as a reference to the hostility with which Columbus's own new ideas were received-in place of the royal arms of Ferdinand and Isabella, the Catholic Kings, which are here displayed on a hanging between the pilasters. The handsomely balanced composition-with its debt, of course, to Leonardo's "Last Supper", as well as to intervening compositions by the Dutch masters- provides a foil for the impassioned pose of the protagonist, who is also set off from the white and black habits of his inquisitors by the vibrant intensity of his doublet, coloristically linking him and his global vision to the distantly-woven "Turkey carpet", and to the triumphant blazon of the royal arms. This picture, which made such an impression on the critic Sheldon that he caused it to be engraved for his American Painters in the year of its completion, was painted immediately after Weir retired as Instructor (1834-1846) and subsequently Professor (1846-1876) of Art at West Point (a position in which he conspicuously influenced the development of the Hudson River School). A pupil of John Wesley Jarvis, Weir had spent the years 1824- 1827 studying in Florence, Siena, Rome, and Naples; almost at once after his return to New York he was elected to the National Academy of Design (1829), where he exhibited regularly until 1882. Weir's most prominent work is his vast "Embarkation of the Pilgrims" for the Rotunda of the U. S. Capitol in Washington (1837-1843), one of eight enormous canvases commissioned to illustrate the history of the nation Among his sixteen children, his sons John Ferguson Weir (1841-1926) and Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919) both became influential and respected artists.