The Libyan Sibyl

William Bewick (1795-1866) was a portrait and history painter who received training in his youth from itinerant artists in Darlington before moving to London in 1815. He was apprenticed to Benjamin Robert Haydon and studied simultaneously at the Royal Academy Schools. During his stay in London, he was commissioned by the German poet Goethe to complete a series of drawings of the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum. In the 1820s he began exhibiting at the Society of Painters in Water Colours and at the British Institution, before going on to exhibit solely in Newcastle, Carlisle and Glasgow for the following seventeen years.
After his marriage in 1826, Bewick made plans for a trip to Italy. Upon hearing of Bewick's intentions, Sir Thomas Lawrence, then President of the Royal Academy, offered him 100 guineas to produce copies of Michelangelo's Prophets and Sybils in the Sistine Chapel. The present cartoon would appear to relate to this 1826 commission.
Bewick's portraiture is represented in the Collections of the National Portrait Gallery and the British Museum, London and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.