Benjamin West

1738-1820 • American • Painter • Neoclassicist/Grand Manner

"The event to be commemorated took place on the thirteenth of September 1759, in a region of the world unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and at a period of time when no such nations, nor heroes in their costumes, any longer existed . ... The same truth that guides the pen of the historian should be given the pencil of the artist." - Benjamin West

West was born in Swathmore, Pennsylvania. He began painting portraits, and when he was about 20, he went to Rome to study. After four years he moved to England and became a member of the inner circle of the art establishment there. He received a commission from King George Ill that led to a long-term friendship between them. West was cofounder, with REYNOLDS, of the Royal Academy of Arts and succeeded Reynolds as its president. He was a magnet, too, for the American painters who flocked to London, prominent among them the PEALEs (Charles and Rernbrandt), STUART, EARL,T RUMBULLA, LLSTON, SULLY,and MORSE. Though he remained an expatriate, West was probably the most influential American artist, in Europe as well as America, until the mid-20th century. His great innovation and triumph was to revolutionize HISTORY PAINTING by presenting important recent events in the GRAND MANNER style and clothing their subjects in contemporary rather than ancient Greek or Roman costume. The Death of General Wolfe (1770) is a melodramatic portrayal of the heroic death of a British commander defeated by the French in the Battle of Quebec. There are allusions to PIETAS of the RENAISSANCE and BAROQUE composition. When Reynolds tried to convince him to dress his characters in the usual CLASSICAL costumes,West replied with the words quoted above. In Death on a Pale Horse, or the Opening of the First Five Seals (1817), the subject is taken from the Book of Revelations, and the scene explodes with apocalyptic fury. The powerful ROMANTICISM of the picture is known by the term terribilita: a kind of imager y of the SUBLIME infused with mystical, vision ary zeal.