Benjamin West

Benjamin West was an American Quaker who became history painter to George III and president of the Royal Academy, and who changed what history painting was allowed to look like. He grew up in Pennsylvania, largely self-taught, sailed to Italy at twenty-two and settled in London in 1763 without ever returning. The Death of General Wolfe, exhibited in 1770, caused the argument that made him: he painted Wolfe dying at Quebec in the uniform his officers actually wore rather than in classical drapery, which Joshua Reynolds and the king both objected to in advance and both conceded afterwards. Dressing the recent dead as Romans stopped being obligatory from that moment. He produced a long series of large canvases on English and biblical history, and after 1805 The Death of Nelson, which shows the admiral expiring on deck in full view of his crew rather than below in the cockpit where he actually died - West's own defence being that the public needed an image it could hold, and that a great subject requires a great moment. It is the image of Trafalgar. He succeeded Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy in 1792 and held the post almost until his death, teaching three generations of American painters including Trumbull, Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale and Samuel Morse. He is buried in St Paul's. He never lost his American connections and never renounced them, which took some doing while holding a royal appointment through a war of independence and a French revolution. George III kept him on regardless and the two remained on good terms for decades. He was a Quaker who painted battles. His studio in Newman Street was effectively the first American art school, and the line of painters who passed through it runs to the middle of the nineteenth century.

• Lived: 1738 CE – 1820 CE
• Nationality: American
• Roles: artist