American Neoclassical Painter, 1738-1820 American historical painter who worked in England. He was born in Springfield, Pa., in a house that is now a memorial museum at Swarthmore College. After some instruction from a local artist named William Williams, he set up as a portrait painter in Philadelphia at 18, subsequently moving to New York City. In 1760 he went to Europe, where he remained for the rest of his life. For three years he studied in Italy. Working under the tutelage of Anton Mengs, he was also inspired by the classical research of Johann Winckelmann. He then settled in London, becoming a leader of the neoclassical movement. Under the patronage of George III, commissions came to him in great numbers, and in 1772 he was appointed historical painter to the king. A founder of the Royal Academy, he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as its president in 1792. West executed more than 400 canvases, chiefly historical, mythological, and religious subjects painted on a heroic scale. He had many pupils and was a generous friend and adviser to younger artists, particularly American painters studying in England, among whom were Washington Allston, Samuel Morse, Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, and John Singleton Copley. His influence on American painting of the period was predominant. Among West's best-known works are Death of General Wolfe (Grosvenor Gall., London) and Penn's Treaty with the Indians (Pa. Acad. of the Fine Arts). In these paintings he created a new departure in historical painting by clothing his figures in the costume of their period instead of the traditional classical garb.  Related Paintings of WEST, Benjamin :. | The Treaty of Penn with the Indians. | Colonel Guy Johnson (mk08) | Self-Portrait | Portrait of Colonel Guy Johnson | Edward III Crossing the Somme |
Related Artists:
Louise Jopling
(16 November 1843 - 19 November 1933) was an English painter of the Victorian era, and one of the most prominent women artists of her generation. Louise Goode was born in Manchester, fifth child of railway contractor T. S. Goode. She married at seventeen to civil servant Frank Romer. The Baroness de Rothschild, a connection of Romer's, encouraged Louise to pursue and develop her art. In the later 1860s she studied in Paris with Charles Joshua Chaplin and Alfred Stevens, and first exhibited her work at the Salon. She entered works into the Royal Academy shows, 1870-73 (as Louise Romer).
Paul Baudry
French Academic Painter, 1828-1886. Specializes in Portraits Specializes in Portraits.was a French painter. He studied under Michel Martin Drolling and carried off the Prix de Rome in 1850 by his picture of Zenobia found on the banks of the Araxes. His talent from the first revealed itself as strictly academical, full of elegance and grace, but somewhat lacking originality. In the course of his residence in Italy Baudry derived strong inspiration from Italian art with the mannerism of Correggio, as was very evident in the two works he exhibited in the Salon of 1857, which were purchased for the Luxembourg: The Martyrdom of a Vestal Virgin and The Child. His Leda, St John the Baptist, and a Portrait of Beul, exhibited at the same time, took a first prize that year. Throughout this early period Baudry commonly selected mythological or fanciful subjects, one of the most noteworthy being The Pearl and the Wave (1862). Once only did he attempt an historical picture, Charlotte Corday after the murder of Marat (1861); and returned by preference to the former class of subjects or to painting portraits of illustrious men of his day: Guizot, Charles Garnier, Edmond About. The works that crowned Baudrys reputation were his mural decorations, which show much imagination and a high artistic gift for color, as may be seen. in the frescoes in the Paris Court of Cassation. at the château of Chantilly, and some private residences the Hôtel Fould and Hôtel Paivabut, above all, in the decorations of the foyer of the Opera Garnier. These, more than thirty paintings in all, and among them compositions figurative of dancing and music, occupied the painter for ten years. Baudry was a member of the Institut de France, succeeding Jean-Victor Schnetz. Two of his colleagues,
Domenico Morelli
Italian, 1826-1901,Italian painter and teacher. Unique among his Italian colleagues in enjoying an international reputation in his lifetime, he was, with Filippo Palizzi (see PALIZZI, (2)), the leading exponent of the Neapolitan school of painting in the second half of the 19th century and a major figure in the artistic and cultural life of Italy. His realistic treatment of Romantic subjects revitalized academic painting,