son of a rural innkeeper
with William Williams and John Valentine Heidt (Philadelphia); with Anton Ralphael Mengs at Capitoline Academy (Rome)
1752-60: works as portrait artist in Chester, PA; Philadelphia; and New York
1760 - Philadelphia patrons, the Allens and Shippens fund West’s trip to Rome to paint copies of Old Masters. In Rome, West meets Anton Raphael Mengs and Gavin Hamilton.
1763 - moves to London
1768 - founding member of the Royal Academy of Art along with Angelica Kauffmann, Nathaniel Dance, Joshua Reynolds
1772 - becomes George III’s official History Painter after success of Death of General Wolfe (1770)
1792: succeeds Joshua Reynolds as Royal Academy president
1802: visits Paris for five weeks; meets Napoleon and Jacques-Louis David
1805: forced to resign as RA president
Member of art academies in Bologna, Florence, and Parma
Philadelphia (1756-60), New York (1760), Italy (1760-63), London (1763-1820), Paris (1802)
George III (King of England)
Death of Lord Nelson, 1806 (Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool)
Erffa, Helmut von and Allen Staley. The Paintings of Benjamin West. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1986
Galt, John. The Life of Benjamin West (1816). Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimilies & Reprints, 1960
Mitchell, Charles. “Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe and the Popular History Piece,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, vol. 7 (1944): 20-33
Montagna, Dennis. “Benjamin West’s The Death of General Wolfe: A Nationalist Narrative,” American Art Journal, vol. 13, no. 2 (Spring 1981): 72-88
Staley, Allen. “The Landing of Agrippina at Brundisium with Ashes of Germanicus,” Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin, vol. 6, no. 287-88 (1 October 1965): 10-19