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Lisa Duffy-Zeballos, PhD

Arch Facial Plast Surg. 2008;10(4):296-297.

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Benjamin West (1738-1820) was the first American artist to achieve an international reputation as an academic history painter. He was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, into a nonobservant Quaker family. West began his artistic career as a portraitist working in the dry, flat portrait style of his colonial contemporaries. However, in 1756 he painted the Death of Socrates (private collection), an awkward, amateurish first attempt at a heroic subject. The wooden figures gesture affectedly, and the awkward rendering of the figures' anatomy betrays West's lack of formal artistic training. Nevertheless, the painting earned West the esteem of Rev William Smith of the College of Philadelphia, who mentored the young painter in classics. While in Philadelphia, he met several important patrons, who financed his 3-year trip to Italy in 1760. In Rome, West became acquainted with the leading Neoclassical painters of the day, including Anton Raphael Mengs, who encouraged . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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