Classical Tragedies and Contemporary Issues: The Art of Benjamin West

Pylades and Orestes Brought as Victims before Iphigenia, 1766. Benjamin West (1738–1820). Oil on canvas, 1003 x 1264 mm. Tate Collection, Presented by Sir George Beaumont Bt 1826, N00126.

Benjamin West was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in 1738. West traveled through and lived in Italy from 1760 until 1763, where he discovered Neoclassicism in Rome. His exposure to this new art movement created the basis for his artistic career. Paintings such as Pylades and Orestes Brought as Victims before Iphigenia exemplify the influence that the sculptural friezes on classical tombs as well as Raphael’s Renaissance frescoes had on West while he was living in Italy. This painting’s scene is based on a play written by Euripides, a classical author. Pylades and Orestes Brought as Victims before Iphigenia depicts two scarcely clad men who were arrested for the attempted theft of a golden statue of the goddess Diana from a temple. The thieves are brought before Iphigenia, a priestess of Diana, in order to be sacrificed at the altar. But Iphigenia realizes that the man in the red cloth is her brother, Orestes.

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A Dynasty of Artists: The Peale Family

Staircase Group (Portrait of Raphaelle Peale and Titian Ramsay Peale), 1795. Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Oil on canvas, 89 1/2 x 39 3/8 in. The George W. Elkins Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Peales were a very gifted American family, with over six of the members working as successful artists – three of which were women. It was rare enough for women to be successful artists during the 18th and 19th centuries and rarer still for them to be related. Their triumph over the art world would perhaps not have come about if it were not for the first artist of the family – Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Though Peale began his career as a saddle maker, he soon discovered that he had a talent for painting and sought tutelage under John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) and later Benjamin West (1738-1820), two prominent American portrait artists. Peale, too, went on to become a celebrated portrait artist best known for his portraits of George Washington. Some even consider him to be one of the first “trompe l’oeil” painters because of his well-known piece The Staircase Group, a portrait of two of his sons. The painting is framed like a doorway, depicting Raphaelle (1774-1825) and Titian Peale (1799-1885) climbing up the stairs to their bedroom, presumably, and looking back at the viewer. The “trompe l’oeil” aspect of the painting is the real wooden stair Peale has added at the foot of the painting, seemingly inviting the viewer to follow Raphaelle and Titian up the stairs.

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Gallery Tours: Colonial Portraiture

Benjamin Colman, 1739. John Smibert (1688–1751). Oil on canvas, 49 3/4 x 39 3/4 in. New Britain Museum of American Art, Harriet Russell Stanley Fund, 1948.01.

Today, we are taking you on a tour of portrait paintings in the Colonial and Early Republican Art Gallery situated on the first floor of the NBMAA.

In 1607, religious and political unrest brought the first English settlers to Jamestown, Virginia. Europeans would continue to seek religious freedom and economic opportunity in the New World, as exemplified by the Puritans who arrived at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620. North America demanded a new way of life.

Unaccustomed to the land and its resources, the settlers had to learn to cultivate crops and survive in the wilderness. Only later, as cities grew, did commerce develop. The demands of everyday life delayed the introduction of art into American culture for generations. Thus, the earliest painting in the Museum’s collection dates to 1739.

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