Benjamin West - England

England

In August 1763, West arrived in England, on what he initially intended as a visit on his way back to America. He stayed for a month at Bath with William Allen, who was also in the country, and visited his half-brother Thomas West, at Reading. In London he was introduced to Sir Joshua Reynolds, and Richard Wilson. He moved into a house in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. The first picture he painted done in England Angelica and Medora, along with a portrait of General Monkton, and his Cymon and Iphigenia, painted in Rome, were shown at the exhibition in Spring Gardens in 1764.

In 1765 he married Elizabeth Shewell, an American, at St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Dr Markham, then Headmaster of Westminster School, introduced him to Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, the bishops of Bristol and Worcester, and Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York. All three prelates commissioned work from him. In 1766 West proposed a scheme to decorate St Paul's Cathedral with paintings. It was rejected by the Bishop of London, but his idea of painting an altarpiece for St Stephen Walbrook was accepted. At around this time he also received acclaim for his classical subjects, such as Orestes and Pylades and The Continence of Scipio

Benjamin West was known in England as the "American Raphael".