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".
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Famous quotes containing the word england:
“In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it.”
—H.G. (Herbert George)
“In nature, all is useful, all is beautiful. It is therefore beautiful, because it is alive, moving, reproductive; it is therefore useful, because it is symmetrical and fair. Beauty will not come at the call of a legislature, nor will it repeat in England or America its history in Greece. It will come, as always, unannounced, and spring up between the feet of brave and earnest men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“It’s easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time.”
—Philip Dunne (1908–1992)