In Death of General Wolfe (FIG. 29-18), West depicted the mor-
tally wounded young English commander just after his defeat of the
French in the decisive battle of Quebec in 1759, which gave Canada to
Great Britain. In portraying a contemporary historical subject, he put
his characters in contemporary costume (although the military uni-
forms are not completely accurate in all details). However, West
blended this realism of detail with the grand tradition of history paint-
ing by arranging his figures in a complex, theatrically ordered compo-
sition. His modern hero dies among grieving officers on the field of
victorious battle in a way that suggests the death of a great saint. West
wanted to present this hero’s death in the service of the state as a mar-
tyrdom charged with religious emotions. His innovative combination
of the conventions of traditional heroic painting with a look of mod-
ern realism was so effective that it won viewers’ hearts in his own day
and continued to influence history painting well into the 19th century.
JOHN SINGLETON COPLEY American artist John Single-
ton Copley(1738–1815) matured as a painter in the Massachusetts
Bay Colony. Like West, Copley later emigrated to England, where he
absorbed the fashionable English portrait style. But unlike Grand Man-
ner portraiture, Copley’s Portrait of Paul Revere (FIG. 29-19), painted
before Copley left Boston, conveys a sense of directness and faithful-
ness to visual fact that marked the taste for honesty and plainness many
visitors to America noticed during the 18th and 19th centuries. When
Copley painted his portrait, Revere was not yet the familiar hero of the
American Revolution. In the picture, he is working at his profession of
silversmithing. The setting is plain, the lighting clear and revealing. Re-
vere sits in his shirtsleeves, bent over a teapot in progress. He pauses
and turns his head to look the observer straight in the eye. Copley
treated the reflections in the polished wood of the tabletop with as
much care as Revere’s figure, his tools, and the teapot resting on its
leather graver’s pillow. Copley gave special prominence to Revere’s eyes
by reflecting intense reddish light onto the darkened side of his face
and hands. The informality and the sense of the moment link this
29-18Benjamin West,
Death of General Wolfe,
- Oil on canvas,
4 111 – 2 7 . National
Gallery of Canada,
Ottawa (gift of the Duke
of Westminster, 1918).
West’s great innovation
was to blend contempo-
rary subject matter and
costumes with the grand
tradition of history paint-
ing. Here, West likened
General Wolfe’s death to
that of a martyred saint.
1 ft.29-19John Singleton Copley,Portrait of Paul Revere,ca. 1768–1770.
Oil on canvas, 2 11 –^18 2 4 . Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (gift of
Joseph W., William B., and Edward H. R. Revere).
In contrast to Grand Manner portraiture, Copley’s Paul Revereempha-
sizes his subject’s down-to-earth character, differentiating this American
work from its European counterparts.1 ft.764 Chapter 29 EUROPE AND AMERICA, 1700 TO 1800