Benjamin West's "Death on the Pale Horse"
This paper will analyze the context in which the work of art, "Death on the Pale Horse" was created. The discussion will also identify the medium which the artist chose as well as highlight some of the more interesting aspects of this Benjamin West painting.
Two copies of the painting, both of which have been exhibited and reproduced as authentic works by Benjamin West, are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. However, in articles written by a former director for that museum, Fiske Kimball, the old director questions whether these two paintings are actually copies. The articles were published in 1931 and 1932, and art historians now believe that the two originals now hang elsewhere (Von Erffa, 392).
A pen and brown ink and wash heightened with white paint is kept in the Royal Academy of Arts in London. That wash or drawing is 22 1/2 by 44 inches large and is signed in the bottom right center. West exhibited this work in 1784 at the Royal Academy along with three other studies which he intended to paint. The more famous work, for which West chose oil on canvas as his final medium, now hangs at the Detroit Institute of Arts. This painting is 23 1/2 by 50 1/2 inches and is signed in the lower right corner "B. West 1796." Historians are not sure whether the artist was pressed for money and sold the painting to a neighbor for 50 pounds during the last few years of his life, or to a portrait painter (Von Erffa 391-392). At any rate, the copy of this large oil painting now hangs in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
As for the context in which the large oil painting was made, some scholars consider the subject matter which Benjamin West chose in this particular piece to be apocalyptic because it was a response to things which were happening around him (Von Erffa, 84). During the time when he made the painting, public outcry against the political upheavals in Europe were absolute...