Work meetings, 1985-1986

Benjamin West (1738-1820) was the first American artist to win international acclaim. This exhibition of 37 paintings and 50 drawings served as a comprehensive survey of his career and included two of the earliest known portraits by West, painted in his native Pennsylvania, a version of his first historical commission in England, and one of his best-known history paintings, William Penn's Treaty with the Indians. Darrel L. Sewell, the Robert L. McNeil Curator of American Art; Joseph J. Rishel; and Ann Percy, Curator of Drawings collaborated to organize this exhibition in celebration of the publication by Yale University Press of the catalogue Paintings of Benjamin West, by Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley.