Summer Archives Series Part Two: The First Famous American Artist

Come hear speaker, Terry Jones present about Benjamin West, the first famous American artist!

Benjamin West (1738-1820), the first of America’s emigré artists, born in Springfield Township, PA, became one of Europe’s most important neoclassic painters. Though the Wests lived among Quakers, who habitually frowned upon art, Benjamin seems to have been encouraged by all about him from the time he began to draw at the age of six years. He gained a reputation in eastern Pennsylvania as a child prodigy.