Honoring Benjamin West
Benjamin West (1738-1820), the father of American panting, spent his boyhood years in and around the tavern that his father, John West, operated at the intersection of Goshen and Newtown Street roads in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania. West went off to study in Italy, stopped in London on his way home, and never returned to America. Instead, he opened a studio in London, was selected as court painter to King George III, was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of the Arts in London, and opened his studio and his home to young painters from America who sought to further their art education in London. These students included some of the greatest painters in American history: Charles Willson Peale, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Ralph Earl, Washington Allston, Thomas Sully, and Samuel F. B. Morse, among others. West is considered to be the Father of American Painting.
The Benjamin West Society
The Benjamin West Society is a Pennsylvania non-profit corporation that seeks to preserve the memory of the father of American painting, Benjamin West, by connecting the various sites linked to West in suburban Philadelphia, his birth place, and the area institutions that preserve and display his works. We hope to make his childhood home at the Square Tavern in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, a focal point for remembering the artist. We are commissioning a life sized statue to be placed ast the new Town Square in Newtown Square showing the young West. An interpretive trail will then lead the visitor to the nearby Square Tavern and Arts Center. We have exhibits inside the Tavern that promote his life and career. We hope that by promoting the life and works and local ties of Benjamin West we create an economic engine for preserving the Tavern building and site.
The Statue:
Young Benjamin West
The Society is currently fundraising to commission a life sized statue of the young Benjamin West, being shown by a Native American how to mix colors gathered from local materials in nature. The story is taken from a memory that West shared with his biographer. The Indian figure is one no doubt drawn from childhood memory, and used by West in several of his historical paintings. The statue would be cast in bronze, and dedicated at the new Town Square being built in Newtown Square. The photograph shows the current version of the model for the larger statue to be commissioned.
The Sculptor: Terry Jones
We have living in Newtown Square today one of the foremost sculptors of historic monuments in the United States, Terry Jones. Terry has been a professional sculptor for 52 years, during 30 of which he has been concentrating on monuments. He studied at the Hussian School of Art in Philadelphia and the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, France. The first 16 years of his professional career were spent sculpting over 600 bas-relief coins and medals for various private mints. In 1980 he was one of a very few American artists to be invited to show at the International Exhibit of Medallic Art in Florence, Italy. In 1984 the American Numismatic Association named him Medallic Sculptor of the year. He created “coin of the realm” for foreign countries: British Virgin Islands, Bahamas, Jamaica, Panama, etc.
Over the years, Terry’s work has moved from bas-relief to figures “in the round.” He has successfully combined his lifelong love of history with his storytelling ability to create dynamic representations of personalities and events from the past. He has the unique ability to combine creative enthusiasm and historical accuracy in all his sculpture.
Since 1988 Terry has been involved in many monumental projects, which have literally taken his talents to new heights. Please visit his website www.TerryJonesSculpture.com to see each of these works. They include an 8” Gen John Gibbon on Gettysburg Battlefield; a life-size “Angel of Mercy” in front of Nat’l Civil war Museum Harrisburg; a 21’ monument at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point NY; a life-size Ernest Hemingway in Key West FL; a 9’ John Philip Sousa in Washington DC; a Fallen Heroes tableau in Colchester VT; a 7’ Scottish Immigration Monument in Philadelphia; an 8’ Chesty Puller statue at National Marine Corps Museum, Quatico VA; and two life-size “Band of Brothers” statues in South Philadelphia.
“Sculpting the Past for the Present and the Future”
The Paintings
Death of Socrates (1756)
One of the first historical works done by 18 year old Benjamin West. This early effort has been called "the most ambitious and interesting painting produced in colonial America".
Benjamin West (1776)
Self Portrait. His pose with large black hat was based on Peter Paul Rubens's Self Portrait (1623). The West portrait hangs in the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Death of General Wolfe (1771)
West paints an historical panorama with its subjects dressed in contemporary clothes, a break with the classical paintings of the past.
Native American
In the Death of General Wolfe, painted in London, West draws on his childhood memories of Native Americans in Colonial Pennsylvania who he encountered and who taught him how to prepare colors from local materials .
William Penn's Treaty with Indians (1772)
West painted a large canvas to capture the meeting of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and the local Indian tribes to exchange gifts and agree on how to live in peace with each other.
Detail from Penn's Treaty
London audiences flocked to West's studio to see something that they had never seen: life-like representations of the natives of the far away New World of colonial America.
The West Family (1772)
West painted his family at a sitting in London in 1772: his wife and two children, his half-brother, his father, and the artist himself, standing at right.
Benjamin West (1819)
West's last self portrait, done six months before his death in 1819. The original painting hangs in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
The Square Tavern
As a young boy, Benjamin West helped in the work of operating a crossroads tavern, The Square, where his father John West, was the tavern keeper. The building has been preserved and restored to its appearance when it served as an 18th century crossroads tavern.
The tavern building associated with John West was built in 1742 of bricks made in a kiln across the street. The tavern was erected at the intersection of the main intersection of the New Town originally planned by William Penn as the first town west of his capital city of Philadelphia. During West’s life, the tavern was at the crossroads of early American history. Revolutionary War General “Mad” Anthony Wayne was born and raised in the family home, Waynesborough, just down the road. During the Revolution, raiding parties from both armies crisscrossed the countryside to find supplies for their armies. The British occupied Philadelphia, 12 miles away, and Washington and his troops camped at Valley Forge, just seven miles away. One of Washington’s spies, Major John Clarke, used a nearby home just down the road from the Tavern as his base to keep tabs on the British moves in the western towns, and report back to Washington. In the midst of the lawlessness of an occupied countryside, a highwayman named Captain Fitz roamed the local roads, robbing travelers and whipping those who drew his special disfavor. His sidekick, Mordecai Dougherty, was reportedly the hosler at the Tavern in Newtown.
After the American Revolution, the tavern ceased operations, and the structure continued on as a private home for another 200 years. In the enthusiasm for the American Bicentennial in 1976, the building was restored to its original construction as a brick 18th century tavern building. It has since seen several half-hearted uses. The town seems to have forgotten about its most famous hometown boy, Benjamin West. What a Homecoming it will be if we can bring young Benjamin West back to Newtown Square, and make the Tavern a center for the appreciation of the artist and his life and works.
Help The Society By Donating Below!
Benjamin West is the classic case of the prophet who is not remembered in his home town. The Father of American Painting, one of the groundbreaking painters of the 18th and early 19th century, is remembered in London as one of the founders of the Royal Academy of the Arts, which hosts an annual Benjamin West Dinner each year to honor his memory. His work hangs in every major museum in the world. And yet his story has receded into national memory in the United States, and particularly in the area where he spent his boyhood in suburban Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he began to learn the skills that catapulted him to prominence in the art world.
We have formed the Benjamin West Society, modeled on an earlier society of the same name, to promote Benjamin West, by highlighting his local connections, his work that hangs in local museums, his birthplace on the grounds of what is now Swarthmore College, his childhood haunts, and his artistic legacy in the world at large.
We seek to include in this effort artists, collectors, historians, writers, photographers, family ancestors, and anyone who wishes to remember and honor this first great American artist. If you wish to volunteer your time, please contact us at benjaminwestsociety@gmail.com.
If you wish to support our work, and help to raise money for the West statue, please click on the Donate button below.