Benjamin West and Thomas Eakins

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"As a newly settled frontier area that shared in the culture of an older, dominant power, the American Colonies and, later, the United States of America expended a great deal of effort in defining themselves as a separate cultural entity. Perhaps it was not even until the United States had become a dominant power itself that America felt free of the shadows cast by its ancestors. A comparison of works by two American painters will give some idea of how the this process of self-definition worked. Benjamin West (1738-1820), the most successful American painter of the eighteenth century, was a friend of King George III and his official history painter. West was also a founder and the second President of the Royal Academy and had one of the most successful careers of any painter of his time. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) worked in relative obscurity. He was a successful ..."

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