and Pylades," which on account of its
novelty and merit produced a sensation. He painted "Agrippina weeping over
the Urn of Germanicus," and by the Archbishop of York was introduced to
George III. as its author. He immediately gained favor with the king, and
was installed at Windsor as the court-painter with a salary of one
thousand pounds per annum. This salary and position was continued for
thirty-three years. He painted a series of subjects on a grand scale from
the life of Edward III. for St. George's Hall, and twenty-eight scriptural
subjects, besides nine portrait pictures of the royal family. In 1792, on
the death of Reynolds, he was elected President of the Royal Academy, a
position which, except a brief interregnum, he held until his death in
March, 1820. He was greatly praised in his day, and doubtless thought
himself a great artist. He painted a vast number of portraits and quite a
number of pictures of classical and historical subjects. His "Lear" is in
the Boston Athenaeum; his "Hamlet and Ophelia" is in the Longworth
collection in Cincinnati; "Christ Healing the Sick" is in the Pennsylvania
Hospital; and the "Rejected Christ" is or was owned by Mr. Harrison, of
Philadelphia. There are two portraits of West, one by Allston and one by
Leslie, in the Boston Athenaeum, and a full-length, by Sir Thomas Lawrence,
in the Wadsworth Gallery in Hartford, Conn. One of West's pictures did a
great deal for his reputation, although it was quite a departure from the
treatment and ideas then in vogue; this was the "Death of General Wolfe"
on the Plains of Abraham. When it was known to artists and amateurs that
his purpose was to depict the scene as it really might have happened he
was greatly ridiculed. Even Sir Joshua Reynolds expressed an opinion
against it; but when he saw the picture he owned that West was right.
Hitherto no one had painted a scene from contemporary history with figures
dressed in the costume of the day. But West depicted each officer and
soldier in his uniform, and gave every man his pig-tail who wore one. The
picture is spirited and well grouped. West was just such a practical,
thoughtful, and kindly man as we might expect from his ancestry and
surroundings.

GEORGE ROMNEY (1734-1802), born in Beckside, near Dalton, in Cumberland.
He married when he was twenty-two, and in his twenty-seventh year went to
London with only thirty pounds in his pocket, leaving his wife with
seventy pounds and two young c