West's The Death of General Wolfe (1770) broke a two-thousand-year convention by depicting a contemporary military event in modern dress rather than classical garb. The Royal Academy's president, Joshua Reynolds, tried to talk him out of it. The painting was a sensation, and the convention was broken for good.

He was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in 1738, a Quaker-raised boy from the colonies who became the second president of the Royal Academy in London, holding the post for twenty-eight years. He arrived in England in 1763 after studying in Italy and quickly gained the patronage of George III, serving as the king's historical painter from 1772 to 1801.

He trained a generation of American painters in London, including Gilbert Stuart, Charles Willson Peale, Samuel Morse and John Trumbull. Each returned to America and shaped the new nation's visual culture. West stayed in London and died there in 1820, at eighty-one.