Innovations.

As successful and wealthy artists, both Benjamin West and John Singleton Copley turned to history painting, which was considered the highest branch of art, where ambitious artists might secure their critical reputation and financial success. Over the last decades of their careers they completed many large, impressive canvases depicting scenes from English history. History paintings portrayed real persons and events, but they typically did so by using neoclassical conventions to transform historical moments into timeless lessons that taught ideal behavior: characters would wear Roman and Greek costumes while impersonating the stoic attitude and heroic virtues exemplified by the ancients. In mastering a genre of painting already weighed down by stylistic and thematic traditions, West and Copley's most noteworthy works are striking for their modification of reigning precepts and ideals of European history painting. Coming from provincial colonies that seemed devoid...