- published: 05 Jan 2016
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Benjamin West, RA (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820) was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence. He was the second president of the Royal Academy in London, serving from 1792 to 1805 and 1806 to 1820.
West was born in Springfield, Pennsylvania, in a house that is now in the borough of Swarthmore on the campus of Swarthmore College, as the tenth child of an innkeeper. The family later moved to Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, where his father was the proprietor of the Square Tavern, still standing in that town. West told John Galt, with whom, late in his life, he collaborated on a memoir, The Life and Studies of Benjamin West (1816, 1820) that, when he was a child, Native Americans showed him how to make paint by mixing some clay from the river bank with bear grease in a pot. Benjamin West was an autodidact; while excelling at the arts, "he had little [formal] education and, even when president of the Royal Academy, could scarcely spell".
Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical and democratic values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."
Loyd Grossman on Benjamin West | Artist & Empire
Gallery Highlights - The Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, "Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky"
Benjamin West and his paintings
Lecture 7, Benjamin West's Agrippina Landing at Brundisium with the Ashes of Germanicus
Saylor.org ARTH207: "Benjamin West"
Death of General Wolfe by Benjamin West
Benjamin West- Suite Bergama Debussy
Benjamin West (Егорка) :D
Actors: Guy Wilkerson (actor), Lon Chaney Jr. (actor), John Dierkes (actor), Bruno VeSota (actor), Elisha Cook Jr. (actor), Leo Gordon (actor), Leo Gordon (actor), I. Stanford Jolley (actor), John Dierkes (actor), Elisha Cook Jr. (actor), Milton Parsons (actor), Vincent Price (actor), Vincent Price (actor), Jack Tornek (actor), Guy Wilkerson (actor),
Plot: Loosely based on H.P. Lovecraft's novel THE CASE OF CHARLES DEXTER WARD, this fright flick opens with a warlock placing a curse on a group of villagers about to burn him at the stake. Generations later, the warlock's descendant returns to the village to pick up where his ancestor left off.
Keywords: ancestor, angry-mob, attempted-rape, based-on-poem, black-magic, blind-girl, burned-alive, burned-at-the-stake, burning-building, candle