Elizabeth Shewell West and Her Son, Raphael
Benjamin West (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1738–1820)
c. 1770
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- Framed: 88 x 87.5 x 9 cm (34 5/8 x 34 7/16 x 3 9/16 in.); Unframed: 66.5 x 66.3 cm (26 3/16 x 26 1/8 in.)
- Culture
- United States
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- The Charles W. Harkness Gift
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its museum says too little about what it shows to place it for younger viewers. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
West was the first American artist to study in Italy, where he spent three years before permanently settling in London. He so admired the artistic ideals of the Italian Renaissance master Raphael that he named his eldest son after him, and he imitated Raphael’s celebrated Madonna of the Chair when composing this tender double portrait of his wife and child.
