“Our geniuses all go to Europe. In England, at present, the best history painter, West; the best portrait painter, Copley; and the best landscape painter, Taylor, at Bath, are all Americans.”

Benjamin Franklin

16 May 1783

 

Marking the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Ben Elwes Fine Art takes a visually rich and historically significant look at the Anglo-American artists who enriched London in the eighteenth century. “One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution” brings together works on canvas and paper by Benjamin West (1738-1820), John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), and John Taylor (1735-1806), three artists singled out by Benjamin Franklin as the best in England in their respective genres: history, portraiture, and landscape. Amongst the additional works which complement the exhibition are an eighteenth-century portrait by the leading artist of New Orleans, Jose Francisco de Salazar y Mendosa (1750-1802), Robert Smirke’s study for an engraving that appeared in Joel Barlow’s epic poem, The Columbiad, and the terracotta maquette by Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi (1834-1904) for Liberty Enlightening the World.

 

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a newly available painting by Taylor that is the single most outstanding landscape by an American in the eighteenth century, and one of the best in Britain. The Philadelphia-born Taylor painted his large River Landscape with the Ruins of an Abbey in 1792, after his move to London from Bath, where he had been a friend and neighbour of Thomas Gainsborough.  It is a culminating work.  There is a spectacular silvery effect in the delicate foliage that is being teased by a breeze that gives the picture a sense of real time.  The ruined abbey evokes twelfth-century Tintern on the River Wye in Wales, a subject being painted by J. M. W. Turner at the same time.  Taylor’s work was added to the collections of George III and George IV, praised by David Garrick, and extolled by the Scottish novelist, Tobias Smollett, who considered him “the best landscape-painter now living.”

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22 June – 11 September 2025

Monday to Friday, 9:30am to 5:30pm, or by appointment

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Classic Art London: 22 June – 3 July 2025

Monday to Friday,  9:30am to 5:30pm, Saturday to Sunday, 11am to 5pm

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Ben Elwes Fine Art, 45 Maddox Street, London, W1S 2PE

gallery@benelwes.co.uk | www.benelwes.co.uk | +44 (0)20 7629 6645  

 

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EVENT: THE STATIONERS' COMPANY 

 

Monday 22 June 2025, 9:30am – 10:30am

Stationers' Hall, Ave Maria Lane, London, EC4M 7DD

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Brian Allen will discuss Benjamin West’s King Alfred dividing his last loaf with the Pilgrim owned by the Stationers’ Company, London, since it was painted in 1779. He will examine the context of the artist’s career and the rise and development of history painting in 18th-century Britain. It is likely the first reunion of both the Stationers’ painting and the grisaille of 1778 by West - on loan from the Collection of Stiles Tuttle Colwill to Ben Elwes Fine Art’s exhibition One People, Two Shores: Anglo-American Art in the Age of Revolution – since their conception.  

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EVENT: VIOLENCE AND PROPAGANDA, IN-GALLERY CONVERSATION WITH PAUL STAITI AND MEGAN KING

 

Wednesday 24 June 2025, 2pm – 2:45pm

Ben Elwes Fine Art, 45 Maddox Street, London, W1S 2PE

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​Megan King (Benjamin Franklin House, London) and Paul Staiti (Mount Holyoke College) engage in a spirited conversation sparked by a Robert Smirke painting of the murder of Jane McCrea. The killing, perpetrated by two Native Americans in 1777, was used in two propaganda campaigns: one was meant to increase support for the American cause on both sides of the Atlantic, the other was to demonize Indians during an era of westward expansion.

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EVENT: PANEL DISCUSSION, ANGLO-AMERICAN ART IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION

 

Thursday 25 June 2025, 11am – 12:30pm

The Society of Antiquaries, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London, W1J 0BE

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America 250 is certainly on our minds and we have a great line-up of speakers on Anglo-American Art - Paul Staiti, Professor at Mount Holyoke College, and author of Of Arms and Artists: The American Revolution through Painters' Eyes; Adam Chen of Harvard University and co-curator of 'Life and Liberty: The Revolution in American Art' which opens at Tate Britain in June; and Anna Reynolds, Surveyor of The King's Pictures at the Royal Collection Trust. Moderated by Thomas Ardill, curator of paintings, prints and drawings at the London Museum.

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