The Last Supper, 1786

  • Benjamin West, American, 1738-1820

Oil on canvas

  • Unframed: 98 × 140 1/2 inches (248.9 cm × 3 m 56.9 cm)
  • 114 × 154 1/2 × 5 1/2 inches (289.6 cm × 3 m 92.4 cm × 14 cm)

Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund and Gibbs-Williams Fund

80.101

Signed and dated, lower left: B. West 1786

1786, commissioned by George III (Windsor, England). June 2, 1978, sale, Dean and Canons of Windsor, Sotheby's, lot 132 (London, England). dealer, Somerville and Simpson (London, England) and dealer, P. and D. Colnaghi (London, England). 1980-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Evans, Dorinda. Benjamin West and His American Students. Exh. cat., National Portrait Gallery. Washington, D.C., 1980, p. 19 (fig. 4). Bulletin of the DIA 59, 4 (1981): p. 109 (ill.). Von Erffa, Helmut and Allen Staley. The Paintings of Benjamin West. New Haven, CT, 1986, pp. 354-355, no. 346. Black, Mary, et al. American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume One: Works by Artists Born Before 1816. New York, 1991, pp.229-231, no. 106.

Benjamin West, The Last Supper, 1786, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund and Gibbs-Williams Fund, 80.101.