The Last Supper

Benjamin West American, 1738-1820
On View

in

American, Level 2, West Wing

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About the Artwork

British King George III commissioned this enormous painting from Benjamin West in 1786, when the American-born artist was living in London as the king’s official history painter. That position paid a substantial income and supported West’s ambitions to paint monumental canvases depicting scenes from the Bible.

In this image of the Last Supper, Judas looms prominently in the foreground, a reference to John 13:30: “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” West chose to cast the outsized figure of Judas in a sickly green shadow, prompting the critic Horace Walpole to quip, “he seems more likely to burst by his bulk than through guilt.” King George III donated this painting to Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle along with monumental stained-glass windows also designed by West.

The Last Supper

1786

Benjamin West

1738-1820

American

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Oil on canvas

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

Paintings

American Art before 1950

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

80.101

Public Domain

Markings

Signed and dated, lower left: B. West 1786

Provenance

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)

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Exhibition History

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Published References

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, no. 4 (1981): p. 109 (ill.).

Von Erffa, Helmut, and Allen Staley. The Paintings of Benjamin West. New Haven, 1986, pp. 354-355, no. 346.

Black, Mary, et al. American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Vol. 1, Works by Artists Born Before 1816. New York, 1991, pp. 229-231, no. 106.

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Catalogue Raisoneé

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Credit Line for Reproduction

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.

The Last Supper
The Last Supper