  About the Artwork
  
  
  In act 3, scene 4 of William Shakespeare’s King Lear, Lear wanders the wilderness during a fierce storm. His outlook is grim. Two of his daughters have betrayed him and his armies have abandoned him. As the storm rages, Lear mulls human nature, fate, and betrayal. He shouts, “unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, bare, forked animal as thou art,” before tearing off his clothes to confront the storm naked and alone.


American painter Benjamin West painted this small sketch in anticipation of a monumental canvas of the same scene (now in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston). He painted that work for John and Josiah Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery on Pall Mall in London. In the later, larger version, West made substantial changes to the figure of Edgar (one of Lear’s subjects, here in disguise as the figure Poor Tom) seated at the lower right of the composition.
  
  
  Title
  King Lear
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1788
  
  Artist
  Benjamin West
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1738-1820
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 20 1/2 × 27 1/2 inches (52.1 × 69.9 cm)
  Framed: 27 × 34 × 4 inches (68.6 × 86.4 × 10.2 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  77.58
  
  
  Copyright
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