Benjamin West painted “The Death of General Wolfe,” depicting the contemporary 1759 Battle of Quebec in a neoclassical history-painting style.
Completed in 1770, the painting shows British commander James Wolfe dying after the British victory over French forces at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The event had occurred only eleven years earlier, making West’s subject unusually recent for a grand history painting.
West also broke convention by showing the figures in contemporary 18th-century clothing rather than dressing them as ancient Greeks or Romans. Sir Joshua Reynolds urged him to use classical costumes, but West refused. George III initially declined to buy the painting partly because of this choice.
The scene is not a literal eyewitness reconstruction. Several figures surrounding Wolfe were not present when he died, and the composition gives his death the solemnity of a martyrdom. The painting therefore combines historical subject matter with symbolic drama. West produced several versions; the best-known original is held by the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa.