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The American School, 1765
Matthew Pratt (1734–1805)
Oil on canvas; 36 x 50 1/4 in. (91.4 x 127.6 cm)
Gift of Samuel P. Avery, 1897 (97.29.3)

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The Philadelphia portraitist Matthew Pratt was the first of many American artists who, over the years, flocked to Benjamin West's studio in London to acquire professional artistic training. This conversation piece—a group portrait with insinuated narrative content—is Pratt's homage to West's generosity and an expression of his own progress as a portrait painter. Pratt's conception for the painting owes much to the influence of traditional representations of academies and artists' shops and makes the point that a small but vigorous school of American artists was forming in London, under a youthful host and master, in an atmosphere of friendship and informality.

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