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contemporaries, the painting's "moral" echoed the words
of the Roman poet Horace, Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori ("It is sweet and honorable to die for one's country").
West's Mohawk warrior also reminded his British viewers
that American colonials and their Indian allies had supported the British during the French and Indian War.
Seated next to the figure of William Johnson, an American
known for his work with Indians but not actually present at
the battle for Quebec (Johnson wears Indian leggings), this
warrior demonstrates West's deep sympathy for colonial
causes. Painted at a moment of high tension between
Britain and the American colonies, West's image brings
together Johnson and the Mohawk as embodiments of
New World sympathy, naturalness, and virtue. West presented the colonists, and their Indian allies, as valued partners that the British could not afford to lose.
The following year, West again turned to history
in order to comment on the present. In William Penn's
Treaty with the Indians in 1683 , 1771-72 , West commemorated
an encounter in 1673 when William Penn, founder of
the Pennsylvania colony, negotiated one of several land
exchanges with the Leni-Lenape (Delaware) Indians
(fig. 4.35). The French philosopher Voltaire would later
describe Penn's treaty as the "only treaty" between
Europeans and Indians that was "never infring'd." The
painting divides into two halves: the lush and slightly
darker world of the Native Americans on the right, and the
ordered world of Penn and his circle of Quaker merchants
on the left. At the center of the canvas, an unrolled bolt
of cloth links the two parties. The viewer can barely see
the text of Penn's treaty in the hands of the man to Penn's
side . The painting focuses , instead, on the cream-colored
cloth. Anthropologically, the cloth illustrates the process of
diplomacy with Native tribes- the drawing up of a contract
being followed by an exchange of goods, demonstrating
the honorable intentions of both parties. At a political level,
however, the cloth suggests something else. The fabric is
linked visually to the trunk below it, to the second trunk in
4-35 BENJAMIN WEST , W illiam Penn's Treaty with theindians in 1683,
1771-2. Oil on canvas, 75½in x ro7¾ in (191.7 x 273 cm). Pennsylvania
Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Pennsylvania.
ART I s Ts p A I NT I N G
I
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The White House
(1754-1825), designer of the city of
Washington , originally imagined the "President's House," as it
was then called, as a huge European-style palace. L'Enfant's
1791 plan for Washington called for a building five times the
size of the present White House. After George Washington
dismissed L'Enfant for insubordination , he chose James Hoban
(c. 1762-1831), an Irish-born architect, to design the President's
House. Hoban envisaged a traditional Georgian-style structure,
with a projecting bay on the south fa