View on the Susquehanna River

Painted seven years after Benjamin West’s departure from the Americas for London, England, this landscape likely represents a location from the artist’s youth, painted from memory. A testament to the preservation of memory, it captures an idyllic sporting scene, featuring three fishermen and a hunter serenely surrounded by the Susquehanna River under picturesque sunlight. Through West’s sketches, the centermost fisherman has been identified as his friend Dr. Richard Bragge. Other sketchbooks of the artist also contain studies of trees with leaves described in a floating fashion, similar to those shown in the painting, recalling the naturalistic approach of seventeenth-century French painter Claude Lorrain. These studies and the painted version demonstrate West’s dedication to landscape painting, despite the genre’s waning popularity at the time this work was completed.