Windsor. His first reverse came
when the King's mind began to fail. His commissions were cancelled and
his pensions stopped. He was deposed from the Presidency of the Royal
Academy, which he had founded, and was for a time in needy
circumstances; but the tide soon turned, and his last years were marked
by the production of a number of great paintings. He died at the age of
eighty-two, and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral with splendid
ceremonies. So ended one of the most remarkable careers in history.

West was, perhaps, more notable as a man than as an artist, for his fame
as a painter has steadily declined. His greatest service to art was the
example he set of painting historical groups in the costume of the
period instead of in the vestments of the early Romans, as had been the
custom. This innovation was made by him in his picture of the death of
General Wolfe, and created no little disturbance. His friends, including
Reynolds, protested against such a desecration of tradition; even the
King questioned him, and West replied that the painter should be bound
by truth as well as the historian, and to represent a group of English
soldiers in the year 1758 as dressed in classic costume was absurd.
After the picture was completed, Reynolds was the first to declare that
West had won, and that his picture would occasion a revolution in
art--as, indeed, it did.

It is difficult to understand the habit of thought which insisted on
clothing great men in garments they could never by any possibility have
worn, yet it persisted until a comparatively late day. The most famous
example in this country is Greenough's statue of Washington, just
outside the Capitol. One looks at it with a certain sense of shock, for
the Father of His Country is sitting half-naked, in a great arm chair,
with some drapery over his legs, and a fold hanging over one shoulder.
We shall have occasion in the next chapter to speak of it and of its
maker.

Another of West's services to art was the wholehearted way in which he
extended a helping hand to any who needed it. He was always willing to
give such instruction as he could, and among his pupils were at least
four men who added not a little to American art--Charles Willson Peale,
Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, and Thomas Sully.

Peale was born in Maryland in 1741, and was, among other things, a
saddler, a coach-maker, a clock-maker and a silversmith. He finally
decided to add painting to his other a