General Johnson rettet einen verwundeten französischen Offizier vor dem Tomahawk eines nordamerikanischen Indianers

In September 1755, out in the woods south of Lake George in New York, a British colonial force under William Johnson beat back a French column, and its wounded commander, Baron Dieskau, was left on the ground. That is the instant Benjamin West chose. Johnson steps in to stop a Mohawk ally from finishing off the captured Frenchman. West painted it in London in the mid 1760s, not long after arriving from Italy, and he was after something new for the time, a battle from his own century treated with the seriousness usually reserved for ancient Rome. He puts all three parties in the frame at once, the British, the French, and the Mohawk fighters who made up much of Johnson's force. Johnson had commanded that army with Mohawk allies beside him, and West lets the raised arm and the sheltering gesture carry the whole story without a word of text.