American Commissioners of the Preliminary Peace Negotiations with Great Britain

Benjamin West was an odd person to paint this. Born in Pennsylvania, he had moved to London and become history painter to King George III, and here he set out to record the moment his birth country won its independence from his patron's crown. On the left he finished the American side of the 1783 peace talks in Paris, Franklin and John Adams and John Jay among them, calm and lit up. The right side is bare canvas. It was meant to hold the British negotiators, but they never sat for him. The lead British commissioner, Richard Oswald, was described as an ugly man blind in one eye, and he died the next year without leaving any likeness. West set the picture aside, and it has stayed unfinished ever since, now at Winterthur in Delaware.