Photo credit: George J. Fistrovich
If You Want to Know More
The house where Benjamin West was born is still standing, on the campus of Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
Benjamin West’s paintings are in the collections of museums all over the world. Here in the United States you can see his work in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, among other places.
The material for this book is based mainly on West’s own account of his childhood, as told to his biographer, John Galt. I also referred to Robert C. Alberts’s 1978 biography, Benjamin West. For the information on the language of the Delaware Indians, I am grateful to the Pocono Indian Museum in Bushkill, Pennsylvania.
The jacket illustration is based on Benjamin West’s Self-Portrait, 1756 (watercolor on ivory), which is in the Yale University Art Gallery. The portrait of the baby was inspired by an anonymous painting, Baby in Red Chair, in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection, Williamsburg, Virginia.
About the Author and Illustrator
BARBARA BRENNER is the acclaimed author of more than seventy fiction and nonfiction books for children. She lives with her husband, the artist Fred Brenner, on the shore of a lake in northeastern Pennsylvania.
OLIVIER DUNREA’s illustrations for The Boy Who Loved to Draw benefit from his research into architecture, crafts, and art of the colonial era. Mr. Dunrea is the author and illustrator of several books for young readers. He lives in Narrowsburg, New York.
Boy Who Loved to Draw Page 2