A kiss from my mother made me a painter.

Having failed in this he tried with greater success to convince the king George III to patronise West. Pupils
Many American artists studied under him in London including Augustus Earle Ralph Earl Samuel Morse Charles Willson Peale Rembrandt Peale Matthew Pratt Gilbert Stuart John Trumbull and Thomas Sully. West told John Galt with whom late in his life he collaborated on a memoir The Life and Studies of Benjamin West (1816 1820) that when he was a child Native Americans showed him how to make paint by mixing some clay from the river bank with bear grease in a pot.

He was offered a knighthood by the British Crown but declined it believing that he should instead be made a peer. He was the second president of the Royal Academy in London serving from 1792 to 1805 and 1806 to 1820.