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Your galleryAlexander's Confidence with his Physician Philip
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Look from the cup at Alexander’s lips to the old physician reading the letter at the right, and to the soldier watching from behind.
The ancient writer Plutarch tells how Alexander the Great received a letter accusing his doctor, Philip, of treachery, yet drank the medicine Philip gave him while the doctor read the letter aloud. West sets the scene in a tent: the young king drinks from the cup, a helmeted soldier looks on and the old physician reads at the right. He built the drawing entirely with the brush, in brown and black washes with touches of white.
Brush and brown and black wash, with tan gouache, heightened with white gouache, with incising, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid card · Primary support: 21.8 × 30 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- Alexander's Confidence with his Physician Philip
- Artist
- Benjamin West American, 1738-1820
- Date
- c. 1770
- Medium
- Brush and brown and black wash, with tan gouache, heightened with white gouache, with incising, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid card
- Dimensions
- Primary support: 21.8 × 30 cm (8 5/8 × 11 13/16 in.); Secondary support: 30.1 × 36.9 cm (11 7/8 × 14 9/16 in.)
- Credit line
- Gift of Dorothy Braude Edinburg to the Harry B. and Bessie K. Braude Memorial Collection
- Image license
- CC0 1.0 · Public domain
- Museum record
- Art Institute of Chicago
Galler’s rooms and hanging scale are imagined. The image is the museum’s original digital reproduction.