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Your galleryThe Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise
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Follow the angel’s raised arm down to Eve clinging to Adam, then find the serpent slithering away along the ground at the right.
An angel drives Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden while Eve clings to Adam and he hides his face. West made this sketch for one of a set of big paintings intended for a chapel at Windsor Castle, which was being restored at the time; he spent twenty years on the project, but George III abandoned it and none of the pictures was ever put in place. West dated it 1791 in the clouds and noted there that he retouched it in 1803.
Oil on canvas · 48.6 × 72.9 cm · Art Institute of Chicago · Neoclassicism
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Details and source
- Museum title
- The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise
- Artist
- Benjamin West (American, active England, 1738-1820)
- Date
- 1791, retouched 1803
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 48.6 × 72.9 cm (19 1/8 × 28 11/16 in.)
- Credit line
- George F. Harding 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.