West’s arrival in England from Italy in 1763 occurred at a time when artists were seeking to create a distinguished national school of history painting. George III was eager to support such a goal and was also a keen supporter of the proposal to found a national academy for the teaching and display of arts: his patronage of West and the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768 were closely intertwined. At the King’s instruction, ‘The Departure of Regulus’ (OM 1152, 405614) was shown at the first Royal Academy exhibition in 1769; he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy in 1792. West painted around sixty pictures for George III between 1768 and 1801. From 1772 he was described in Royal Academy catalogues as ‘Historical Painter to the King’ and from 1780 he received an annual stipend from the King of £100. In the 1780s he gave drawing lessons to the Princesses and in 1791 he succeeded Richard Dalton as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures. This is one of three pairs of neo-classical history paintings, painted between 1769 and 1773, commissioned by George III to hang in his ‘Warm Room’ (a private sitting room) at Buckingham Palace (OM 1152-7, 405416-7, 405683-4 and 407524-5), along with one modern scene, the ‘Death of Wolfe’ (OM 1167, 407297). The first commission was placed in February 1768 when West showed the King his picture of Agrippina with the ashes of Germanicus which he had just completed for Robert Hay Drummond, Archbishop of York. This pair (OM 1156-7, 407524-5), for which West was paid 300 guineas each, seems especially designed to complement the 'Death of Wolfe' of 1771 and deals with the same perennial subject, the exemplary death. West here contrasts an ancient Greek with a Renaissance French hero. This episode tells of Pierre Terrail, Chevalier de Bayard, who served three French Kings and was shot from an arquebus on 30 April 1524. The dying Chevalier is lying, propped up against a tree with his defeated adversaries coming to pay their respects and his mounted comrade apparently telling everyone to make less noise, which seems a strange instruction on a battle-field. The dying man was said to have recited his ‘Miserere’ (‘Lord have mercy on me’) holding his sword; in Wests’s painting the hilt acts as a perfect cross, the appropriate emblem for a Christian warrior. Signed and dated: 'B.West / 1772' and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1773.