The Death of Procris

Benjamin West · 1770, retouched 1803

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

32.4 × 41.2 cm (12 3/4 × 16 1/4 in.); Framed: 41.6 × 50.8 × 5.1 cm (16 3/8 × 20 × 2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Rococo

Benjamin West's *The Death of Procris* is a quietly devastating work — tender in its grief, precise in its neoclassical restraint, with a stillness that makes the tragedy feel inevitable rather than dramatic. West, an American-born painter who rose to become President of the Royal Academy in London, was celebrated for bringing emotional depth to classical subjects at a time when history painting ranked as the highest form of the art. Drawing from Ovid's *Metamorphoses*, he depicts the moment Cephalus discovers he has accidentally killed his wife with a javelin enchanted to never miss its mark. The composition uses controlled light and soft, sculptural figuration to hold the viewer in the suspended horror of the moment — a hallmark of West's mature technique. The panel medium lends the surface a fine, jewel-like quality that sets it apart from his larger canvas works. West returned to the painting in 1803, reworking it more than three decades after its original completion — a rare act of revision that speaks to how much the subject meant to him. Our hand-painted oil reproduction faithfully replicates West's palette, his delicate handling of light across Procris's figure, and the emotional weight embedded in every brushstroke, on panel to honour the original's intimate scale.