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that "there were inventive touches in his first and juvenile essay which with all his
subsequent knowledge and experience he had not been able to surpass."
A few days after Mr. Pennington made another visit to the Wests, and took the boy with him
to Philadelphia, where he composed a picture of a river, with vessels on the water and cattle on the banks,
and where he met with a professional painter, one Williams, who had painted a picture for one of Mr.
Pennington's acquaintance who asked the artist to show it to young West. The interest and enthusiasm of the
boy impressed Williams, who asked if he had read any books on the lives of great men, and finding his reading
limited to the Bible, he lent him the works of Fresnoy and Richardson on Painting. Their perusal gave to him
the idea of an artist's career, and soon after his skill brought him his first pecuniary
profit.
A cabinet-maker had given him some clean poplar boards, and he made drawings on them in
ink, chalk, and charcoal. Mr. Wayne, a gentleman of the neighborhood, noticed them, and asked for two or
three of them afterward, complimenting the young painter and giving him a dollar apiece for them, and Dr.
Johnston Morris, another neighbor, soon after gave him a present of a few dollars to buy materials to paint
with. These were the first public patrons of the artist, and it was at his own request that Gait set down
their names and deeds. A year after the visit to Philadelphia he was invited to spend a few weeks at the
house of a Mr. Flower, who had sent to England for a governess for his daughter; she was interested in West,
and finding him unacquainted with other books than the Bible and Fresnoy and Richardson, she read to him from
Mr. Flower's library " The most striking and picturesque passages from translations of the ancient
historians and poetry," and it was thus that he heard for the first time of the Greeks and
Romans.
The wife of a Mr. Rogers (a friend of Mr. Flower's) was greatly admired for her beauty, as
were also her children. On Mr. Flower's suggestion and with his father's consent the boy went to Lancaster to
paint their portraits in which he was so successful that he had all the orders that he could conveniently
fill. Among others he painted the portrait of a gunsmith, William Henry, who had acquired
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