Study for Pyrrhus when a child brought before Glaucias

The present picture is a study for the oil painting of 1767, which was exhibited at the Society of Artists, in that year, as a companion to The Flight of Astyanax (see A. Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West, London, 1986, no. 163). The finished painting is not mentioned in any early lists of West's work, however an oil sketch, believed to be the present work is recorded. There is also a chalk drawing showing the composition in reverse from the engravings and a very slight sketch, which may represent an early idea for the disposition of the figures and architecture, is in one of West's sketch books belonging to the Royal Academy. The location of the finished oil painting is unknown.

Pyrrhus I was King of Epirus from 307 B.C., and cousin of Alexander the Great. Pyrrhus is the subject of one of Plutarch's Lives and the present picture relates the episode when, as a child and son of the deposed ruler of Epirus, Pyrrhus was brought to the court of Glaucias in Illyria. The child, crying, was set down and crawled along until he pulled himself onto his feet at the knees of Glaucias, as if he was a formal suppliant. Glaucias, moved by the actions of the child, decided to raise him and eventually placed him on the throne of Epirus. The expression 'a pyrrhic victory' meaning an empty triumph, alludes to the battle of Asculum in 279 B.C., where Pyrrhus routed the Romans, but in doing so lost the flower of his army.