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The Return of Hector

The Return of Hector

Artist: William Lovett (American, 1773 - 1801)

Date: 1790
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Canvas: 24 1/2 x 36 1/2 in. (62.2 x 92.7 cm)
Credit Line:Museum Purchase
Object number: 1915.120.1

Very little is known about the artistic career of Lovett. The artist, who died at the age of twenty eight, was considered to be among the finest painters of his time in Boston. He worked in the city from 1795 – 1800, producing a small group of beautiful miniature portraits, three of which belong to the Worcester Art Museum. Lovett also worked in Virginia with Philadelphia miniaturist Benjamin Trott. A group of portraits signed by both artists are in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society.

This history painting most likely depicts the classical narrative of Hector’s return to Troy from Homer’s Iliad. The subject is unusual in his body of work and relates to the strong strain of neoclassicism at the end of the eighteenth century in Europe and the United States expressed by artists like Benjamin West and John Trumbull.

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