Crowds gather as Christ heals sick people. Lithograph after Benjamin West.

Subject described in Matthew 4.24; similar scenes are also described in e.g. Matthew 11.5, 21.14; Luke 7.22

Pharisees glower on the left. The paralysed woman on the right side of the picture has been said to be a portrait of Mrs Benjamin West, who was by 1811 in declining health; she died in 1814. The sick man in the foreground has been identified as Redmond Barry, the (later blind) brother of the painter James Barry: see von Erffa and Staley

1 print : lithograph ; image 41.5 x 56.5 cm

Christ healing the sick. And the fame of Christ went throughout all Syria; and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with diseases and torments, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.

H. von Erffa and A. Staley, Benjamin West, New Haven and London 1986, no. 336 (painting not illustrated, presumably owing to size and/or damage in Tate Gallery flood of 1928; this lithograph not mentioned)

Wellcome Collection 24613i

After West's painting on canvas (274 x 427 cm.) currently (1995) in the Tate Gallery, London: see H. von Erffa and A. Staley, loc. cit.

The painting was originally produced for the Pennsylvania Hospital, Philadelphia, but when it was exhibited at the British Institution in 1811, there was a campaign against its export to America: see [A.D. MacQuin], Description of the picture Christ healing the sick in the temple ..., London 1811. The painting was bought by the Directors of the British Institution for the exceptional price of 3,000 guineas and presented to the National Gallery in 1826. West then painted another, slightly different, version for the Pennsylvania Hospital