Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783

Reception of the American Loyalists by Great Britain in the Year 1783 is a lost painting by American-born artist Benjamin West, depicting the return of the Loyalists to the British Empire following their expulsion from the victorious United States after the American Revolutionary War. Unlike West's established historical styles, Reception features a highly allegorical composition of European, Black, and Native American refugees being welcomed back into the fold by Britannia, who presides over the British Crown Jewels while flanked by angels and government officials surveying the scene.^[1]

The original painting and its date of creation have been lost but is survived by a pair of replicas, one by engraver Henry Moses and one by West himself in the background of a later portrait of John Eardley Wilmot, completed in 1811 and 1812 respectively.^[2][3]