West’s arrival in England from Italy in 1763 occurred at a time when artists were seeking to create a distinguished national school of history painting. George III was eager to support such a goal and was also a keen supporter of the proposal to found a national academy for the teaching and display of arts: his patronage of West and the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768 were closely intertwined. At the King’s instruction, ‘The Departure of Regulus’ (OM 1152, 405614) was shown at the first Royal Academy exhibition in 1769; he succeeded Sir Joshua Reynolds as President of the Royal Academy in 1792.

West painted around sixty pictures for George III between 1768 and 1801. From 1772 he was described in Royal Academy catalogues as ‘Historical Painter to the King’ and from 1780 he received an annual stipend from the King of £100. In the 1780s he gave drawing lessons to the Princesses and in 1791 he succeeded Richard Dalton as Surveyor of the King’s Pictures.

Prince Octavius, the thirteenth child of George III and Queen Charlotte, died in 1783, a year after his younger brother’s death. The King and Queen commissioned Benjamin West to commemorate the deaths of their youngest two sons in this painting which hung in the King’s Dressing-Room at Buckingham Palace. Prince Octavius is welcomed into heaven by his brother Alfred under the protective wings of an angel and watched by two cherubs. On the ground below there is a view of Windsor Castle from the South.

The painting appears in Pyne's illustrated 'Royal Residences' of 1819, hanging in the King's State Bedchamber at Windsor Castle (RCIN 922108).