, 2008. Fibreglass stone and airplane. National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Purchased 2011. Photo © Roman März](/images/content/menuSeeGallery.png)
Benjamin West
The Death of General Wolfe (Detail), 1770
oil on canvas
152.6 x 214.5 cm
Transfer from the Canadian War Memorials, 1921 (Gift of the 2nd Duke of Westminster, England, 1918)
National Gallery of Canada (no. 8007)
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Power, Rage, and Fulfilment, 1989
Attila Richard Lukacs
Canadian, 1962
oil, enamel and tar on canvas
129.5 x 533 x 2 cm
Gift of Joseph Lukacs, Calgary, 1993
National Gallery of Canada (no. 37177.1-4)
The monkey is a classical symbol of the artist because of its reputation as a clever mimic. Lukacs borrows monkeys as symbolic stand-ins for himself as artist, personifying them as expressions of his own psyche, enslaved by their sensuous desires. This painting features captive, self-absorbed monkeys in an ambiguous morality play that combines references to traditional grand allegories (the scales of Justice or a rabbit pierced like Saint Sebastian) with more idiosyncratic suggestions of social hierarchy and ritual (the colony of rats and the bondage mask). The painting is sketched out horizontally, as if it were a portion of a historical scroll in the process of being written.
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