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Frank Weston Benton 1862 - 1951

Frank Weston Benton of Massachusetts United States was born on March 24, 1862 in Salem, and died at age 89 years old on November 15, 1951 in Salem, Essex County.

Frank Weston Benton

Massachusetts United States

March 24, 1862

Salem, Massachusetts, United States

November 15, 1951

Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts, United States

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Frank Weston Benton Frank Benton (1862 - 1951)

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Frank Weston Benton's History: 1862 - 1951

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Introduction

Frank W. Benson famous impressionist American artist. Frank Weston Benson was a well-known and financially successful painter, printmaker, and teacher. A founding member of the Ten, Benson was associated with that group of painters who withdrew from the Society of American Artists in 1897 in order to promote their work through smaller, more personal exhibitions, the first of which took place in 1898. Though quite diverse in their approaches, much of their work was characterized by visible brushwork, a lightened palette, and a concern with the natural and evocative qualities of light. Benson was born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1862, the second of six children of George Wiggin Benson, a prosperous Boston cotton merchant, and his wife, Elisabeth Frost Poole. His grandfather was Captain Samuel Benson, who sailed around the world and brought back many exotic treasures from his Far Eastern voyages, heirlooms that would appear later in his grandson's paintings. Benson's mother urged her husband to allow Frank to enroll in the newly-founded Boston Museum School in 1880, where he studied for three years under Otto Grundmann (1844-1890). While still a student, Benson began his career as an art teacher in the fall of 1881, hired by the city of Salem to teach evening drawing classes, which were offered free to the public. Among his fellow students in Boston was Edmund C. Tarbell, who became Benson's lifelong friend and colleague for nearly three decades, as well as a fellow member of the Ten. The two young men studied together also in Paris, at the Academie Julian, under Gustave Boulanger (1824-1890) and Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911). While in Europe, where he arrived in October 1883, Benson spent the summer at the artists' colony of Concarneau, Brittany, and traveled with Tarbell through Germany, Italy, and England. Upon returning to the United States in 1886, Benson worked briefly in Salem, Massachusetts, the town in which he would eventually settle. During 1886 and 1887 he taught drawing and painting at the Portland (Maine) Society of Art and in 1889 began to teach at the Boston Museum School. He remained there until 1912. While teaching Benson also received wide recognition for his own work. He won numerous awards, including the Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy of Design in 1889 and a Columbian Exposition Medal in Chicago in 1893. In 1896 he provided decorations for seven ceiling and wall panels in the Library of Congress. Benson became an Associate of the National Academy of Design in 1897 and an Academician in 1905. He was a founding member of the Guild of Boston Artists in 1914. In 1915 the first exhibition of Frank Benson's etchings and drypoints was held. The prints, which were primarily of sporting subjects, such as waterfowl, combined Benson's great love of the outdoors with his free and open draftsmanship. So many variations of these subjects were created over the next decade that some accused the artist of being commercially repetitive. Nonetheless, the turn to sporting subjects in prints, watercolors, and paintings, changed the direction of his work and he created fewer of the serene paintings of women and children for which he had become so well-known. In the last years of his career, his watercolor landscapes were much in demand. Benson maintained his connection with the Boston Museum School as a member of the Advisory Council until l930 when he resigned. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were held at the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C., in 1921 and, jointly with Tarbell, in 1938 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Benson, who had a studio in Boston and, at various times, summer houses in Maine and Cape Cod, eventually retired to his home in Salem, Massachusetts. He died there on November 14, 1951.
03/24

1862

Birthday

March 24, 1862

Birthdate

Salem, Massachusetts United States

Birthplace

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Professional Career

Frank Weston Benson Born March 24, 1862 Salem, Massachusetts Died November 15, 1951 (aged 89) Salem, Massachusetts Nationality American Education School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Académie Julian Paris. Known for Impressionist painting Frank Weston Benson S elf-Portrait oil Frank Weston Benson. Works Interiors and Still Life, Landscapes, Murals, Portraits, Waterscapes, Wildlife. Summer (1909) Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred to as Frank W. Benson, (March 24, 1862 – November 15, 1951) was an American artist from Salem, Massachusetts known for his Realistic portraits, American Impressionist paintings, watercolors, and etchings. He began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Congress. Some of his best-known paintings (Eleanor, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Summer, Rhode Island School of Design Museum) depict his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home, Wooster Farm, on the island of North Haven, Maine. He also produced numerous oil, wash, and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl and landscapes. In 1880, Benson began to study at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston under both Otto Grundmann and Frederic Crowninshield. In 1883 he traveled to Paris to study at the Académie Julian. He enjoyed a distinguished career as an instructor and department head at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He was a founding member of the Ten American Painters, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and The Guild of Boston Artists. Biography Early years Frank Weston Benson was born to George Wiggin Benson, a successful cotton broker, and Elisabeth Poole, from families who founded Salem, Massachusetts. Benson obtained his appreciation of the sea from his grandfather, Captain Samuel Benson. When he was 12, he was given a sailboat[3]: 13 in which he explored the waterways and marshes and raced against his brother, John Prentiss Benson. To encourage educational activity, Benson's parents gave their children a weekly allowance to foster independent study and hobbies, such as Salem's Hamilton Hall dance classes, Lyceum lectures, or equipment for photography. The brothers kept active by participating in sports, as well as fishing and hunting. Benson's father gave him a shotgun and taught him how to hunt shorebirds along the North Shore and wildfowl in the local fields and marshes. He spent nearly all of his weekends hunting or fishing in the fields, marshes and streams. To his good friend Dan Henderson, he wrote of their childhood adventures: "We used to spend our Saturdays chasing coot and old squaws in Salem Harbor. Then, after working hard all day to get one bird, we would assemble at Sam Shrum’s or mine and chew the rag until we were so sleepy we could not hold up our heads. What a minute account each had to give of each movement of every bird seen and every shot missed. It was almost criminal to miss an easy shot in those days, so many excuses had to be invented. One word would have served for all in my case if it had been invented then, I was generally 'rattled,' I think when you and I went ducking." His brother, John Prentiss Benson, was an architect and painter in his own right. Both of his sons may have been influenced by their mother, Elisabeth Poole Benson, who Frank once remarked, had "a little room" on the top floor of their house where she would go to paint and "forget about the rest of the world". Artistic studies An avid birdwatcher and wildfowl hunter, Benson wanted to be an ornithological illustrator. At the age of 16, he painted Rail, one of his first oil paintings, after a hunting trip. He began his studies at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1880, and there befriended Joseph Lindon Smith, Robert Reid, and Edmund Charles Tarbell. Capitalizing on what he learned, Benson held drawing classes in Salem and painted landscapes during the summer of 1882. On Benson's 21st birthday his parents gave him a gift of $2,000 to study in Europe. He traveled to Paris and studied at the Académie Julien from 1883 to 1884 with Edmund Tarbell and Joseph Lindon Smith; Joseph Lindon Smith and Benson shared an apartment. At the Academy, Benson studied under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, William Turner Dannat, and Gustave Boulanger. Gustave Boulanger, one of Benson's teachers at Académie Julien, said to him: "Young man, your career is in your hands... you will do very well." After his study at Académie Julien, Benson traveled to England's Royal Academy to see his painting "After the Storm" on exhibit.[8] He also spent time in Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Brittany. Influences Benson was "deeply influenced" by Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez, masters from the seventeenth century. Vermeer painted few works during his lifetime, about 35-36 [universally accepted] paintings, but nearly each of them has become a masterpiece. The Dutch artist from Delft was astute in his depiction of light and the "poetic quality" of his subjects. Impressionism, particularly the work of Claude Monet, played a role in the development of Benson's own American Impressionistic style. He capitalized on Monet's color palette and brush strokes and keenly depicted "reflected light", yet maintained some detail in the composition. Per Chambers, Benson represented American people with an "ideal of grace, of dignity, of elegance." Influences from Impressionism Claude Monet, The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil, 1880, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Benson's watercolors reminded some critics of Winslow Homer's works. Robert Reid, Her First Born, 1888, Brooklyn Museum Willard Metcalf, My Wife, and Daughter, ca. 1917 Benson was not one to experiment with emerging art forms, like Cubism, Expressionism, and Fauvism. As American Impressionism extended to Post-Impressionism about 1913, Benson stayed with traditional genres and his American Impressionist style. As a result, "The pretty, genteel life that Benson had depicted was criticized. Benson's reaction was to turn to nature, and birds replaced the women and children as his objects of interest." said Dean Lahikainen, curator of the Peabody Essex Museum. Marriage and children In the summer of 1884, Benson painted at Concarneau, along with Willard Metcalf and Edward Simmons. While there, Benson became engaged to the daughter of friends from Salem, Massachusetts, Ellen Perry Peirson. They married in 1888 when Benson had established himself in his career and raised four children: Eleanor (born 1890), George (born 1891), Elisabeth (born 1892), and Sylvia (born 1898). Instructor Benson became a Portland, Maine School of Art instructor in 1886. The spring of 1889 he began teaching antique drawing at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and in 1890 became head of the Painting department. The school's reputation grew and its enrollment tripled under the leadership of Philip Hale, Benson, and Edmund C. Tarbell. Students were assessed on the basis of their skill and placed at the appropriate level (from low to high): Hale had a class for beginners, Benson concentrated on how to depict figures while Tarbell covered still-lifes. Benson, a favored instructor called "Cher Maitre" ("Dear Master") by his students, taught until 1913. Among his pupils were the portraitist Marie Danforth Page and the miniaturist Bertha Coolidge. Works Main article: List of works by Frank Weston Benson Moonlight on the Waters oil 1899 William H. Gerdts, the art historian, wrote of Benson's work in his introduction to Faith Andrews Bedford's biography of the painter: "Frank Benson painted some of the most beautiful pictures ever executed by an American artist. They are images alive with reflections of youth and optimism, projecting a way of life at once innocent and idealized and yet resonant with a sense of certain, selective realities of contemporary times."His work was also part of the art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics and the 1936 Summer Olympics. Realism Benson opened his first studio in Salem in 1886 with his friend, Phillip Little, and began painting portraits, an occupation in which Benson took seriously. He once said: "The more a painter knows about his subject, the more he studies and understands it, the more the true nature of it is perceived by whoever looks at it, even though it is extremely subtle and not easy to see or understand. A painter must search deeply into the aspects of a subject, must know and understand it thoroughly before he can represent it well." Benson took a Boston studio in 1888 with Edmund C. Tarbell. He gained favorable attention in his first showing at the Society of American Artists in New York, with a piece that suggested the influence of academic Realism. At the suggestion of his friend, Joseph Lindon Smith, Benson spent several summers in Dublin from 1889 to 1893, where he painted with and was influenced by Abbott Thayer. By the early 1890s, he began using his family as subjects. Benson later recalled it was then that he realized design was the most important component of painting. Consequently, works of the period evidence a greater interest in and command of pattern, silhouette, and abstract design. Red and Gold, portrait of countess Clelia de Candia, 1915, Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio Impressionism It was only after joining the "Ten American Painters" in 1898 that Benson shifted from the decorative painting of murals (for the Library of Congress) and allegories to a genuine interest in Plein-air Impressionism. Continuing a pattern that the Bensons would follow for years, the family left Boston during the summers. The family spent summers in New Castle, New Hampshire from 1893 to 1900, where Benson made some of his first Impressionist paintings, such as Children in the Woods and The Sisters. The popularity of The Sisters, a painting of daughters Elizabeth and Sylvia, won medals in expositions throughout the United States and in Paris, was a prelude to the successes of the next 20 years, when Benson became famous for a series of paintings of his family. After New Castle, the Bensons spent their summers on North Haven Island in Penobscot Bay in Maine at Wooster Farm. Benson made Impressionist works of his family in earnest at Wooster Farm en plein air. The summer home afforded a great view of the bay and surrounding area. Near the house was an old orchard, large fields provided plenty of space for the children to play and for a garden and the property stood beside a wooded area. Like the French Impressionists, Benson focused on capturing light. To his daughter Eleanor he said, "I follow the light, where it comes from, where it goes." A critic said of Benson's work: "It is impossible to believe that mere paint, however clearly laid on, can glow and shimmer and sparkle as does that golden light on his canvas." Through his role as a teacher, work as an artist, and affiliation with professional organizations for artists, Benson was a leader in American Impressionism. In 1898 Benson and nine other artists including William Merritt Chase, Thomas Dewing, Childe Hassam, and J. Alden Weir formed "Ten American Painters". They conducted annual exhibitions of their works in New York City and often showed in other cities, such as Boston, and became known as the American Impressionists. The Traditional Fine Arts Organization claimed he was "one of the last great American Impressionists."
11/15

1951

Death

November 15, 1951

Death date

Unknown
Cause of death

Salem, Essex County, Massachusetts United States
Death location

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