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Frank W. BensonBroadbills1922
1922
About the Item
Broadbills
Drypoint, 1922
Signed in pencil, lower left (see photo)
Initialed and dated in the plate (see photo)
Edition: 150 (unnumbered)
Condition: Excellent, professionally cleaned
Image/Plate size: 9 15/16 x 7 7/8 inches
Sheet size: 12 x 9 1/4 inches
Reference: Paff 153, published state
Biography
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 approachs, 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 studed 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. [This is an edited version of the artist's biography published in the NGA Systematic Catalogue] Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Creator:Frank W. Benson (1862 - 1951, American)
- Creation Year:1922
- Dimensions:Height: 9.94 in (25.25 cm)Width: 7.88 in (20.02 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Fairlawn, OH
- Reference Number:
Frank W. Benson
Frank Weston Benson, well known for his American Impressionist paintings, also produced an incredible body of prints — etchings, drypoints and a few lithographs. Born and raised on the North Shore of Massachusetts, Benson, a natural outdoorsman, grew up sailing, fishing, and hunting. From a young age, he was fascinated with drawing and birding — this keen interest continued throughout his life. His first art instruction was with Otto Grundman, at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and then in 1883 in Paris at the Académie Julian, where he studied the rigorous “École des Beaux-Arts”’ approach to drawing and painting for two years.
During the early 1880s, Seymour Haden visited Boston, giving a series of lectures on etching. This introduction to the European etching revival inspired Benson. He purchased a copy of Maxime Lalanne’s “A Treatise on Etching” and used it as a guide into the nuances of the craft. Benson's first etching was done in 1882. Titled “Salem Harbor,” it was published in “The Art Student,” the school magazine at the Museum of Fine Arts. Almost three decades would pass before Benson’s busy schedule allowed his fascination with etching and dry-point to weave its way back into the daily structure of his life. He produced over 350 different prints before his death in 1951. In a letter to his grandson, Frank Benson noted, “I have been happy because my hobby and my work are one and the same, and if you can arrange the same thing in your life, you will be equally happy.”
(Biography provided by The Old Print Shop, Inc.)About the Seller
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