Skip to main content

Harry Bennett Art

American, 1919-2012
Harry R. Bennett (1919-2012) Award-winning painter and illustrator Harry R. Bennett, formerly of Ridgefield, Connecticut, died early Thursday, November 29, 2012, from complications of pneumonia at The VA Medical Center in Baltimore, MD. He had lived with his daughter, Pamela Bennett, and wife Margaret Shean in Towson, Maryland. Mr. Bennett was a commercial artist when he enlisted in the Army in November 1940. He graduated from the Infantry Officer Candidate School in May 1942. Major Bennett was a veteran of the Hollandia operation, in which Gen. Douglas MacArthur's forces cut off the entire Japanese 18th Army, and in which Major Bennett himself won the Bronze Star. In 1945, Mr. Bennett married Margaret Shean in Ridgefield, CT, where they lived until 1985. His wife encouraged him to follow his passion for painting. He attended The Art Institute of Chicago and The American Academy of Art Chicago. He would use his family and neighbors as models for over 1000 book covers and illustrations over the years. Mr. Bennett was best known as an internationally published illustrator who painted large-scale covers for the big publishers of the paperback industry at the time including, Simon and Schuster, Western Printing, and Avon Press. He painted covers for various authors including Jude Deveraux, Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, and Victoria Holt. He also illustrated the first paperback edition of Mario Puzo's "The Godfather". He was awarded a bronze medal by The New York Society of Illustrators for the ink paintings he created to illustrate a boxed collectors' edition of Dante's "Divine Comedy," published in 1966, in which he has granted him a one-man show at The New York Public Library. In 1986, Mr. Bennett retired from commercial work and traveled out West, settling in Astoria, OR, where his work continues to be exhibited. Jeannine Grafton, director of the RiverSea Gallery, remembers Bennett as a passionate, enthusiastic artist with a "youthful zest for life." Harry was compassionate, warm, and always interested in engaging with new people. Teri Sund, who was a good friend of Mr. Bennett's and helped run RiverSea Gallery before opening her gallery, recalls, "He was the most honorable and graciously sincere human I have ever had the privilege to know. When Harry was in the room, there were no worries, we all felt safe and cared for when he was around." Harry had a strong work ethic and always wanted to be painting or preparing for a painting. He was a great mentor to young artists, including his daughter Deborah and Thomas who are also painters. In 2008, he and his wife moved to Towson, MD. Source: Taken in part from the obituary on the Legacy website.
(Biography provided by BLUE IRIS / IRIS BLEU)
to
1
1
1
2
1
1
Overall Height
to
Overall Width
to
1
2
2
6,847
3,164
2,517
1,217
2
1
1
1
1
Artist: Harry Bennett
Building Landscape Gouache Painting by Harry Bennett
By Harry Bennett
Located in Atlanta, GA
Stunning gouache on cardboard painting by American Artist Harry Bennett (1919 - 2012). This early hyperrealist design features a church or school in the middle of nowhere in the coun...
Category

Mid-20th Century Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Gouache, Cardboard

Harry Bennett (1879-1955) - Signed Early 20th Century Oil, Village Scene
By Harry Bennett
Located in Corsham, GB
This painting depicts a quaint, rural village with figures wandering towards the church. The expressive brushstrokes are typical of Bennett's style. Well presented in a textured guil...
Category

20th Century Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Oil

Related Items
'Agay, le château et le Sémaphore'. Oil on canvas. Signed.
By Armand Guillaumin
Located in Paris, FR
'Agay, le château et le Sémaphore'. Oil on canvas. +/- 1922 Signed lower right Measurements : 60 x 73 cm. This painting will be recorded in the second volume of the Catalogue Raisonn...
Category

1920s Impressionist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Oil

Oil painting; Italian Landscape in the style of Claude Lorraine (1600-1682).
By Claude Lorrain (circle of)
Located in Uppingham, GB
Large Italian Landscape circa 1890 painted by a heavily influenced follower of Claude Lorraine (1600-1682). Superb depth and detail. Indistinc...
Category

Late 19th Century Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Oil

Sailboats and Sailing Ship in Seascape early 20th Century Oil Painting Framed
Located in Stockholm, SE
This artwork showcases the beauty of sailing boats and ships sailing gracefully on the sea waters. The artist's attention to detail is evident in the intricate depiction of the ships...
Category

Early 20th Century Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Wood, Oil, Cardboard

1880s Original Hudson River School Landscape -- Sunset Through The Forest
By Charles Russell Loomis
Located in Soquel, CA
Beautiful Hudson River School Original gouache autumnal landscape of vivid sunset through forest by Charles Russell Loomis (American 1857 - 1936), circa 1880. Warm and cool tones wit...
Category

1880s Hudson River School Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Gouache, Paper, Cardboard

Early oil depicting the Great Fire of London
Located in London, GB
The Great Fire of London in September 1666 was one of the greatest disasters in the city’s history. The City, with its wooden houses crowded together in narrow streets, was a natural fire risk, and predictions that London would burn down became a shocking reality. The fire began in a bakery in Pudding Lane, an area near the Thames teeming with warehouses and shops full of flammable materials, such as timber, oil, coal, pitch and turpentine. Inevitably the fire spread rapidly from this area into the City. Our painting depicts the impact of the fire on those who were caught in it and creates a very dramatic impression of what the fire was like. Closer inspection reveals a scene of chaos and panic with people running out of the gates. It shows Cripplegate in the north of the City, with St Giles without Cripplegate to its left, in flames (on the site of the present day Barbican). The painting probably represents the fire on the night of Tuesday 4 September, when four-fifths of the City was burning at once, including St Paul's Cathedral. Old St Paul’s can be seen to the right of the canvas, the medieval church with its thick stone walls, was considered a place of safety, but the building was covered in wooden scaffolding as it was in the midst of being restored by the then little known architect, Christopher Wren and caught fire. Our painting seems to depict a specific moment on the Tuesday night when the lead on St Paul’s caught fire and, as the diarist John Evelyn described: ‘the stones of Paul’s flew like grenades, the melting lead running down the streets in a stream and the very pavements glowing with the firey redness, so as no horse, nor man, was able to tread on them.’ Although the loss of life was minimal, some accounts record only sixteen perished, the magnitude of the property loss was shocking – some four hundred and thirty acres, about eighty per cent of the City proper was destroyed, including over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, and fifty-two Guild Halls. Thousands were homeless and financially ruined. The Great Fire, and the subsequent fire of 1676, which destroyed over six hundred houses south of the Thames, changed the appearance of London forever. The one constructive outcome of the Great Fire was that the plague, which had devastated the population of London since 1665, diminished greatly, due to the mass death of the plague-carrying rats in the blaze. The fire was widely reported in eyewitness accounts, newspapers, letters and diaries. Samuel Pepys recorded climbing the steeple of Barking Church from which he viewed the destroyed City: ‘the saddest sight of desolation that I ever saw.’ There was an official enquiry into the causes of the fire, petitions to the King and Lord Mayor to rebuild, new legislation and building Acts. Naturally, the fire became a dramatic and extremely popular subject for painters and engravers. A group of works relatively closely related to the present picture have been traditionally ascribed to Jan Griffier...
Category

17th Century Old Masters Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Day at the Beach - Realistic Figurative Illustration in Gouache
Located in Soquel, CA
Day at the Beach - Realistic Figurative Illustration in Gouache Original figurative illustration of people at the beach by Charles Ross Kinghan (American, 1895-1984). Several women are looking at someone's foot, as if there is a splinter being removed. Three of the women are closer, with their heads in the frame. Two of them have are standing with their backs to the viewer. Between the women, the viewer can catch glimpses of other activities on the beach. Possibly a sketch for Good Housekeeping Magazine. Signed "Charles Ross" in the lower right corner. (Charles Ross Kinghan) Acquired with other signed estate works by the artist. Presented in a new cream mat. Mat size: 16"H x 13"W Board size: 14"H x 11.75"W Charles Ross Kinghan (American, 1895-1984) was born in Anthony, KS on January 18, 1895. A teacher, he moved to Wichita as a teenager and did sign painting for the Western Sign Works. He studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art in 1916, the American Academy of Art in Chicago, the Audubon School of Art and the Art Institute of Chicago. He was a pupil of Carl Scheffler, J. Wellington Reynolds, and H.A. Oberteuffer. He taught at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the American Academy of Art in Chicago. He was an illustrator for McCalls, Good Housekeeping, Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and many others, including American Artist magazine. He was author and illustrator of Rendering Techniques for Commercial Art and Advertising (1956) and of Ted Kautzky...
Category

1930s American Impressionist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Watercolor, Gouache, Cardboard

Soldier Shooting Gun with Bikini Girls, Mid-Century Mens Magazine War
By Mort Künstler
Located in Miami, FL
The artist tells a whole action-packed story in one picture. A handsome young soldier shoots his pistol at a passing bomb-dropping airplane. The close call splashes water on him and his two sexy girl...
Category

1960s Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Board, Gouache, Pencil

Oil painting, boats fishing on a misty morning by Robert Chalmers 1874.
Located in Uppingham, GB
Oil painting, boats fishing on a misty morning by Robert Chalmers 1874. Signed and dated by the artist. Canvas size: 69cm x 106cm, Framed size 87cm x 123cm Robert Chalmers, littl...
Category

1870s Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Oil

The Harvest, Impressionist Haystack 19th Century
Located in Saint Augustine, FL
Artist: G. Rhumont Title: The Harvest Medium: Oil on Masonite Dimensions: 6.5 x 12" unframed, 18 x 12" Framed G. Rhumont was a turn of the century German landscape artist of romantic style with realistic scenes as seen here in “The Harvest”. This bucolic scene of harvesting hay depicts two farmers working in tandem loading the horse-drawn hay wagon in a field just outside their homestead. This early autumn painting...
Category

Late 19th Century Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Masonite, Oil

Mid Century Modern Framed Ram Boat Signed Oil Signed Jack Lorimer Gray 1950s 60s
By Jack L. Gray
Located in Keego Harbor, MI
Jack Lorimer Gray, 1927-1981, was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia to Scottish parents. His talents as an artist were spotted by E. Wyly Grier while Gray was still a child. He attended t...
Category

1950s Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Oil

Sunday Drive in the Hills - Gouache on Cardboard
Located in Soquel, CA
Highly detailed landscape with a house and car by Edward K. Williams (American, 1870-1950). A large house sits atop a hill, looking down over a road that runs along the river. Three people are driving a car from the 1930s along the road. The scene is rendered with great detail - both the house and the car are very accurate. There is an ornate border around the piece that was not finished, including instructions for framing and matting. Signed "E K Williams" on verso, with an address. Presented in a giltwood frame with a new off-white mat. Frame size: 15.75"H x 12.75"W Image size: 7.75"H x 6.5"W Landscape painter, Edward K. Williams was born 1870 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. Williams studied at the Art Institute of Chicago with Freer, Vanderpoel, Fursman, and Krehbiel. He exhibited there as well from 1903-1929 (including many winter scenes). He also exhibited at the Hoosier Salon, New York Watercolor Club, Herron Art Institute, American Watercolor Society, Brown County Art...
Category

Early 20th Century American Impressionist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Gouache, Cardboard

Surroundings in countryside. 1963, cardboard, oil, 45 x 58 cm
Located in Riga, LV
Surroundings in countryside. 1963, cardboard, oil, 45 x 58 cm Landscape painting of Latvia countryside. Gentle and careful brushstrokes in the foreground accents sunny day. Color u...
Category

1960s Realist Harry Bennett Art

Materials

Cardboard, Oil

Harry Bennett art for sale on 1stDibs.

Find a wide variety of authentic Harry Bennett art available for sale on 1stDibs. You can also browse by medium to find art by Harry Bennett in paint, board, cardboard and more. Not every interior allows for large Harry Bennett art, so small editions measuring 19 inches across are available. Customers who are interested in this artist might also find the work of Stephen Day, Steven Paddack, and Michael Budden. Harry Bennett art prices can differ depending upon medium, time period and other attributes. On 1stDibs, the price for these items starts at $459 and tops out at $2,200, while the average work can sell for $1,330.

Recently Viewed

View All