Frank Weston Benson
Frank Weston Benson
1862 - 1951
American painter, etcher and teacher. Benson attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1880 to 1883 as a student of Otto Grundmann (1844–90) and Frederick Crowninshield (1845–1918). In 1883 he travelled with his fellow student and lifelong friend EDMUND C. TARBELL to Paris, where they both studied at the Académie Julian for three years with GUSTAVE BOULANGER and JULES LEFEBVRE. Benson travelled with Tarbell to Italy in 1884 and to Italy, Belgium, Germany and Brittany the following year. When he returned home, Benson became an instructor at the Portland (ME) School of Art, and after his marriage to Ellen Perry Peirson in 1888 he settled in Salem, MA. Benson taught with Tarbell at the Museum School in Boston from 1889 until their resignation over policy differences in 1913. Benson rejoined the staff the next year and taught intermittently as a visiting instructor until 1930.
In style and subject Benson’s paintings closely resemble those of Tarbell, with whom he is often paired as a leader of the ‘Boston School’. His early paintings were primarily portraits and figure studies in interiors. About 1898 he began the series by which he is best known, paintings in an Impressionist style of young women and children in bright sunny landscapes (e.g. Children in Woods, 1905; New York, Met.). Benson and his family summered on Penobscot Bay, ME, and their holidays provided inspiration for many of those works. In such paintings as My Daughters (1907; Worcester, MA, A. Mus.) and Eleanor (1907; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.), women clothed in white or pastel colours relax outside in a seemingly endless summer of sunlit leisure. His interior scenes such as Rainy Day (1906; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.) and Open Window (1917; Washington, DC, Corcoran Gal. A.) are more directly influenced by Tarbell, since they depict young women in the still interiors favoured by that artist. In other paintings such as Black Hat (1904; Providence, RI Sch. Des., Mus. A.), Benson’s figures are more monumental and the compositions more decorative than those of Tarbell.
Benson was involved in the decoration of the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, one of the major American mural projects of the late 19th century. His octagonal panels of the Three Graces and circular lunettes of the Four Seasons were completed in 1896. Executed in a bright Impressionist palette, these murals of half-length young girls were often cited as symbolic of the hope and optimism of the American spirit in the 1890s.
Benson was elected to the SOCIETY OF AMERICAN ARTISTS in 1888 but resigned in 1898 to become a founder-member of the TEN AMERICAN PAINTERS, who grouped together to exhibit in a stylistically harmonious atmosphere. He was made an academician at the NATIONAL ACADEMY OF DESIGN in 1905. Benson was versatile in his use of many media, including watercolour, pastel, engraving and aquatint. In 1912 he turned to etching as a hobby and quickly gained critical acclaim after an exhibition of his etchings in 1915 at the Guild of Boston Artists. Always an avid sportsman and hunter, he specialized in wildlife scenes, especially in etching but also in watercolour and oil (e.g. Salmon Fishing, oil, 1927; Boston, MA, Mus. F.A.). Benson taught until 1931 and continued to exhibit until the mid-1940s, when ill health forced his retirement. [Bailey Van Hook. "Benson, Frank W.." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press, accessed September 3, 2014, http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T007956.]
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French, 1864 - 1901
