Frank Weston Benson

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 Artistic studies An avid birdwatcher and wildfowl hunter, Benson wanted to be an ornithological illustrator. one of his first oil paintings, after a hunting trip. Capitalizing on what he learned, Benson held drawing classes in Salem and painted landscapes during the summer of 1882.  He traveled to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian 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 Julian, said to him: "Young man, your career is in your hands... you will do very well." After his study at Académie Julian, Benson traveled to England's Royal Academy to see his painting "After the Storm" on exhibit. He also spent time in Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Brittany. File:Rail Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Rail, c. 1878–1879, Private collection File:After the Storm 1884 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|After the Storm, 1884, Private collection File:Frank W. Benson - Portrait of Joseph Lindon Smith (1884).jpg|Portrait of Joseph Lindon Smith, 1884, Private collection ==Influences==

Benson was "deeply influenced" by Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez, masters from the seventeenth-century. File:Girl with a Pearl Earring.jpg|Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, ca. 1660–1670, Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis, The Hague File:El aguador de Sevilla, por Diego Velázquez.jpg|Diego Velázquez, The Waterseller of Seville, 1623, Apsley House, London File:Diego Velazquez - An Old Woman Cooking Eggs - Google Art Project.jpg|Diego Velázquez, Old Woman Frying Eggs, 1618, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh. 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." File:The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil.JPG|Claude Monet, ''The Artist's Garden at Vétheuil'', 1880, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. File:Monet - Zwei Mädchen in einem Boot.jpg|Claude Monet, Two Girls in a Boat File:Pont Argenteuil Monet 1.jpg|Claude Monet, ''Pont d'Argenteuil'' Benson's watercolors reminded some critics of Winslow Homer's works. 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 taught until 1913. and the miniaturist Bertha Coolidge. ==Works==

William H. Gerdts, 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." Realism Benson opened his first studio in Salem in 1886 with his friend, Phillip Little, and began painting portraits, 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. File:The sisters 1889 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|The Sisters, 1899, Terra Museum, Chicago File:Eleanor Holding a Shell.jpg|Eleanor Holding a Shell, 1902, Private collection File:Calm Morning 1904 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Calm Morning, 1904, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston File:Evening Light 1908 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Evening Light, 1908, Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio Wildlife (1935), based on a painting by Benson Before Benson began his Impressionist paintings of his family, he made many seascape and landscape paintings. Regarding his artistic mastery, Peabody Essex Museum curator Dean Lahikainen commented: "Benson was a unique artist, in that he had mastered so many different mediums and subjects. And from his early works right until the very end, light is what he was interested in." Wash paintings :At the Cape Cod hunting cabin that he purchased with his brothers-in-law, Benson began working with black-and-white wash in the 1890s. The works were a commercial success, so much so that Benson was not able to keep up with the demand. Benson was a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists, known as The Society of American Etchers from 1915 - 1947, based in New York City and participated in many exhibitions. File:Frank Benson - Seal of the Essex County Ornithological Club (1916).jpg|Seal of the Essex County Ornithological Club, 1916, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem File:Frank W. Benson - Old Squaws (1915).jpg|Old Squaws, 1915, Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum File:Brooklyn Museum - Geese Alighting - Frank Weston Benson - overall.jpg|Geese Alighting, ca. 1916, Brooklyn Museum, New York File:Ducks in the Rain 1918 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Ducks in the Rain, 1918, University of New Hampshire Museum of Art Watercolors :Benson's watercolor paintings began on a Canadian fishing trip in 1921. and were often the products of bird-hunting sojourns in Cape Cod and salmon fishing expeditions in Canada. were favorably compared to similar works by . A critic wrote of his watercolors, "The love of the almost primitive wilderness which appears in many of (Winslow) Homer's landscapes and the swift, sure touch with which he suggests rather than describes--these also characterize Benson's work. The solitude of the northern woods is very much like Homer's." Benson made more than 500 watercolors in his lifetime. --> Oil paintings :Hunter in a Boat (1915) and Twilight (1930) are a few examples of Benson's oil paintings of wildlife settings. Gallery --> File:Eleanor 1907 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Eleanor, 1907 File:Summer 1909 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Summer, 1909 File:Elizabeth and Anna oil c.1909 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Elizabeth and Anna, c.1909 File:Benson, Frank Weston - Sunlight - Google Art Project.jpg|Summer, 1909 File:Frank Weston Benson 1909 Margaret Gretchen Strong .jpg|Margaret Gretchen Strong, 1909 File:Girl Playing Solitaire oil 1909 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Playing Solitaire oil 1909 File:Benson25.jpg|The Reader, ca. 1910 File:Benson Against the Sky.jpg|Against the Sky, ca. 1912 File:Study for Young Girl with a Veil, c. 1912.jpg|Study for Young Girl with a Veil, 1912 File:Interior-benson-greyroom.jpg|The Grey Room, 1913 File:Frank Weston Benson, The Dining Room Table, 1919.jpg|The Dining Room Table, 1919 File:Great White Herons 1923 Frank Weston Benson.jpg|Great White Herons 1923 --> ==Death and posthumous sales==

He is buried in Salem's Harmony Grove Cemetery. To date the highest price brought at auction for an oil painting by Benson is $4.1 million, realized at Sotheby's in 1995. On October 19, 2006, a watercolor painting by Benson was sold at auction for $165,002. The painting was anonymously donated to an Oregon Goodwill Industries site, most likely without the owner's knowing of its value. Bidding on the shopgoodwill.com website started at $10, and increased after the work was authenticated. ==Figure in a Room==

Benson's Figure in a Room, a 1912 realistic oil painting of a woman standing behind a small table in a room, was involved in a controversy that surfaced long after the death of the artist. The Detroit Club apparently purchased the painting in 1914, following an exhibit held there by Benson. At some time during the next several decades, the painting was replaced on the club's premises by an excellent fake or forgery, which was inserted into the painting's original frame. The original Benson was eventually obtained by a collector named Donald Purdy, and later by the New Britain Museum of American Art. The fake Benson painting remaining with the Detroit Club was finally sold for $38,500 to an attorney and his wife, at an auction held by Christie's in 1986. When the new owners began their own research of the painting many years later, they learned that the New Britain Museum had a strikingly similar painting from Benson in their collection; the couple's subsequent attempt to sell the painting ended when Sotheby's (who also learned of the New Britain painting) pronounced it to be a probable fake. A lawsuit was filed against Christie's, alleging negligence and/or fraud; but a Delaware Court ruled in favor of the defendants, opining that the auctioneer's fiduciary responsibility was with the seller rather than with the purchaser. The court also noted that Christie's six-year warranty of authenticity, clearly communicated, had long since expired. Today, the two "Figure in a Room" paintings involved in this controversy hang side by side at the New Britain (CT) Museum; visitors are invited to decide for themselves which is real and which is fake. Benson scholar, Faith Andrews Bedford, notes that the frame is a hand-carved frame by Wilfred Thulin, one of the members of the famed Boston school of arts and crafts framemakers. She has recently donated to the museum the mandarin coat worn by the model in the painting. ==Exhibitions and shows==

• 1885 - After the Storm at the Royal Academy in London • 1889 - National Academy of Design in New York, won first prize for Orpheus • 1891 - First private show of Benson's work, Chase Gallery, Boston with Edmund C. Tarbell • 1894 - First known wildfowl exhibition, exhibited Swan Flight • 1897 - With nine other men, held their own exhibition in New York City • 1898 - First exhibition as the Ten American Painters in New York City • 1899 - Second exhibition as the Ten American Painters in New York City, including Children in the Woods, the first Impressionist painting exhibited by Benson • 1900 - The Sisters was presented at the Paris Exposition Universelle and won a silver medal • 1904 - First known exhibition of a still life by Benson • 1912 - First known showing of black and white wash drawings, Ten American Painters show • 1913 - First one-man show devoted to wash drawings of wildfowl, Copley Society of Art, Boston • 1915 - Benson's etchings were exhibited for the first time, The Guild of Boston Artists • 1915 - First one-man show devoted to etchings, George Gage Gallery • 1915 - First one-man show devoted to etchings in New York, Kennedy Galleries • 1916 - First one-man show devoted to etchings outside of the United States, British Museum • 1922 - First exhibition of his watercolors in New York, Boston and Cleveland • 1945 - His last one-man exhibition of etchings at Arthur Harlow & Sons Gallery, New York • 1950 - His final exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Retroactive exhibitions of his work occurred in 1921 at the Guild of Boston Artists in 1917, Corcoran Gallery of Art, in 1924 at the Carnegie Institute and the Akron Art Museum, in 1936 at Guy E. Mayer Gallery in New York and in 1938 in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Such was its popularity that the exhibition broke the museum's attendance records. == Awards and acclaim ==

In the 1890s he began receiving his first awards; after the turn of the century he won awards for his Impressionist paintings, and his wildlife watercolors and etchings won awards in the 1920s and 1930s and up to age 86. Awards that Benson won include: • 1889 Third Hallgarten Prize, National Academy in New York for Orpheus • 1906 Thomas R. Proctor Prize, National Academy • 1924 Frank G Logan prize He received an honorary Master of Fine Arts degree from Tufts University in 1930 and was selected into the National Institute of Letters and Arts in 1945. ==Organizations==

• 1888 - Became a member of the Society of American Artists • 1926 - Elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences • 1937 - First documented showing as a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists ==See also==