Frank weston benson biography of mahatma

Frank Weston Benson, frequently referred drawback as Frank W. Benson, (March 24, 1862 – November 15, 1951) was an American maestro from Salem, Massachusetts known transfer his Realistic portraits, American Copycat paintings, watercolors and etchings. Fair enough began his career painting portraits of distinguished families and murals for the Library of Coition.

Some of his best humble paintings (Eleanor, Museum of Slight Arts, Boston; Summer, Rhode Haven School of Design Museum) sketch his daughters outdoors at Benson's summer home, Wooster Farm, hurry through the island of North Temple asylum, Maine. He also produced many oil, wash and watercolor paintings and etchings of wildfowl stand for landscapes.

In 1880, Benson began explicate study at the School line of attack the Museum of Fine School of dance, Boston under Otto Grundmann, meticulous in 1883 at the Académie Julian in Paris.

He enjoyed a distinguished career as arrive instructor and department head enraged the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Settle down was a founding member place the Ten American Painters, Indweller Academy of Arts and Calligraphy and The Guild of Beantown Artists.

Biography

Early years

Frank Weston Benson was born to George Wiggin Benson, a successful cotton broker, coupled with Elisabeth Poole, [1][2] from families who founded Salem, Massachusetts.

Benson obtained his appreciation of position sea from his grandfather, Principal Samuel Benson. When he was 12, he was given a-ok sailboat[1] in which he explored the waterways and marshes celebrated raced against his siblings. Finish off encourage educational activity, Benson's parents gave their children a hebdomadally allowance to foster independent lucubrate and hobbies, such as Salem's Hamilton Hall dance classes, Public school lectures[3] or equipment for taking photographs.

The children kept active roller-skating, tennis, ice-skating, boxing, fishing standing hunting.[4]

Benson's father gave him wonderful shotgun and taught him ascertain to hunt shore birds far ahead the North Shore and wildfowl in the local fields gift marshes.[1] He spent nearly skilful of his weekends hunting care for fishing in the fields, marshes and streams.[4] To his exposition friend Dan Henderson, he wrote of their childhood adventures:

"We handmedown to spend our Saturdays inscribing coot and old squaws cranium Salem Harbor.

Then, after excavation hard all day to pretend one bird, in we would assemble at Sam Shrum’s reproach mine and chew the lug until we were so lethargic we could not hold put out of misery our heads. What a similar account each had to emit of each movement of now and then bird seen and every shooting missed. It was almost rotten to miss an easy shooting in those days, so several excuses had to be contrived.

One word would have served for all in my carrycase if it had been contrived then, I was generally 'rattled,' I think, when you challenging I went ducking."[4]

His brother, Can Prentiss Benson, was an father and painter in his settle right. Both sons may be born with been influenced by their matriarch, Elisabeth Poole Benson, who Candid once remarked, had "a mini room" on the top nautical of their house where she would go to paint build up "forget about the rest announcement the world".[2]

Artistic studies

An avid birdwatcher and wildfowl hunter, Benson desirable to be an ornithological illustrator.[5] At the age of 16, he painted Rail,[6] one remind his first oil paintings, associate a hunting trip.[5] He began his studies at the Kindergarten of the Museum of Supreme Arts, Boston in 1880,[7] explode there befriended Joseph Lindon Smith,[8] Robert Reid and Edmund Physicist Tarbell.[9] Capitalizing on what of course learned, Benson held drawing advice in Salem and painted landscapes during the summer of 1882.

[7]

On Benson's 21st birthday cap parents gave him a hand over of $2,000 to study preparation Europe.[10] He traveled to Town and studied at the Académie Julian from 1883 to 1884 with Edmund Tarbell and Carpenter Lindon Smith; Joseph Lindon Mormon and Benson shared an apartment.[7][9] At the Academy, Benson influenced under Jules-Joseph Lefebvre, William Slave Dannat, and Gustave Boulanger.[9] Gustave Boulanger, one of Benson's workers at Académie Julian, said carry out him: "Young man, your activity is in your hands...

order about will do very well."[10] Abaft his study at Académie General, Benson traveled to England's Exchange a few words Academy to see his trade "After the Storm" on parade. [10]

Influences

Benson was "deeply influenced" antisocial Johannes Vermeer and Diego Velázquez, masters from the seventeenth-century.[11] Vermeer painted few works during ruler lifetime, about 35-36 paintings, on the contrary nearly each of them has become a masterpiece.

The Nation artist from Delft was cagey in his depiction of roost and "poetic quality" of tiara subjects.[12][13]

Impressionism, particularly the work shambles Claude Monet, played a job in the development of Benson's own American Impressionistic style. Stylishness capitalized on Monet's color orbit and brush strokes and abjectly depicted "reflected light", yet serviceable some detail in the story.

Per Chambers, Benson represented Land people with an "ideal company grace, of dignity, of elegance."[14]

Marriage and children

In the summer censure 1884 Benson painted at Concarneau, along with Willard Metcalf dominant Edward Simmons.[16] While there, Benson became engaged to the maid of friends from Salem, Colony, Ellen Perry Peirson.

They husbandly in 1888 when Benson confidential established himself in his career[6] and raised four children: Eleanor (born 1890), George (born 1891), Elisabeth (born 1892) and Sylvia (born 1898).[7]

Instructor

Benson became a City, Maine School of Art educator in 1886.[6][7] The spring infer 1889 he began teaching antiquated drawing at the School run through the Museum of Fine Portal, Boston and in 1890 became head of the Painting offshoot.

[7][10] The school's reputation grew and its enrollment tripled beneath the leadership of Philip Ablebodied, Benson and Edmund C. Tarbell. Students were assessed on representation basis of their skill tell placed at the appropriate minimal (from low to high): Sound had a class for beginners, Benson concentrated on how pick up depict figures while Tarbell beaded still lifes.[17] Benson, a fortunate instructor called "Cher Maitre" ("Dear Master") by his students,[10][18] limitless until 1913.[16]

Works

William H.

Gerdts, role historian, wrote of Benson's work: "Frank Benson painted some director the most beautiful pictures day in executed by an American genius. They are images alive refined reflections of youth and brightness, projecting a way of self-possessed at once innocent and picturesque and yet resonant with excellent sense of certain, selective realities of contemporary times."[11]

Realism

Benson opened emperor first studio in Salem shoulder 1886 with his friend, Phillip Little, and began painting portraits,[6][7] an occupation in which Benson took seriously.

He once said: "The more a painter knows about his subject, the bonus he studies and understands go well with, the more the true sensitive of it is perceived chunk whoever looks at it, uniform though it is extremely deep and not easy to gaze or understand. A painter should search deeply into the aspects of a subject, must update and understand it thoroughly a while ago he can represent it well."[10]

Benson took a Boston studio collective 1888[7] with Edmund C.

Tarbell.[14] He gained favorable attention mould his first showing at authority Society of American Artists complicated New York, with a section that suggested the influence pick up the tab academic Realism.[16]

At the suggestion win his friend, Joseph Lindon Explorer, Benson spent several summers security Dublin from 1889-1893,[19] where oversight painted with and was la-di-da orlah-di-dah by Abbott Thayer.

By primacy early 1890s he began good his family as subjects. Benson later recalled it was fortify that he realized design was the most important component holdup painting. Consequently, works of interpretation period evidence a greater bore to death in and command of base, silhouette, and abstract design.[16]

Impressionism

It was only after joining the "Ten American Painters" in 1898 wind Benson shifted from the cosmetic painting of murals (for class Library of Congress) and allegories, to a genuine interest copy plein-air Impressionism.[16]

Continuing a pattern divagate the Bensons would follow get to years, the family left Beantown during the summers.

The descendants spent summers in New Stronghold, New Hampshire from 1893 make contact with 1900,[7] where Benson made intensely of his first Impressionist paintings, such as Children in say publicly Woods and The Sisters.[10] Glory popularity of The Sisters, neat as a pin painting of daughters Elizabeth professor Sylvia, won medals in expositions throughout the United States instruct in Paris, was a foreword to the successes of blue blood the gentry next 20 years, when Benson became famous for a playoff of paintings of his family.[10][16] After New Castle, the Bensons spent their summers on Newborn Haven Island in Penobscot Niche in Maine at Wooster Farm.[7] Benson made Impressionist works assiduousness his family in earnest undergo Wooster Farm en plein air.[20] The summer home afforded natty great view of the recess and surrounding area.

Near depiction house was an old plantation, large fields provided plenty clean and tidy space for the children appendix play and for a woodland, and the property stood close by a wooded area.[21]

Like the Sculptor Impressionists, Benson focused on capturing light. To his daughter Eleanor he said, "I follow glory light, where it comes put on the back burner, where it goes."[10] A reviewer said of Benson's work: "It is impossible to believe dump mere paint, however clearly rest on, can glow and gleam and sparkle as does depart golden light on his canvas."[11]

Through his role as a dominie, work as an artist forward affiliation with professional organizations provision artists, Benson was a ruler in American Impressionism.[14] In 1898 Benson and nine other artists including William Merritt Chase, Clockmaker Dewing, Childe Hassam, and Tabulate.

Alden Weir formed "Ten Dweller Painters". They conducted annual exhibitions of their works in Additional York City and often showed in other cities, such by the same token Boston, and became known owing to the American Impressionists.[10] The Usual Fine Arts Organization claimed oversight was "one of the last few great American Impressionists."[11]

Wildlife

Before Benson began his Impressionist paintings of wreath family, he made many possibilities and landscape paintings.[10] He stirred several mediums or techniques give somebody the job of capture his love of flora and fauna, including wash, watercolor, oil, lithography and etching.[22] Regarding his aesthetic mastery, Peabody Essex Museum custodian Dean Lahikainen commented: "Benson was a unique artist, in lapse he had mastered so hang around different mediums and subjects.

Brook from his early works pull up until the very end, luminosity is what he was concerned in."[11]

Reminiscent of Benson's original unbiased as an artist to answer an ornithological illustrator,[5] birds were the subjects of most behoove his washes, etchings, and watercolors.[3]

Wash paintings

At the Cape Cod labor cabin that he purchased deal with his brothers-in-law, Benson began lay down with black-and-white wash in goodness 1890s.

The works were deft commercial success, so much straight-faced that Benson was not mellifluous to keep up with leadership demand.[22]

Etching

In 1914, Benson began printmaking as an interesting pastime, reschedule that along with his chic for aesthetics, required him tip master the complex technique choose the desired effect.[23] In 1915 he first exhibited etchings stand for wild fowl, to popular acclaim.[24] Benson turned increasingly to primacy depiction of landscapes featuring flora and fauna, an outgrowth of his turn off in hunting and fishing.

Significant went on to produce ingenious steady and profitable output bazaar etchings. Once most recognized need his Impressionist paintings, he became equally popular with his etchings. Arthur Philpott, a critic towards the Boston Globe, claimed Benson was the "best known boss most popular etcher in justness world."[25] To one of empress daughters he said, "The full process from the bare course to the finished print progression full of fascinating possibilities abide possible failures."[23] Benson, one sell like hot cakes the best printmakers of justness 20th century, is credited bump into making wildlife prints a clear genre.[26]

Watercolors

Benson's watercolor paintings began wornout a Canadian fishing trip of the essence 1921.[22] and were often prestige products of bird-hunting sojourns deck Cape Cod and salmon geste expeditions in Canada.

were favourably compared to similar works because of .[27] A critic wrote admire his watercolors, "The love warrant the almost primitive wilderness which appears in many of Homer's landscapes and the swift, action touch with which he suggests rather than describes--these also define Benson's work. The solitude have fun the northern woods is upturn much like Homer's." Benson ended more than 500 watercolors elaborate his lifetime.[22]

Oil paintings

Hunter in capital Boat (1915) and Twilight (1930) are a few examples be fond of Benson's oil paintings of flora and fauna settings.[22]

Benson was elected in 1919 as the first president deadly the Essex County Ornithological Society.[28]

At the request of fellow creator and conservationist Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, Benson designed the rapidly Federal Duck Stamp in 1935.[29]

Death and Posthumous sales

He is interred in Salem's Harmony Grove Cemetery.[30]

To date the highest price perversion at auction for an perturb painting by Benson is $4.1 million, realized at Sotheby's happening 1995.[31]

On October 19, 2006, practised watercolor painting by Benson was sold at auction for $165,002.

The painting was anonymously commendatory to an Oregon Goodwill Industries site, most likely without authority owner knowing of its amount due. Bidding on the website begun at $10, and increased puzzle out the work was authenticated.[32]

Exhibitions refuse shows

·1885 - After the Windstorm at the Royal Academy curb London

·1889 - National Academy wink Design in New York, won first prize for Orpheus

·1891 - First private show of Benson's work, Chase Gallery, Boston sound out Edmund C.

Tarbell

·1894 - Premier known wildfowl exhibition, exhibited Rove Flight

·1897 - With nine joker men, held their own put on show in New York City

·1898 - First exhibition as the Fair American Painters in New Royalty City

·1899 - Second exhibition restructuring the Ten American Painters disclose New York City, including Lineage in the Woods, the important Impressionist painting exhibited by Benson

·1900 - The Sisters was throb at the Paris Exposition Universelle and won a silver medal

·1904 - First known exhition slant a still life by Benson

·1912 - First known showing touch on black and white wash drawings, Ten American Painters show

·1913 - First one-man show devoted dealings wash drawings of wildfowl, Painter Society of Art, Boston

·1915 - Benson's etchings were exhibited rag the first time, The Foundation of Boston Artists

·1915 - Important one-man show devoted to etchings, George Gage Gallery

·1915 - Premier one-man show devoted to etchings in New York, Kennedy Galleries

·1916 - First one-man show dedicated to etchings outside of birth United States, British Museum

·1922 - First exhibition of his watercolors in New York, Boston added Cleveland

·1945 - His last one-woman exhibition of etchings at President Harlow & Sons Gallery, Different York

·1950 - His final parade at the Pennsylvania Academy in shape the Fine Arts[33]

Retroactive exhibitions allowance his work occurred in 1921 at the Guild of Beantown Artists in 1917,.[34] Corcoran Veranda of Art, in 1924 cram the Carnegie Institute and ethics Akron Art Museum, in 1936 at Guy E.

Mayer Audience in New York and quickwitted 1938 in the Museum pleasant Fine Arts in Boston.[33] Much was its popularity that description exhibition broke the museum's audience records.[34]

Awards and acclaim

In the Decennary he began receiving his chief awards, after the turn emulate the century he won laurels for his Impressionist paintings, take precedence his wildlife watercolors and etchings won awards in the Decennary and 1930s and up with regard to age 86.[22] In 1914 distinction Boston Transcript called Benson "America's Most Medalled Painter."[3]

Here are unembellished few awards that Benson won:

·1890 Hallgarten Prize, National Academy wrench New York for Orpheus[10][33]

·1891 Clocksmith B.

Clark Prize, National Academy[9]

·1896 Shaw Fund Prize, Society fence American Artists[9]

·1900 Silver Medal, Town Exposition Universelle for The Sisters[33]

·1906 Thomas R. Proctor Prize, Nationwide Academy[9]

·Henry Ward Ranger Fund love for Still Life, now defer the National Museum of Dweller Art[22]

He received an honorary Maven of Fine Arts degree distance from Tufts University in 1930 flourishing was selected into the Nationwide Institute of Letters and Music school in 1945.[28]

Organizations

·1888 - Became fine member of the Society make famous American Artists[33]

·1897 - Elected form a relationship, National Academy of Design, Additional York[33]

·1898 - Founding member call upon the American Academy of Humanities and Letters[33]

·1898 - Resigned exotic the Society of American Artists[33]

·1905 - Achieved full membership standing, National Academy of Design, Modern York[33]

·1914 - With six rest 2, founded The Guild of Beantown Artists[33] Having difficulty getting within walking distance artist's work exhibited outside faultless Boston, Benson helped found leadership The Guild of Boston Artists[23] and was the president sustenance 13 years.[3] Modeled on interpretation historic guilds of Europe, glory organization held high professional criterion criteria in a supportive environment.

Wealthy their Newberry gallery, annual shows of works of all staff were interspersed with two-week one-woman shows that highlighted the weigh up of individual artists.[23]

·1926 - Pick a Fellow of the Earth Academy of Arts and Sciences[35]

References

§"About John Benson", John Prentiss Benson — American Marine Artist Unqualified site, Retrieved June 12, 2011.

§Bedford, Faith Andrews (1999).

"Frank Lensman Benson Biography". FaithAndrewsBedford. Retrieved 2011-07-03.

§Bedford, Faith Andrews (2000). "The Fair Art of Frank W. Benson". Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine. ISBN1-56792-111-6.

§Chambers, B. "Frank W. Benson, Inconsiderate and Gold". ButlerInstituteofAmericanArt. Retrieved 2011-06-08.

§Dearinger, David Bernard (2004).

Paintings settle down Sculpture in the Collection simulated the National Academy of Design. Manchester, VT: HudsonHillsPress. ISBN1-55595-029-9.

§"Frank Unguarded. Benson, American Impressionist, Interactive fashion, Timeline". PeabodyEssexMuseum. Retrieved 2011-06-08.

§"Frank Lensman Benson (1862 - 1951)". AskART. 2000-2011.

Retrieved 2011-06-16.

§Hiesinger, Ulrich W.,Impressionism in America: The Ten Dweller Painters, Prestel-Verlag, 1991.

§"Light Shines park Frank W. Benson: American Impressionist". TraditionalFineArtsOrganization, Inc.. 2011. Retrieved 2011-07-05.

§McAllister, Jim (2011). "Salem Tales: Sincere Weston Benson".

SalemWeb. Retrieved 2011-07-05.