Frank Weston Benson Prints and Multiples

Frank Weston Benson Woodcock, 1930 Signed lower right Etching on paper Image 8 3/4 x 7 inches Edition of 150 Born in Salem, Massachusetts, a descendant of a long line of sea captains, Benson first studied art at Boston’s Museum School where he became editor of the student magazine. In 1883, Benson enrolled at the Académie Julian in Paris where artists such as Bouguereau, Lefebvre, Constant, Doucet and Boulanger taught students from all over Europe and America. It was Boulanger who gave Benson his highest commendation. “Young man,” he said, “Your career is in your hands . . . you will do very well.” Benson’s parents gave him a present of one thousand dollars a twenty-first birthday and told him to return home when it ran out. The money lasted long enough to provide Benson with two years of schooling in Paris, a summer at the seaside village of Concarneau in Brittany and travel in England. Upon returning to America, Benson opened a studio on Salem’s Chestnut Street and began painting portraits of family and friends. An oil of his wife, Ellen Perry Peirson, dressed in her wedding gown is representative of this period. It demonstrates not only the academic techniques he learned at the Academie Julian but also his own growing emphasis on the effects of light. And yet, despite all the technical mastery displayed in the work, the painting exudes the warmth that existed between model and artist. More than a likeness, it is a study in serenity. Perhaps it was of a work such as this that Benson was thinking when he said, “The more a painter knows about his subject, the more he studies and understands it, the more the true nature of it is perceived by whoever looks at it, even though it is extremely subtle and not easy to see or understand. A painter must search deeply into the aspects of a subject, must know and understand it thoroughly before he can represent it well.” Following a brief stint as an instructor at the Portland, Maine, Society of Art, Benson was appointed as instructor of antique drawing at the Museum School in Boston in the spring of l889. Benson’s long association with the school was particularly fruitful. Under the leadership of Edmund Tarbell and Benson the Museum School became a national and internationally recognized institution. The students won numerous prizes, enrollment tripled, a new school building was erected and visiting delegations from other schools sought the secret of their success. Benson cherished his role as teacher and was held in high esteem by his students, many of whom called him “Cher Maitre.” Reminiscing about his long career with the school Benson once said, “I may have taught many students, but it was I who learned the most.” In 1890, Benson won the Hallgarten Prize at the National Academy in New York. It was the first of a long series of awards, that earning for him the sobriquet “America’s Most Medalled Painter.” In the early years of his career, Benson’s studio works were mostly portraits or paintings of figures set in richly appointed interiors. Young women in white stretch their hands out towards the glow of an unseen fire; girls converse on an antique settee in a room full of objets d’arts; his first daughter, Eleanor, poses with her cat. Works of this sort, together with a steady influx of portrait commissions, earned Benson both renown and financial rewards, yet it was in his outdoor works that gave Benson his greatest pleasure. In the latter half of the 1890s, Benson summered in Newcastle, on New Hampshire’s short stretch of seacoast. It was here, in 1899, that Benson made his first foray into impressionism with Children in the Woods and The Sisters, the latter a sun-dappled study of his two youngest daughters, Sylvia and Elisabeth. This painting was one of the first works that Benson hung at an exhibition with nine friends. The resignation of these ten illustrious artists rocked the American art establishment but, the catalogue for their first exhibition was titled, simply, “Ten American Painters.” When, in 1898, the three Bostonians and seven New Yorkers began to exhibit their best work in exquisitely arranged small shows, the group (dubbed by newspapers, “The Ten” ) quickly became known as the American Impressionists, a bow to the style of their French predecessors. The Ten’s annual shows soon became an eagerly awaited part of the annual exhibition calendar and were always well reviewed. Held annually in New York City, the group’s yearly exhibitions usually traveled to Boston and were occasionally seen in other cities. Benson’s association with other members of the group such as Childe Hassam, Thomas Dewing, William Merrit Chase and J. Alden Weir, only reinforced his growing emphasis on the tenets of Impressionism. As he later said to his daughter Eleanor, “I follow the light, where it comes from, where it goes.” The principles of Impressionism began to dominate Benson’s work by 1901, the year that the Bensons first summered on the island of North Haven in Maine’s Penobscot Bay. His summer home “Wooster Farm,” which they rented and finally bought in 1906, became the setting for some of Benson’s best known work and there, it seemed, he found endless inspiration. Benson’s sparkling plein-air paintings of his children–Eleanor, George, Elisabeth and Sylvia–capture the very essence of summer and have been widely reproduced: In The Hilltop, George and Eleanor watch the sailboat races from the headland near their house. As a boy, Benson dreamed of being an ornithological illustrator. In mid-life, he returned to the wildfowl and sporting subjects that had remained his lifelong passion. Using etching and lithography, watercolor, oil and wash, Benson portrayed the birds observed since childhood and captured scenes of his hunting and fishing expeditions. Together with his two brothers-in-law, Benson bought a small hunting retreat on a hill overlooking Cape Cod’s Nauset Marsh. Here, in the late 1890s, he began experimenting with black and white wash drawings. These paintings became so popular that Benson was not able to keep up with the demand. He turned to an art publishing company to have several made into it intaglio prints; twelve wash drawings are known to have been reproduced in this manner. At least two of them were given as gifts to associate members of the Boston Guild of artists, of which Benson was a founding member. Benson was also an avid fisherman and his salmon fishing expeditions to Canada’s Gaspé Peninsula where one of the high points of his summer. There, in 1921, he began the first in a series of watercolors that would eventually over 500 works. Benson’s watercolors conveyed the joy and beauty of a sportsman’s life whether in a painting of a hunter setting out decoys, a flock of ducks coming in for a landing or a grouse flushed from cover. The critics favorably compared Benson’s watercolors to those of Homer. “The love of the almost primitive wilderness which appears in many of Homer’s landscapes and the swift, sure touch with which he suggests rather than describes–these also characterize Benson’s work,” one critic wrote. “The solitude of the northern woods is very much like Homer’s.” Like the wash drawings before them, Benson’s watercolors proved...

Ducks on Lake Frank Weston Benson, American (1862–1951) Date: 1923 Etching on thin wove paper, signed in pencil and dated in the plate Image Size: 11 x 14 inches Size: 14 x 16.5 in. ...

Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951) "Teal" 1925 (Paff 243) Etching Ed. 150 Signed Lower Left Image Size: approx 8 x 10 inches Framed Size: approx 14.5 x 16 inches Born in Salem, Massac...

Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951) "The Alarm" 1917 Etching Ed. 80 Signed Lower Right Image Size: approx 8 x 10 inches Framed Size: approx 14.5 x 16 inches Born in Salem, Massachusett...

Two Canoes 1927. Etching. Paff catalog 266 state iii. 5 7/8 x 7 3/4 (sheet 9 x 11 1/4). Edition 150. An extremely rich impression with plate tone, printed on cream laid paper on the full sheet with deckle edges. Provenance: the artist's family. Signed in pencil. Housed in a 16 x 20-inch archival mat, suitable for framing. Frank W. Benson was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts. He spent a great deal of time in the salt marshes that surrounded this costal town studying, as well as hunting, various waterfowl. He painted his first oil of shore birds at the age of twelve. At nineteen he attended the School of Drawing and Painting of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While attending the school he produced his first etching, "Salem Harbor." In 1883 he traveled to Paris to study at the Academie Julie and for the next thirty years devoted his artistic talent to painting and watercolor. In 1912 at the age of fifty he again began to produce prints. At first, these prints were portraits, then of waterfowl and nature oriented subjects, totaling over 355 various prints before his death in 1951. Today, Benson is considered the founder of the school of American sporting art...

On the Kedgwick 1923. Etching. Paff 222. 7 3/4 x 11 3/4 (sheet 11 1/2 x 15 9/16). Edition 150. Illustrated: Fine Prints of the Year, 1923. A rich impression in excellent condition, printed on cream laid paper on the full sheet with deckle edges. Signed in pencil. Housed in a 16 x 20- inch archival mat, suitable for your choice of frame. In the late summer of 1894, a friend invited Benson to go to New Brunswick, Canada, to fish for salmon. The artist discovered he loved the sport as well as camping out in the wilderness and thereafter made annual trips to Canada for almost 40 years. The Kedgwick River in New Brunswick was his favorite river for salmon fishing. Frank W. Benson was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts. He sepnt a great deal of time in the salt marshes that surrounded this costal town studying, as well as hunting, various waterfowl. He painted his first oil of shore birds at the age of twelve. At nineteen he attended the School of Drawing and Painting of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While attending the school he produced his first etching, "Salem Harbor." In 1883 he traveled to Paris to study at the Academie Julie and for the next thirty years devoted his artistic talent to painting and watercolor. In 1912 at the age of fifty he again began to produce prints. At first, these prints were portraits, then of waterfowl and nature oriented subjects, totaling over 355 various prints before his death in 1951. Today, Benson is considered the founder of the school of American sporting art...

Two Canoes 1927. Etching. Paff 266.i/iii 5 7/8 x 7 3/4 (sheet 9 5/8 x 10 3/4). Trial proof A-5, prior to the edition 150. An extremely rich impression of a fascinating window into the way the artist developed the image. Housed in a 16 x 20-inch archival mat, suitable for your choice of frame. Frank W. Benson was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts. He sepnt a great deal of time in the salt marshes that surrounded this costal town studying, as well as hunting, various waterfowl. He painted his first oil of shore birds at the age of twelve. At nineteen he attended the School of Drawing and Painting of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While attending the school he produced his first etching, "Salem Harbor." In 1883 he traveled to Paris to study at the Academie Julie and for the next thirty years devoted his artistic talent to painting and watercolor. In 1912 at the age of fifty he again began to produce prints. At first, these prints were portraits, then of waterfowl and nature oriented subjects, totaling over 355 various prints before his death in 1951. Today, Benson is considered the founder of the school of American sporting art...

Signed in pencil. Etching and aquatint, 1931. Edition 150. Image size 9 13/16 x 8" (25.1 x 20.4 cm). Paff #316. Very good condition.

Signed and numbered "10" in pencil. A very nice and rich impression. Etching, 1915. Edition 50. Image size 7 3/4 x 11 7/8" (19.7 x 30.2 cm). Good condi...

Geese. 1917. Drypoint. Paff 124. 10 x 15 1/2 (sheet 13 3/16 x 17 3/4). Trial proof, before the edition of 79 proofs in 4 states. Illustrated: Salaman, Modern Masters of Etching: Fran...

Mallards at Evening 1927. Drypoint. Paff 271. 13 7/8 x 11 7/8 (sheet 15 7/8 C 13 4/5). Edition 112. An extremely rich impression with drypoint burr, printed on the full sheet of crea...