Image size of this print is 28 x 24 with ample margins

FRANK WESTON BENSON (American 1862-1951) Detroit Institute of Art, MI

Frank Weston Benson's masterpiece paintings of American society at the turn of the century are some of America's most popular works of art. 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 Academie 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 where his painting, After the Storm hung at the Royal Academy. 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.