Image size of this print is 22 X 28.

RED AND GOLD by Frank Weston Benson (American 1862-1951) Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.

BENSON, FRANK WESTON American painter, was born in Salem, Massachusetts, on the l4th of March 1862. He was a pupil of Boulanger and of Lefebvre in Paris; won many distinctions in American exhibitions, and a silver medal st the Paris Exhibition of 1900; and became a member of the Ten Americans, and of the National Academy of Design, New York. Besides portraits, he painted landscape and still life; and he was one of the decorators of the Congressional library, Washington, D.C.

From its beginnings in the work of James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Mary Cassatt, American Impressionism had explored a variety of themes and styles, from the broken brushwork and chromatic analyses of light pioneered by Claude Monet to the bravura strokes and psychological penetrations of John Singer Sargent. Benson's style, which had matured by 1898, combined the brushwork and color of Monet-a Boston favorite since the early 1890s-with his own characteristically American subjects.

Like most American Impressionists, Benson was conservative in his approach; his figures solidly occupy spaces and, though his surfaces sparkle with the effects of reflected light, they never dissolve into a coloristic haze. He deliberately chose subjects that, in one critic's words, celebrated a civilized "ideal of grace, of dignity, of elegance" ; his subjects also proclaim the defining traits of the modern American woman as he understood her: glowing with health, virtuously domestic without being stuffy, wrapped in a mantle of material privilege yet independent and inquisitive, direct in the expression of opinions yet self- controlled.

The young lady in Red and Gold exemplifies the type. In lesser hands, she might have ended up as but one more decoration in a highly decorative composition the tone of which is instantly proclaimed by the bold black and gold Japanese screen that forms the backdrop. Her white dress and bright red shawl thus immediately gain our attention, from which we then turn to the details: the black fan that she holds so elegantly above her head, its tassel falling alongside the cream-white flesh of her arm; the gold necklace laid out across the tablecloth, one end of which she casually grasps with her left hand. It is a rich tapestry of possessions, yet when we look into her classically pretty face, with its bright red lips, raven black hair and ruddy cheeks, she looks right back at us. Her frank yet somewhat wistful gaze speaks of a complex world of feelings which we are not asked so much to share as to appreciate.

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