Frank W. Benson 1862-1951

Faith Andrews Bedford writes, "Frank W. Benson was born into a sea faring family in one of America’s most famous port cities  – Salem, Massachusetts.  The harbors and coves near his childhood town, his summer home on Maine’s Penobscot Bay, and the marshes of his many hunting spots became the backdrop for dozens of Benson’s major works. But his first marine paintings, such as Moonlight, were not created in America. They were created in France.

"In 1883, Benson, in the company of his close friend, Joseph Lindon Smith, boarded a steamer for Paris to study art. Searching for a summer place in which to paint after their first year at the Académie Julian, they happened upon the fishing village of Concarneau, on the coast of Brittany. The appeal of the seaside setting was immediate. The two friends took rooms at the Grand Hotel, rented a studio and looked forward to associating with some of the renowned artists who summered there as such as Alexander and Birge Harrison, Arthur Hoeber and Clifford Grayson. "There are many very strong painters at Concarneau,” Lindon Smith wrote home to his parents. “Harrison, one of the strongest American landscapists . .  is there and is a fine fellow, helping anyone who asks him.”[1]

"In the early 1880s, the town had begun to attract numerous artists – both European and American - who brought their families and attracted disciples. But,  in 1892, when an extremely popular novel, Guenn, was written about a local girl who became an artist’s model, the hotels quickly filled with American tourists, on “The Grand Tour,” looking for the real “Guenn,” her lover and the novel’s scenes and characters.

"The fact that the artists’ paintings of pretty village girls in their quaint Breton costumes sold quickly to the summer tourists was not lost on Benson and Lindon Smith. Both immediately began canvases of  comely young women looking out to sea.  Benson’s  paintings were as much about the effects of light upon the water as they were about his models. While his Concarneau oil, After the Storm, features two girls awaiting a fisherman’s return, Benson’s masterful depiction of storm-tossed waves, pale sunlight touching the crests, fills more than half the canvas. In Afternoon Off Concarneau. a study of boats upon the water, the boats are stiff but the water is wonderfully conveyed. Lindon Smith obviously appreciated his friend’s work. He wrote home that “(Frank) is at home painting the water as he has painted it a good deal before.”[2]  Lindon Smith also noted that the older artists had taken a real interest in their work and that Alexander Harrison had critiqued a number of their paintings.

"Benson undoubtedly admired the numerous seascapes that Harrison was painting. The two friends made frequent visits to the various established artists’ studios. As Ellen Peirson, who would later become Benson’s wife, wrote in her diary while staying in Concarneau with her mother and sister, "We visited Mr. Grayson’s studio [and] saw a photo of his Salon picture of this year called Ahoy.  It is now creating a sensation in Chicago together with Mr. Harrison’s marine.”[3]  That painting could well have been Harrison’s celebrated work entitled "Le Crepuscule,” which won a prize at  the American Art Association the following year.

"Alexander Harrison was as drawn to the sea as Benson was. He had been a topographical draftsman for the United States Coastal Survey for six years before becoming an artist and is best known for his stunning marine works.  His wide, narrow canvases feature dramatic waves rolling onto the shore. The brilliant light of the sun or the silvery shimmer of a moon highlights vast stretches of sea.  That many of his works feature titles such as Twilight Moon, La Mer, Curling Breakers, Moonlight on the Waters, underscores Harrison’s fascination with the effects of light upon water.

"Benson clearly admired Harrison’s work; the older artist’s influence on his seascapes is unmistakable.  Benson’s Moonlight nearly duplicates the dimensions of Harrison’s marine canvases and his emphasis on the shimmering effect of moonlight echoes that of his mentor. One can almost imagine the two artists sitting side my side painting the same subject, each in his own manner, and Benson hoping that someday his marine might create a “sensation” too.  A strong argument can be made that Moonlight was begun at Concarneau and quite possibly finished in Benson’s Paris studio the following winter.  It was quite likely one of the six or seven canvases that Benson crated up and took with him on his voyage home in the summer of 1885. He submitted these works to numerous art exhibitions upon his return to America.

"Harrison's Crepuscule and his equally famous, The Wave, may well have inspired Benson to paint at least two more early examples of this motif. In 1886, Benson finished his own Wave. He inscribed it to Joseph Lindon Smith and gave it to his old friend. Its wide, narrow dimensions and subject matter are very similar to Moonlight. In 1891, Benson created a third painting of the shimmering trail of the moon on waves.  Moonlight on the Sea (Moonlight on the Waters) was first exhibited at Benson’s earliest private exhibition held at Chase’s Gallery in Boston.

"Given the date of Moonlight, its early signature and New York location, it is very likely that it is the painting of the same title that was Benson’s first submission to the National Academy of Design the year following his return to America. Upon seeing Moonlight hanging at the Academy exhibition, Arthur Hoeber, a well-known landscapist and  friend from Benson’s summer in Concarneau, wrote him words of praise. A few weeks later, probably acting as a member of the show’s managing board, Hoeber said,” I wrote you on varnishing day and now have the pleasure of adding that your "Moonlight" is sold.  Congratulations  ‑ on your good fortune.” [4]

"A ‘Moonlight’ scintillated over a jiggling, undulating harbor, is a capital performance of Frank W. Benson's,” one newspaper critic wrote. “The sense of unresting waters  is prettily conveyed without leaving an impression of a noisy or busy picture.   What with the snap given by a dark little foreground in the right hand corner and some nice nuances in a nearly flat sky, the artist has certainly made a moonlight that has extra sentimental value." [5]

"Benson slipped Arthur Hoeber’s note into an envelope on which he proudly wrote, "My first sale in New York.[6]”  It was the first of  many New York successes. And the type of praise that Moonlight received in the press would follow him throughout his long career."

1] Joseph Lindon Smith to his mother. Concarneau, 1 June  l884.  Archives of American Art.   Henceforth abbreviated as JLS.
[2]  JLS ‑ Concarneau, 22 July  l884.
[3]  Diary of Ellen Perry Peirson. Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem Massachusetts.  Concarneau, 20 September l884.[4] Arthur Hoeber  to  Frank W. Benson. 1886. Written from New York City. Frank W. Benson’s artist’s scrapbook. The Frank W. Benson Papers, Peabody-Essex Museum.
[5] Unsourced, undated newspaper clipping. Photocopied and in  the Benson file. Museum of Fine Arts Boston.  
[6] Benson sold the painting for $100 – a handsome price for the day. The Frank W. Benson Papers, Peabody-Essex Museum.

We are grateful to Faith Andrews Bedford, author of the biography Frank W. Benson: American Impressionist, New York, 1994 and The Sporting Art of Frank Benson, Jaffrey, New Hampshire, 2000, for her assistance in cataloguing this lot.