Frank Weston Benson (American, 1862-1951). Children in the Woods, 1898. Oil on canvas. 40 x 40 inche...

Description

Frank Weston Benson (American, 1862-1951)
Children in the Woods, 1898
Oil on canvas
40 x 40 inches (101.6 x 101.6 cm)
Signed lower left: Frank W. Benson
Signed twice, titled, and inscribed on the stretcher: Children in the Woods / Frank Benson / F.W. Benson 12th St Botolph, Boston
PROVENANCE:
The artist;
Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1905 (as Children in the Forest);
Collection of Henry Eichbay, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1942;
Schweitzer Gallery, New York;
Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 1971;
Terry De Lapp Gallery, Los Angeles, California, circa 1978;
Coe-Kerr Gallery, New York;
Private collection, Los Angeles, California;
Ron Hall Gallery, Dallas;
Private collection, acquired from the above, 1990;
By descent to the present owners.

EXHIBITED:
Carnegie Art Galleries, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, "Third Annual Carnegie International Exhibition," November 3, 1898-January 1, 1899, no 4;
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "Sixty-Eighth Annual Exhibition," January 16-February 25, 1899, no. 38;
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, "Sixth Annual Exhibition of American Art in the Art Museum," May 20-July 10, 1899, no. 11., illustrated;
Durand-Ruel Gallery, New York, "The Ten American Painters," April 4-15, 1899;
St. Louis Exhibition and Music Hall Association, St. Louis, Missouri, "Sixteenth Annual Exhibition," 1899; p. 41, illustrated;
St. Botolph Club, Boston, Massachusetts, "Paintings by Frank W. Benson," January 11-29, 1900, no. 17;
Exposition Universelle, Paris, "Fine Art Exhibit, United States Commission," 1900, no. 28.
Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York, "An Exhibition of Portraits." May 1-November 2, 1901, no. 567;
Copley Society, Boston, Massachusetts, "Exhibition of a Loan Collection of Pictures of Fair
Children," 1901, no. 10;
The Union League of New York City, New York, "An Exhibition of Portraits" March 10-12, 1905;
Spanierman Gallery, New York, "Frank W. Benson, The Impressionist Years," May 11-June 11, 1988, no.1;
Amarillo Museum of Art, Amarillo, Texas, "1998 Achievements in American Art Exhibition," January 24-March 22, 1998;
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, 2012 (on loan).

LITERATURE:
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Sixty-Eighth Annual Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, p. 12;
Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio, Sixth Annual Exhibition of American Art in the Art Museum, exhibition catalogue, 1899, p. 5, no. 11, illustrated;
St. Louis Exhibition and Music Hall Association, St. Louis, Missouri, Sixteenth Annual Exhibition, 1899; p. 41, illustrated;
Spanierman Gallery, New York, Frank W. Benson, The Impressionist Years, 1988, pp. 19, 35, 40-1, 43, 48-9, no.1, illustrated;
Berry Hill Galleries, Inc., Frank W. Benson: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1989, pp. 47-9, illustrated;
Spanierman Gallery, Ten American Painters, exhibition catalogue, 1990, pp. 17, 83-4, illustrated.
F.A. Bedford, Frank W. Benson: American Impressionist, New York, 1994, p. 72;
F.A. Bedford and L. Buckley, The Art of Frank W. Benson: American Impressionist, Salem, Massachusetts, 1999, pp. 24-5, 62, illustrated;
F.A. Bedford, The Sporting Art of Frank W. Benson, Boston, Massachusetts, 2000, p. 72;
F.A. Bedford, Impressionist Summers: Frank W. Benson's North Haven, New York, 2012, pp. 17-8, illustrated.

We wish to thank Benson scholar Faith Andrews Bedford for her assistance cataloguing this work and preparing the following essay:

By the time Frank W. Benson painted Children in the Woods in 1898, he was already recognized as a gifted teacher, a sought-after portraitist, a painter of wide-ranging subjects, and the artist who would later earn the title of "America's Most Medaled Painter."

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1862, Benson showed exceptional artistic talent from an early age. Encouraged by his mother, Elisabeth, he was allowed to pursue formal training. She convinced her husband, George, to permit their eldest son to enroll at the newly established School of the Museum of Fine Arts in nearby Boston. Benson soon began commuting to the city by train each morning, immersing himself in the school's rigorous academic training and creative atmosphere.

At the Museum School, Benson was part of what would later be called the "banner class," celebrated for the notable success its members achieved. Among them was Edmund C. Tarbell, who became Benson's studio mate, lifelong friend, fellow instructor, and eventual co-director of the Museum School.

After three years of study in Boston, Benson sought to continue his artistic training in Europe. For his twenty-first birthday, his parents gave him $1,000 and told him to return home when the money ran out. In preparation for his journey, Benson and several classmates-including Joseph Lindon Smith, who would become his roommate in Paris-visited the Grand Foreign Exhibition at Boston's Mechanic's Hall. There, they encountered works by Monet, Pissarro, and Renoir. The exhibition, showcasing the radical new approaches of the French Impressionists, left a deep impression on the young artists, even if their formal training would initially follow more conservative academic lines.

In Paris, Benson and Lindon Smith enrolled at the prestigious Académie Julian. Founded by Rodolphe Julian, a former artist himself, the school was known for its openness to international students and its roster of esteemed instructors-including Gustave Boulanger, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Jules Lefebvre, and Tony Robert-Fleury-who critiqued students' figure studies twice weekly. Model's wages were included in their monthly fee, but art supplies were not. Julian was so influential that it was rumored he could sway judges at the coveted Paris Salon.

Between their two academic years in Paris, Benson and Smith spent the summer in the walled coastal town of Concarneau in Brittany. With affordable models, low rents, and a thriving artist colony, Concarneau attracted painters from across Europe and America. The popularity of the recently published novel Guenn: A Wave on the Breton Coast, which told the tragic story of a Breton model who falls in love with an American artist, drew tourists eager to experience the setting of the novel. Among the visitors were the Peirson family, close friends of the Bensons from Salem. During their stay, Benson painted a portrait of Ellen Peirson as a surprise for her mother. In a happier echo of Guenn, the artist fell in love with his model. According to Smith, the posing sessions "became longer than necessary."

As Benson's second year at the Académie Julian drew to a close, Paris buzzed with excitement: the completed Statue of Liberty was being prepared for shipment to the United States. Smith wrote home about a grand parade they witnessed-possibly celebrating the statue's imminent departure. A small painting Benson brought back from Paris, long known in the family as Papa's Paris Parade, hints at this event with the inclusion of an American flag.

Despite no record in Smith's letters of visits to exhibitions of Manet, Degas, or Sisley-whose works were not formally shown during their time in Paris-Papa's Paris Parade reveals Benson's growing awareness of Impressionist techniques. Though he never directly cited the movement, this painting demonstrates a clear affinity: high-keyed colors applied in broken brushstrokes, the dissolution of forms in bright light, and a textured surface that suggests atmosphere through reflected light. It is a joyful fragment of life captured in motion.

The Statue of Liberty departed for America in May 1885, and Benson's ship home was not far behind. Upon returning, he established a studio on Salem's Chestnut Street and immediately began painting portraits. He exhibited both his Paris work and new canvases in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. That December, he and Ellen announced their engagement; they married three years later. Shortly afterward their wedding, Benson and Tarbell were both appointed instructors at their alma mater, the Boston Museum School.

The years between Benson's appointment and the creation of Children in the Woods were intensely productive. and when not teaching, Benson was exhibiting widely across the U.S. and Europe, winning numerous awards, and painting both portraits and studio pieces. He and Ellen had three children - Eleanor, George and Elisabeth in four years. Sylvia was born in 1898, a few months before Children in the Woods was painted.

During this period, Tarbell began painting en plein air and developing a distinct personal approach to Impressionism. In contrast, Benson-though close friends with Tarbell and equally respected as a teacher-remained primarily a studio painter, working in a refined, academic style that retained much of what he had learned at the Académie Julian.

That began to change when Benson and his family started spending summers at Dublin Lake, New Hampshire. With time to paint outdoors, Benson began using his children as "home-grown models," as he called them. In their second summer in Dublin, he painted Ellen in a classical pose, with trees replacing Grecian columns. The resulting painting, Summer (1890) (fig. 1), exemplifies a piece of advice he later gave his daughter Eleanor when she took up painting: "Paint nothing but the effects of light."

In the summer of 1892, the Tarbells joined the Bensons in Dublin. However, the following year they found a house in Newcastle, New Hampshire, on the banks of the Piscataqua River and invited the Bensons for a month's visit. Perhaps during the following winter at the Museum School, the two discussed Newcastle and the opportunities for painting there. Whatever the inspiration, in 1894, Benson and Tarbell began a summer art school on the Newcastle town dock that continued for at least five years.

By 1898, Benson's two eldest children, Eleanor and George, were old enough to hold still for brief periods of times. In Children in the Woods, Benson dressed Eleanor in one of the white dresses he favored for his models, drawn to the challenge of rendering the many tones of white and its reflective qualities. George, in a blue sailor suit, joins his sister in a rare moment of stillness among the forested surroundings of Newcastle.

Though this was only the second time Benson had painted his children, Children in the Woods marks a turning point in his artistic evolution. For the first time, he fully embraced Impressionist elements: vibrant complementary colors, broken brushwork, and a lively surface animated by dashes of bright green and white. The result is a bold, luminous composition that captures both light and atmosphere with freshness and immediacy.

It is no surprise that Benson chose Children in the Woods for his first solo exhibition, held at Boston's St. Botolph Club. This beautiful canvas announced a new artistic direction while affirming the painter's enduring skill.


Estimate: $200,000 - $300,000.

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