Frank W. Benson

Frank W. Benson (1862-1951) was born in Salem, Massachusetts. He was known as a painter of impressionist seascapes and landscapes, often with figures modeled by his wife and children. He was also known for paintings of numerous hunting scenes - he is credited with making the American sporting print a distinct art from. He spent most of his life in the seaport town of Salem and loved trekking through the countryside for his often wildlife subject matter. He is one of the outstanding 20th-century wildlife printmakers.He was a teacher in Portland, Maine at the Society of Art and in Boston at The Museum of Fine Arts, where he and his good friend Edmund Tarbell established it as a top-notch institution. He studied art in Boston at the Museum School of Fine Arts, and in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre at the Academie Julian during the French Impressionism movement in 1883. By the early 1900s, he had a very successful career and was a member of the Ten American Painters- a prestigious group of early impressionists.