Frank W. Benson: Love of Nature

"Bound Home," 1918 by Frank W. Benson

"When Frank Weston Benson was born in Salem, Massachusetts, Essex County was a hunter's paradise. The marshes were a bicycle trip away, the local train conveniently stopped at rich fishing spots, and upland game was plentiful within a half a day's carriage ride. The fields and marshes, the inlets and brooks that lent their names to many of Benson's later paintings were his for the tramping. His father, George Wiggins Benson, a cotton broker in Boston, gave him his first shotgun and taught him to hunt the wildfowl and shorebirds that teemed along the North Shore. His mother, a descendant of some of Salem's founding families, was an amateur painter.

Benson and his brothers and sisters inherited their grandfather's love of the sea. They were all given their own small sailboat at the age of twelve. The margins of Benson's childhood journals are filled with tiny drawings of boats tacking smartly or running before the wind, sails filled, flags flying. Pictures of sailboats filled his art school sketchbooks. The children reveled in sailboat racing: ribbons and trophies crowded their mantelpiece.

In his little boat, Benson explored the many coves and inlets, islands, and marshes that surrounded Salem. Family journals indicate that the children were encouraged to be independent and adventuresome. Each of them had a toolbox and a weekly allowance to be spent on 'things of an educational or experimental nature.' Benson's younger brothers experimented with photography in an attic darkroom and later photographed their brother at his easel.

It is only fitting that Benson's first known works in oil were of birds: a rail and a snipe hanging on a barn door. As a child he had been fascinated by birds and had decided at an early age that he wanted to be an ornithological illustrator. He haunted the halls of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and pored through the thick volumes in its library. He admired the work of Audubon, hoping to follow in his footsteps." 

 To be continued

(Excerpts from "The Sporting Art of Frank W. Benson" by Faith Andrews Bedford.)