Frank W. Benson: School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

"Untitled (Elizabeth)," an etching
by Frank W. Benson

"Although a career as an artist was obviously not what Frank W.  Benson's businessman father would have chosen for him, his mother encouraged his interest. She was, as she said, a 'Sunday painter' and had created a small studio for herself in an attic room. It took several years for George Benson to relent.

In 1881, the elder Benson, thinking art might be a passing fancy, finally agreed to let his son attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Every morning they traveled together by train and walked to Copley Square where the Museum of Fine Arts had opened its Gothic-style building in 1876. Although not originally built to house an art school, by the time Benson entered in 1881, the building's attic and basement rooms had been full of students for four years.

Art historians would later call Benson's class the 'banner class' of the school. A number of his classmates - men such as Edmund Tarbell and Robert Reid, John Redmond and Philip Little - all later made names for themselves in the art world. Under the tutelage of Otto Grundman and Frederick Crowninshield, Benson moved from drawing from plaster casts of antique sculptures to drawing live models. In his second year, he began copying old masters in oil and studying anatomy.

He obviously excelled in his studies, for during his second year of art school, he was hired, together with his friend, John Redmond, by the Salem Evening Drawing Classes to teach their students. What is also striking is that, even as a young man, Benson strongly believed in fairness and loyalty. In his last year at the Museum School, he wrote to Dan Henderson, 'I haven't got the drawing school this winter as the committee had serious objections to Redmond, and I wouldn't serve without him.' Such a comment is typical of Benson, whose strong Yankee principles caused him to take firm stands for causes in which he strongly believed. Several times he risked his own interests or the security of a position to stand by someone he felt had been wronged."

To be continued

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