Sunlit summers spent along the rocky coast of Maine with his family inspired the acclaimed
series of paintings for which Frank Weston Benson is best remembered. Benson's paintings of
his daughters enjoying the fleeting days of a turn of the century summer holiday provided the
artist the opportunity to explore the subtle nuances of light, a favored subject of the
Impressionist movement.
Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Benson attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts
in Boston from 1880 to 1883. In 1883, the artist traveled to Paris with childhood friend and
fellow artist Edmund C. Tarbell where both men continued their studies at the Acad‚mie
Julian. Returning to the United States, Benson taught at the Portland School of Art and later
at the Museum School in Boston with Tarbell.
Benson was accomplished in a variety of media including watercolor, pastel, aquatint
and engraving and was a founding member of "The Ten," a group of ten well known American
Impressionist painters from New York and Boston who exhibited together for nearly twenty
years. Like his French counterparts, Benson frequently painted outdoors to capture the
dynamic character of light. In the late 1890s the artist accepted a prestigious commission to
work on the decoration of the Library of Congress and completed murals of Fours Seasons and
Three Graces for the project. The Impressionist style, pioneered by Monet in France, enjoyed
tremendous popularity with the American public and as a result, Benson attained a large
measure of success as an artist during his lifetime.
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