Frank Weston Benson (1862-1951)

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Frank Benson was a painter of impressionist* seascapes and landscapes, often with figures posed by his wife and children, and also numerous hunting scenes. He spent most of his life in the seaport town of Salem and loved trekking through the countryside for his subject matter, especially wildlife. He is credited with making the American sporting print a distinct art form and for being 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 1883 in Paris with Gustave Boulanger and Jules Lefebvre at the Academie Julian* during the French Impressionism movement. By the early 1900s, he had a very successful career and was a member of the Ten American Painters*