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The brilliant color, dazzling sunlight and rapid brushwork are typical elements of the Impressionist style.

The figure's gesture, hand raised against the glare, refers to the light that is the true subject of the painting.

The model is the artist's daughter, Eleanor.

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Frank Benson was a key figure in the vital artistic arena of early 20th-century Boston, a member of a school of painters named for their city. He painted an idealized world that was never ugly or harsh, focusing instead on the lifestyle of genteel New Englanders. His outdoor images, especially those of vibrant young women, were painted in the full spectrum of colors, in bright sunshine. The model in Sunlight is the artist's daughter Eleanor, who, like her mother and sisters, often posed for Benson's outdoor works. Enveloped in sunshine, Eleanor's white dress is crisscrossed with the blue shadows typical of orthodox Impressionism. Even her gesture-left hand raised against the glare-refers to the light that is the painting's true subject.

Benson studied at the Boston Museum School and the Académie Julian, eventually embracing many of the techniques and goals of French Impressionism. Benson was accomplished in a variety of media, including watercolor, pastel, aquatint, and engraving. In the 1890s, the artist accepted a commission to work on the decoration of the Library of Congress and completed murals of the four seasons and Three Graces for the project.

[Benson] sets before us visions of the free life of the open air . . . in a landscape drenched in sweet sunlight.
-Critic William Howe Downes, 1911

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Frank Weston Benson

Sunlight, 1909

32 x 20 in.

John Herron Fund

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Frank Benson was a key figure in the artistic world of 20th-century Boston and a member of the school of painters named for the city. He painted an idealized world that was never ugly or harsh, focusing instead on the lifestyle of genteel New Englanders. His outdoor images, especially those of vibrant young women, were painted in the full spectrum of colors, in bright sunshine. Benson studied at the Boston Museum School and the Académie Julian in Paris, eventually embracing many of the techniques and goals of French Impressionism. Benson was accomplished in a variety of media, including watercolor, pastel, aquatint and engraving. He became Boston’s most popular artist and played a leading role in the local Impressionist school. Benson was a member of The Ten, a group that included America’s most important Impressionist painters. In the 1890s, the artist accepted a commission to work on the decoration of the Library of Congress and completed murals of the four seasons and the three graces for the project.

Sunlight shows the artist’s daughter Eleanor looking across the Penobscot Bay in Maine, a pose that Benson incorporated in several compositions during the early 1900s, when he fully adopted the Impressionist style.  Benson most likely referred to a photograph of Eleanor as a guide for the figure and probably sketched in the open air to capture the essence of the sparkling light. The brilliant color, dazzling sunlight and rapid brushwork are typical elements of the Impressionist style. The figure’s gesture, hand raised against the glare, refers to the light that is the true subject of the painting.

Reference

Faith Andrews Bedford. Frank W. Benson: American Impressionist. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 2002. ISBN-13: 978-0847816095

John Wilmerding. Frank W. Benson: The Impressionist Years. New York: Spanierman Gallery, 1988. ISBN-13: 978-0945936008