Traveling to History: Eighteen
FRANK BENSON’S SALEM WORLD
By James F. Lee
Self-portrait of Frank Benson, 1898. Collection of National Academy of Design. (Source: The Athenaeum). {{PD-US}}
Artist Frank Benson will forever be associated with Maine summers and the delightful Impressionist paintings he created there in the early 20th century. These paintings, usually of his children, depict sparkling sunlight radiating from clouds and the sea. They made him famous. His oils, etchings, and watercolors were in great demand throughout his lifetime.
Benson was born in Salem, Massachusetts in 1862, and except for two years studying in Paris, lived there for his entire life, married there, raised his family there, and was buried there. He started his career as an artist in Salem, but most of his working life was in Boston, where he taught at the Museum of Fine Arts School, and where he kept art studios for many years.
But in the evening, he would return home to his house across from Salem Common, and later to his Chestnut Street house.
Today, he is largely forgotten in Salem. I know – I was born and raised there, and never heard of him until well into my adulthood and long removed from Salem.
Benson’s Salem world was a small one geographically, easily walkable today, and while many of the structures associated with him are still standing, most are private residences. But still, it’s a pleasant walk along tree-lined streets, past stately homes, and a chance to get away from witch-kitch.
46 Washington Square South. Frank Benson lived much of his life at this house on Salem Common. (Photo by Patti Kelleher, City of Salem, Department of Planning & Community Development, 2017).
Benson was a third-generation Salemite born into a prosperous family at 46 Washington Square South, a French Empire house next to Phillips Grammar School. His father was a Boston businessman and his grandfather a sea captain. In this three-story 1870 home, Benson grew up with his five siblings. It was a privileged upbringing with private tutors, servants, and summers at Peach’s Point in Marblehead. In his time, artifacts from his grandfather’s voyages filled the house, a curved staircase led to the second floor containing six bedrooms, and upstairs was a billiard room and servants’ quarters. His mother kept a lovely garden out back.
Salem people will recognize this Washington Square house as the former O’Donnell Funeral Home, with its mansard roof and second story bay over a recessed front door, for years a landmark on the Common. Today, it has been divided into multiple residences as has much of historic Salem. The Phillips School, by the way, from which I graduated in 1966, was used as a background in the film Hocus Pocus, and is a pilgrimage stop for fans of that movie.
Salem Common was Benson’s playground growing up, where he and his siblings could run among the trees and grassy spaces, as it has been for countless Salem kids over the years, myself included. Many of the houses around the Common were built during Salem’s heyday as a seaport.
While a student at the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston, and still living at No. 46, Benson produced his first etching, “Salem Harbor” (1882), as the frontispiece for the student art magazine. Benson knew Salem Harbor well, fishing and sailing there as a child. This scene shows a working harbor, several sailboats and rowboats and a floating dock; gulls soar overhead.
Frank Benson’s etching “Salem Harbor” (1882) from the collection of the Boston Public Library. Benson was about 20 and living at 46 Washington Square South when he created this as the frontispiece for a student art magazine at the Museum of Fine Arts school. https://ark.digitalcommonwealth.org/ark:/50959/1v53kb83f
After returning from his studies in Paris, Benson opened his first art studio in 1885 with local artist Phillip Little, on the top floor of the rowhouse at 2-4 Chestnut Street. From Benson’s house you can walk west on Essex Street through Salem’s downtown, crossing the intersection at Washington Street, and then continuing to North Street. At North, turn left. Chestnut is the first right.
Built in the 1820s, this three-story brick building is notable by its twin arched front entrances. Salem’s City Directory for 1886 shows Miss Helen A. Brooks, music teacher, and Miss Mary H. Stone’s private school occupying No. 2 in addition to Benson and Little.
“My Sister” (1885). Benson’s oil portrait of his sister Betty was created at his studio at 2 Chestnut Street. (Photo by Stella van Mever My Sister, 1885 - Frank W. Benson - WikiArt.org) {{PD-US}}
One notable work he created there was “Portrait of My Sister” (1885), an oil painting in the Realistic style, which hints at his future command of light. His sister Betty’s left side and face are partially obscured in shadow, while her right side is flooded in light so that we can see the skin on her arm clearly through the gauzy material of her dress.
By 1888, Benson moved his studio to Boston, while Little remained in Salem.
That same year Benson married Ellen Peirson, daughter of Edward Peirson, a prominent Salem physician. The Peirson house, an early example of the Italianate style in Salem, still stands, at 13 Barton Square, an L-shaped street that bends between Essex and Washington Streets. Today, the house, with an impressively bracketed gable end, seems forlorn hidden among the apartments, commercial buildings, and parking lots of downtown Salem.
13 Barton Square. This was the home of Ellen Peirson, whom Benson would later marry. This house was an early example of the Italianate style in Salem. Benson painted a portrait of Ellen, “In Summer” (1887) in the back yard here. (Photo courtesy of City of Salem, Department of Planning & Community Development).
One of Benson’s early outdoor (plein air) oil paintings, “In Summer” (1887), was of Ellen sitting in her backyard. She poses in a white dress, sitting with her arm draped over a chair; sunlight seems to halo her hair, and in the background is the green lawn and a row of trees. Benson often played tennis in that very backyard.
“In Summer” (1887). Benson painted this portrait of his future wife Ellen Peirson in the garden of her family home at 13 Barton Square. (Photo by xennex In Summer, 1887 - Frank W. Benson - WikiArt.org) {{PD-US}}
Benson and Ellen were married at the Unitarian Church (First Church) on Essex Street, a five-minute walk from the Peirson home. Built in 1836 in the English Gothic style, this magnificent stone structure has a central bell tower with large, pointed arch windows. Their daughter, Eleanor, would also marry here 25 years later.
The newlyweds lived on Lafayette Steet.
Sometime between 1891 and 1893 they moved back to the 46 Washington Square South house and raised their family there, three girls and a boy. Benson’s father moved three doors down to No. 36.
The Unitarian Church on Essex Street in Salem. Frank Benson and Ellen Peirson married here on October 18, 1888. (Photo by Fletcher6 CC BY-SA 3.0 Creative Commons Legal Code
A circa-1895 photograph of the interior of No. 46 in Images of America Salem Massachusetts shows a cluttered Victorian living room with a book-strewn table, armchairs, and bric-a-brac on the mantle. Above the mantle is a portrait of what looks like a mother and child.
It was at about this time Benson received a commission to paint seven murals at the Library of Congress (“The Three Graces” and “The Four Seasons”) still on view there.
In 1915, his eldest daughter Eleanor moved to 88 Washington Square East with her husband, Ralph Lawson. Benson must have been overjoyed to have grandchildren living so close by. Eleanor, a painter in her own right, was frequently the subject of her father’s works, especially those painted during summer retreats on North Haven Island, Maine, and Benson continued the tradition with his grandchildren. For example, in the oil painting “Two Boys” (1926) Eleanor’s sons, Benny and Ralph, Jr., pose on a hillside in Maine with their dog at their side as they stare wistfully toward the sea. Above them the sky is a brilliant blue with rising white clouds. The painting today is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The house at No. 88 no longer exists. It was behind Dr. Hardy Phippen’s house at 84, reachable, I presume, by a right of way between 84 and 92. If you stand in front of No. 46 today and look slightly to your right, the Phippen House is plainly visible, a white Colonial Revival, which ironically is the new home of O’Donnell Funeral Home. Salem City Directories show Eleanor and her family living at No. 88 until at least 1937.
14 Chestnut Street. Frank Benson purchased this stately Greek Revival house on Chestnut Street in October 1924. He lived there the rest of his life. Photo by Melystu CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 Creative Commons Legal Code
In October 1924, Benson purchased 14 Chestnut Street, a lovely wooden Greek Revival home built in the 1830s, just a block up from his old art studio at No. 2. It is a stately house on a stately street. Four Ionic pilasters line the street-side’s imposing façade, with an interesting semi-circular louvered arch and window in the pediment. An entrance with Ionic columns is in the east-facing ell.
A reason he may have moved to Chestnut Steet was that the Common neighborhood, especially, Washington Square South, was changing. In June 1924, the Franklin Building at Essex Street and Washington Square South, which housed the Salem Marine Society, was torn down to make way for the present-day Hawthorne Hotel, still standing today.
One of the houses removed for hotel parking was Benson’s father’s old home, 36 Washington Square South, a huge Second Empire mansion that had double-arched windows above the double pillars of the front doorway. From 1906 until its demolition, this elegant building housed the Now and Then Association, a social club.
Benson lived for the rest of his life on Chestnut Street, producing an enormous amount of art to great critical and financial success. He died there on November 14, 1951 and is buried at Harmony Grove Cemetery on Grove Street.
Sources:
Salem Atlases
Salem City Directories
Images of America: Salem Massachusetts, Turino and Schier
Architecture in Salem: An Illustrated Guide, Tolles and Tolles
Frank Benson: American Impressionist, Faith Andrews Bedford
