John Prentiss Benson

John Prentiss Benson (also John P. Benson; 1865–1947) was an American architect and artist noted for his maritime paintings.

Early life

Benson was born into a prosperous family in Salem, Massachusetts on February 8, 1865. He was trained as an architect at the Académie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was the brother of Frank Weston Benson. He married Sarah Bissell Whitman in 1893; they lived in Plainfield, New Jersey and then in Flushing, New York.

Career

Upon his return from Paris, Benson was employed by McKim, Mead & White in New York City. He and Albert Leverett Brockway, a fellow architecture student from his Paris days, soon formed their own firm, Benson and Brockway.

In 1922 at Benson and his wife traveled to England where he rented a studio and painted several pictures. He shipped them to New York's Kennedy Galleries, and when they sold he became a full-time painter. Benson and his wife moved to a house they called "Willowbank" on the Piscataqua River in Kittery, Maine.

A retrospective John Benson exhibition was held in 1968 at the Peabody Museum in Salem, Massachusetts.

Gallery