Benson, John P.

John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947) was an American architect and artist noted for his maritime paintings. He was brother to noted artist Frank Benson. Born into a prosperous family in Salem, Benson was trained as an architect at the Academie Julian and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He married Sarah Bissell Whitman in 1893. They lived in Plainfield, N.J. and then in Flushing, New York.

Upon his return from Paris, Benson was employed by McKim, Mead & White in New York City. In 1922, Benson and his wife traveled to England where he rented a studio and painted several pictures. When they sold, he became a full-time painter. Benson and his wife moved to a house that called Willowbank on the Piscataqua River in Kittery, Maine.

He is buried in the Harmony Grove Cemetery in Salem, Massachusetts.

A retrospective John Benson exhibition was held in 1968 at the Peabody Museum in Salem (now called Peabody Essex Museum.)

See Also

John P. Benson Wikipedia entry