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A pale-skinned woman wearing a long dress sits on a golden-brown grassy hillside in this vertical portrait painting. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes throughout. The hill creates a steep diagonal angling down from near the top left corner to the right edge, just over the lower corner there. The woman sits with her knees facing us as she looks up and off to our left in profile. She is lit from our right so her face is in shadow, but she has delicate features. The light warms her copper-red hair, which is tied with a bow at the back of her neck. Her ice-blue dress has a high collar, long sleeves, and a full skirt that puddles in the grass. She rests her left arm, to our right, across her midsection, and holds her other hand just over the grass. White flowers dot the hillside, which slopes down a single tree in the near distance along the right edge of the canvas. Ultramarine-blue water beyond ripples back to a flat-topped, smoky-mauve outcropping. A sliver of oyster-white sky lines the horizon, which comes almost to the top of this composition. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “F.W. Benson.”

Frank Weston Benson

Margaret ("Gretchen") Strong, c. 1909

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 76.8 x 64.2 cm (30 1/4 x 25 1/4 in.)

framed: 90.8 x 78.1 x 3.2 cm (35 3/4 x 30 3/4 x 1 1/4 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of Elizabeth Clarke Hayes

Accession Number

1992.66.1

Artists / Makers

Frank Weston Benson (painter) American, 1862 - 1951

Image Use

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Inscription

lower left: F.W. Benson / [four blurred digits, possibly 1910]

Provenance

Commissioned by the sitter's parents, The Reverend and Mrs. George Alexander Strong, Boston; by inheritance to their daughter, the sitter, Margaret Wendell Strong Withers [1892-1973] and her husband, Captain Clarke Withers [d. 1983], Massachusetts and St. Michael's, Maryland; by bequest 1983 to Captain Wither's first cousin once removed, Elizabeth Clarke Hayes [Mrs. Francis W. Hayes], St. Michael's, Maryland; gift 1992 to NGA.

Associated Names

Hayes, Elizabeth Clarke
Strong, George Alexander, The Rev. and Mrs.
Strong, Margaret ("Gretchen") Wendell
Withers, Clarke, Captain

Exhibition History

1989: Frank W. Benson: A Retrospective, Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York, 1989, no. 28.

2007: Loan to display with permanent collection, Academy Art Museum, Easton, Maryland, 2007-2008.

2012: Impressionist Summers: Frank W. Benson's North Haven, The Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, 2012, fig. 57.

Technical Summary

A thin, grayish ground is applied over the medium-weight, plain-weave fabric support. The painting remains unlined and is attached to the original four-member, mortise-and-tenon stretcher. The fabric was primed before stretching. Paint was applied fluidly and in a relatively thick manner in a series of impasted brushstrokes. A small repaired hole is found in the area of the sitter's hair. There appears to be writing in addition to the signature and date. Efforts to decipher this with infrared reflectography and ultraviolet examination have been unsuccessful. The painting underwent varnish removal in 1993 and is currently displayed unvarnished.

Bibliography

1989: Bedford, Faith Andrews. "Frank W. Benson: A Biography." In Frank W. Benson: A Retrospective. Exh. cat. Berry-Hill Galleries, Inc., New York, 1989: 66, no. 28.

1994: Bedford, Faith Andrews. Frank W. Benson: American Impressionist. New York, 1994: 106, repro. 107.

1996: Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 28-31, color repro.