Frank W. Benson, Three Geese, 1918

Frank Benson masterfully illustrates the fleeting moment of three geese flying through the air over a serene body of water. Rendered in a network of rich, velvety lines, the geese anchor the composition, adding weight and presence to the foreground. These stoic geese offer a representational entry point into the image, allowing the viewer to begin visually constructing the sparsely drawn landscape that Benson created. As your eye moves around the composition, one starts to pick up on the beautiful subtleties and physical nature of the drypoint process. All in all, this is an outstanding example of early 20^th century sporting art by one of the most renowned artists of the genre.

Frank Benson was a member of The Ten American Painters, a group of important artists who were inspired by the works of the French impressionists. Benson’s portraits and paintings of leisure activities at the turn of the twentieth century remain extremely popular images of a bygone era. In his later paintings and prints of wildlife, however, Benson expressed his profound relationship with nature. As the founder and continued leader of the American school of the “sporting print,” the origins of Benson’s art form are to be found in his early life in Massachusetts where he grew up hunting and fishing. Indeed, many of Benson’s prints show the hunt, while others display the pure vitality of his animal subjects. It is this concentration on vitality that distinguishes his wildlife prints from ornithological studies. Faith Andrews Bedford writes,

Using the language of the etcher’s needle, Benson transformed the observations of nearly five decades of hunting and fishing into exquisitely rendered depictions of wildfowl. His birds are never static creatures; rather, their motion is vital and crisp. Viewing a collection of his prints, one can almost hear the whir of feathers as a flock of ducks descends to a marsh, the cacophonous honking and slapping of wings at the moment of touchdown. In plates of birds on the water, reeds and rushes appear to bend and sway while ducks silently glide through them. The heavy beating of wings as a goose surges upward is almost palpable; the whole effect is charged with energy not only observed, but also felt. The atmosphere is always alive with an open-air breeziness. One can almost feel the wind that rushes beneath the wings of a hawk carrying him ever higher for the perfect vantage point.

Refs.: Bedford, Faith Andrews, The Sporting Art of Frank W. Benson; Ordeman, John T., Frank W. Benson’s Etchings, Drypoints and Lithographs, p. 177, Pl. #135.