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  • Four women in flowing white dresses relaxing on a sunlight grassy slope, enjoying the breeze and bright blue sky.
  • Four women in flowing white dresses relaxing on a sunlight grassy slope, enjoying the breeze and bright blue sky.
  • Four women in flowing white dresses relaxing on a sunlight grassy slope, enjoying the breeze and bright blue sky.

Frank Weston Benson

Summer

Maker

Frank Weston Benson (American, 1862-1951)

Title

Summer

Year

1909

Medium

  • Oil on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Techniques

  • Oil on canvas

Materials

oil paint

Supports

  • canvas

Dimensions

91.8 x 113 cm (36 1/8 x 44 1/2 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signature: Signed LL:F.W. Benson, 1909

Credit / Object Number

Credit

Bequest of Isaac C. Bates

Object Number

13.912

Type

  • Paintings

Provenance

The Artist, 1910
Isaac C. Bates, Providence

Publications

  • Books

A Handbook of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

  • Books

Selection VII: American Painting from the Museum's Collection, c.1800-1930

  • Books

Selected Works

Exhibition History

Making It In America
Oct 11, 2013 – Feb 09, 2014

Label copy

Frank Benson taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and gave occasional studio critiques at RISD. That work and income from private commissions permitted him to acquire vacation property on North Haven Island, Maine, where he photographed and made sketches of his daughters and their friends in preparation for this painting of a perfect summer day. Benson used these studies to capture poses, then referenced and combined them as he created the finished work in his studio. His models present an optimistic view of contemporary young womanhood-relaxed, confident, and looking to the future.

Benson’s Summer is incomplete without its frame, impeccably crafted by the Boston firm Foster Brothers to complement the painting. I am attracted to this frame for its brilliant luminosity. To achieve such a dazzling surface, tissue-thin sheets of gold leaf were carefully laid over wood that had been carved, sanded, sealed with rabbit-skin glue, and painted with gesso and reddish clay before it was sized with adhesive. Even today this surface glows, as gold leaf retains its luster indefinitely. Festooned with a chainwork of fruit, foliage, and flowers, the frame also redoubles the painting’s inherent theme of fertility.

Isabella McCormick, RISD (Painting) / Brown BA student, 2015

American Art from the Permanent Collection
May 01, 2010 – Aug 31, 2014
An American Idyll
19th-Century Paintings and Decorative Arts
Apr 06, 2007 – Jan 06, 2008
From the Reserve IV
Nineteenth-Century American Painting
Jul 22, 1994 – Oct 02, 1994
Romanticism and Revival
Nineteenth-Century American Art from the Permanent Collection
Dec 04, 1992 – Jun 26, 1993
  • More Exhibition History +

Image use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use.

Public Domain This object is in the Public Domain and available under a CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication

Tombstone

Frank Weston Benson (American, 1862-1951)
Summer, 1909
Oil on canvas
91.8 x 113 cm (36 1/8 x 44 1/2 inches)
Bequest of Isaac C. Bates 13.912

To request new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

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