This book focuses on Frank W. Benson’s life and work in Maine, where he spent summers on North Haven Island, at Wooster Farm. It was there that he painted almost all of his brilliant, light-filled Impressionist paintings, launched his prolific etching career, and began his highly successful watercolor period, many.

In mid-life, after an extremely successful career as a portraitist and painter of plein air canvases, Frank W. Benson returned to the wildfowl and sporting subjects that were his lifelong passion. Over the next forty years, in etching, lithography, watercolor, and oil and wash, he portrayed birds beloved since childhood.

Mrs. Andrews Bedford has drawn on a rich store of family memories, diaries, letters and archives to create an intimate biography of the artist. Her research both here and abroad have created an authoritative portrait of the artist and his personal and professional milieu. This rare material allows intriguing insights.