Margaret ("Gretchen") Strong

c. 1909

Frank Weston Benson

Painter, American, 1862 - 1951

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.”
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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Gift of Elizabeth Clarke Hayes

  • 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.)

  • Accession

    1992.66.1


Artwork history & notes

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

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.

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.

Inscriptions

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

Wikidata ID

Q20191267


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