American, 1852 - 1926
Ben Foster's childhood was disrupted by the death of his father in 1861. The family's subsequent financial difficulties forced him to seek work in New York while still a teenager. He soon developed an interest in painting but was unable to give up the mercantile trade until he was thirty. In 1882 he began studying privately under Abbott H. Thayer and at the Art Students League. Foster first exhibited in an Academy annual in 1884, showing flower still lifes; he pursued this theme over the next decade.
In 1886 Foster left for a year of study in Paris under Luc-Olivier Merson and Aimé Morot. Returning to New York in 1887, he established himself as a painter of dim forest interiors, often with dark tree silhouettes, a high horizon, and sheep. He especially favored such woodland scenes shown in moonlight. Recognition began to come to him when he was made a member of the Society of American Artists in 1897. The year of his election as an Associate Academician, Foster received the distinct honor of becoming the second American artist (Winslow Homer had been the first) to have a painting purchased by France's Luxembourg Gallery.
The Society honored Foster with its Carnegie Prize in the winter exhibition of 1906 and the Academy with its George Inness Gold Medal and Benjamin Altman Prize in the annual exhibitions of 1909 and 1917, respectively. He served on the advisory board of the Society of American Artists from 1902 to 1904. The following year he was elected to the Academy Council, on which he served until 1909. Thus he would have been especially able to assist when the two organizations merged in 1906.
Foster lived half of each year at his summer home in Cornwall Hollow, Connecticut. He also traveled often to the West, especially to California. On the side, he wrote art criticism for the Nation and the New York Evening Post. In its eulogy the Academy noted that his death came "after a long and painful illness which seemed particularly cruel as coming to one of his kindly temperament." His heirs destroyed much of Foster's work, which they deemed substandard; Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, sold the rest over a five-year period.
JD
In 1886 Foster left for a year of study in Paris under Luc-Olivier Merson and Aimé Morot. Returning to New York in 1887, he established himself as a painter of dim forest interiors, often with dark tree silhouettes, a high horizon, and sheep. He especially favored such woodland scenes shown in moonlight. Recognition began to come to him when he was made a member of the Society of American Artists in 1897. The year of his election as an Associate Academician, Foster received the distinct honor of becoming the second American artist (Winslow Homer had been the first) to have a painting purchased by France's Luxembourg Gallery.
The Society honored Foster with its Carnegie Prize in the winter exhibition of 1906 and the Academy with its George Inness Gold Medal and Benjamin Altman Prize in the annual exhibitions of 1909 and 1917, respectively. He served on the advisory board of the Society of American Artists from 1902 to 1904. The following year he was elected to the Academy Council, on which he served until 1909. Thus he would have been especially able to assist when the two organizations merged in 1906.
Foster lived half of each year at his summer home in Cornwall Hollow, Connecticut. He also traveled often to the West, especially to California. On the side, he wrote art criticism for the Nation and the New York Evening Post. In its eulogy the Academy noted that his death came "after a long and painful illness which seemed particularly cruel as coming to one of his kindly temperament." His heirs destroyed much of Foster's work, which they deemed substandard; Grand Central Art Galleries, New York, sold the rest over a five-year period.
JD
