Benjamin West Clinedinst (October 14, 1859 – September 12, 1931) was an American book illustrator and portrait painter. ''
The New International Encyclopedia
''The New International Encyclopedia'' was an American encyclopedia first published in 1902 by Dodd, Mead and Company. It descended from the ''International Cyclopaedia'' (1884) and was updated in 1906, 1914 and 1926.
History
''The New Intern ...
'' considered that his "sympathetic collaboration" with the authors of the books he illustrated gave his works "a special charm".
Biography
Clinedinst was born to Barnett M. Clinedinst and Mary C. South on October 14, 1859, in
Woodstock, Virginia
Woodstock is a town and the county seat of Shenandoah County, Virginia, United States. It has a population of 5,212 according to the 2017 census. Woodstock comprises 3.2 square miles of incorporated area of the town, and is located along the ...
. His father was a photographer and inventor who named him after painter
Benjamin West
Benjamin West, (October 10, 1738 – March 11, 1820) was a British-American artist who painted famous historical scenes such as '' The Death of Nelson'', ''The Death of General Wolfe'', the '' Treaty of Paris'', and '' Benjamin Franklin Drawin ...
Google Books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical c ...
)
Clinedinst attended
Virginia Military Institute
la, Consilio et Animis (on seal)
, mottoeng = "In peace a glorious asset, In war a tower of strength""By courage and wisdom" (on seal)
, established =
, type = Public senior military college
, accreditation = SACS
, endowment = $696.8 mill ...
in
Lexington, Virginia
Lexington is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. At the 2020 census, the population was 7,320. It is the county seat of Rockbridge County, although the two are separate jurisdictions. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines ...
.
He studied for a year in
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the List of municipalities in Maryland, most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, and List of United States cities by popula ...
, and for five years in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
under
Cabanel
Alexandre Cabanel (; 28 September 1823 – 23 January 1889) was a French painter. He painted historical, classical and religious subjects in the academic style. He was also well known as a portrait painter. According to ''Diccionario Encicloped ...
and Bonnat.
He first attracted attention in New York City with his illustrations for ''
Leslie's Weekly
''Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper'', later renamed ''Leslie's Weekly'', was an American illustrated literary and news magazine founded in 1855 and published until 1922. It was one of several magazines started by publisher and illustrator Frank ...
''. He exhibited two works – ''The Water Colorist'' and ''Monsieur's Mail'' – at the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
, image_map =
, map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago
, coordi ...
in Chicago.
Clinedinst painted a mural of Virginia Military Institute cadets at the 1864
Battle of New Market
The Battle of New Market was fought on May 15, 1864, in Virginia during the Valley Campaigns of 1864 in the American Civil War. A makeshift Confederate army of 4,100 men defeated the larger Army of the Shenandoah under Major General Franz Si ...
. The 1913 mural is on display in V.M.I.'s Jackson Memorial Hall.
In 1894, he was elected into the
National Academy of Design
The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...
as an Associate Academician, and became a full Academician in 1898. He was awarded the Evans prize of the
American Watercolor Society
The American Watercolor Society, founded in 1866, is a nonprofit membership organization devoted to the advancement of watercolor painting in the United States.
Qualifications
AWS judges the work of a painter before granting admission to the soc ...
in 1900.
Clinedinst died on September 12, 1931, in
Pawling, New York
Pawling may refer to:
*Pawling (town), New York, in Dutchess County
**Pawling (village), New York, in the town of Pawling
***Pawling (Metro-North station), train station for the village
**Pawling Nature Reserve, in the northern section of the to ...
.
Memorial medal
In 1947 the nonprofit Artists' Fellowship, Inc. established the Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal for exceptional artistic merit. Past winners include William H. Bailey,
Will Barnet
Will Barnet (May 25, 1911November 13, 2012) was an American artist known for his paintings, watercolors, drawings, and prints depicting the human figure and animals, both in casual scenes of daily life and in transcendent dreamlike worlds.
Biogr ...
,
Stanley Bleifeld
Stanley Bleifeld (August 28, 1924 – March 26, 2011) was an American sculptor.
Early life
Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bleifeld earned bachelor of fine arts, bachelor of science in education and in 1949 a master of fine arts degree in painting at ...
,
Paul Cadmus
Paul Cadmus (December 17, 1904 – December 12, 1999) was an American artist widely known for his egg tempera paintings of gritty social interactions in urban settings. He also produced many highly finished drawings of single nude male figures ...
,
Lois Dodd
Lois Dodd (born 1927 in Montclair, New Jersey) is an American painter. Dodd was a key member of New York's postwar art scene. She played a large part and was involved in the wave of modern artists including Alex Katz and Yvonne Jacquette who exp ...
,
Jane Freilicher
Jane Freilicher (November 19, 1924 – December 9, 2014) was an American representational painter of urban and country scenes from her homes in lower Manhattan and Water Mill, Long Island. She was a member of the informal New York School beginni ...
,
Robert Beverly Hale
Robert Beverly Hale (1901–November 14, 1985) was an artist, curator of American paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and instructor of artistic anatomy at the Art Students League of New York and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. He ...
Morton Kaish
Morton Kaish (born 1927) is an American artist whose work integrates the abstract and the figurative. Kaish's paintings and prints have been exhibited by and included in the collections of major national and international museums: the Smithsonian ...
,
Everett Raymond Kinstler
Everett Raymond Kinstler (August 5, 1926 – May 26, 2019) was an American artist, whose official portraits include Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan.Robert Kipniss,
Knox Martin
Knox Martin (February 12, 1923 – May 15, 2022) was an American painter, sculptor, and muralist.
Born in Barranquilla, Colombia, he studied at the Art Students League of New York from 1946 until 1950. He was one of the leading members of the N ...
,
Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson (September 23, 1899 – April 17, 1988) was an American sculptor known for her monumental, monochromatic, wooden wall pieces and outdoor sculptures.
Born in the Poltava Governorate of the Russian Empire (present-day Kyiv Oblast, ...
,
Pat Oliphant
Patrick Bruce "Pat" Oliphant (born 24 July 1935) is an Australian-born American artist whose career spanned more than sixty years. His body of work as a whole focuses mostly on American and global politics, culture, and corruption; he is particu ...
,
Philip Pearlstein
Philip Martin Pearlstein (May 24, 1924 – December 17, 2022) was an American painter best known for Modernist Realist nudes. Cited by critics as the preeminent figure painter of the 1960s to 2000s, he led a revival in realist art.
Biography ...
, and
Norman Rockwell
Norman Percevel Rockwell (February 3, 1894 – November 8, 1978) was an American painter and illustrator. His works have a broad popular appeal in the United States for their reflection of Culture of the United States, the country's culture. Roc ...
.
File:Clinedinst WaterColorist Art of World vol.8.jpg, ''The Water Colorist'' (c.1891)
File:Clinedinst Monsieur's MailHitchcock p.53.jpg, ''Monsieur's Mail'' (c.1893)
File:The woman-suffrage movement in New York City cph.3g12521.jpg, ''The Woman-Suffrage Movement in New York City'' (1894)
See also
*
List of American painters exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
Chicago hosted the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, a world's fair commemorating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World. Artists from the United States and 19 foreign countries exhibited at the Exposition. A c ...