Benjamin Russell (October 16, 1804 – March 3, 1885) was an
American artist best known for his accurate
watercolor
Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...
s of
whaling
Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution.
It was practiced as an organized industry ...
ships working in
New England
New England is a region comprising six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York to the west and by the Canadian provinces ...
. Born to a wealthy family in
New Bedford, Massachusetts
New Bedford (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ) is a city in Bristol County, Massachusetts, Bristol County, Massachusetts. It is located on the Acushnet River in what is known as the South Coast (Massachusetts), South Coast region. Up throug ...
, Russell started drawing and painting in his late 30s, after a few years spent working as a
cooper
Cooper, Cooper's, Coopers and similar may refer to:
* Cooper (profession), a maker of wooden casks and other staved vessels
Arts and entertainment
* Cooper (producers), alias of Dutch producers Klubbheads
* Cooper (video game character), in ...
aboard a whaling ship.
Russell's depiction of
perspective and depth are stiff and flat, and his images "were appreciated more for their accurate representation than their artistic value."
However, most of his work is perfectly to scale, resembling control drawings, and Russell watercolours were some of the better views of the mid-19th-century American whaling industry, until photography became available in the 1850s.
Russell began making lithographs in 1848, and began teaching art in
Rhode Island
Rhode Island (, like ''road'') is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It is the List of U.S. states by area, smallest U.S. state by area and the List of states and territories of the United States ...
, after the
American Civil War
The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...
ended in 1865.
Image gallery
File:WhalingVoyage ca1848 byRussell and Purrington detail NewBedfordWhalingMuseum12.png, Detail from ''Whaling Voyage Round the World'' by Russell & Purrington, ca.1848
File:WhalingVoyage ca1848 byRussell and Purrington detail NewBedfordWhalingMuseum10.png, Detail from ''Whaling Voyage Round the World'' by Russell & Purrington, ca.1848
File:WhalingVoyage ca1848 byRussell and Purrington EssexDetail NewBedfordWhalingMuseum1.png, Wreck of the Essex
Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...
; detail from ''Whaling Voyage Round the World'' by Russell & Purrington, ca.1848
File:1849 whaling AmoryHall Boston.png, Advertisement for performance at Boston's Amory Hall of ''Whaling Voyage Round the World,'' 1849
Further reading
* Robert L. Carothers and John L. Marsh. The Whale and the Panorama. Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Dec., 1971), pp. 319–328.
* Kevin J. Avery. "Whaling Voyage Round the World": Russell and Purrington's Moving Panorama and Herman Melville's "Mighty Book." American Art Journal, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Spring, 1990), pp. 50–78.
* Forbes, Allan. Whale Ships and Whaling Scenes as Portrayed by Benjamin Russell (1955)
References
External links
New Bedford Whaling Museum biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Russell, Benjamin
1804 births
1885 deaths
19th-century American painters
American male painters
American art educators
American lithographers
19th-century American male artists