Born in Philadelphia, George Bensell studied at the Pennsylvania Academy and became a portrait, poetical genre, landscape, and historical painter. The Philadelphia Sketch Club was formed in his studio in 1860, and he served as the Club's first president. He was also an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy and with Samuel Diffield in 1867, wrote a twenty-two page poem, "The Artist's Dream".

Source:
William Patterson & David Zellin, "Thomas Eakins and His Fellow Artists at the Philadelphia Sketch Club"

A native Philadelphian, George Frederick Bensell studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with James Reid Lambdin (1807-1889). He exhibited annually at the Academy from 1856 to 1868.

Also a poet, he co-authored a twenty-two page poem, The Artist's Dream, which is in the collection of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

He was a member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club and his work is in the collections of the National Museum of American Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and the Germantown Historical Society.

Bensell died in Philadelphia at only 42 years of age.