John Prentiss Benson (1865-1947) was born in Salem, Massachusetts, the second son in a prominent Salem family. Both John and his older brother Frank showed artistic promise at an early age. Frank rather quickly acquired a reputation as an artist, while John, who was encouraged to pursue what was then considered a more reliable career, chose architecture.

After study in Paris in the early 1880s, he returned to the U.S. to practice his craft, designing homes, hospitals, schools and other public buildings. By the 1920s, his own creative reputation as an architect having been well established, John Benson put aside his drafting tools for good and turned at last to being the artist he had wanted to be since boyhood. In 1925 h...