Cloudy Dawn

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Cloudy Dawn

Artist Frank Weston Benson American, 1862-1951

Date1922

Dimensions9 3/4 x 11 7/8 in.

MediumEtching

ClassificationPrints

Credit LineGift of Joseph Hearst

Object number

1951.429

Not on View

Collections

Works on Paper

Published ReferencesPaff catalogue 215Exhibition HistoryToledo Museum of Art, For the Birds, April 13-October 14, 2012.Label TextThe most widespread wild goose in North America, the Canada Goose is a familiar sight along ponds, lakes, and streams, even in urban areas. They breed in large numbers in the marshes along the southern shore of Lake Erie. In this etching artist Frank Weston Benson captures the elegance of the large birds’ flight as they are silhouetted against the dawn sky. Best known as an American Impressionist painter, Benson had a “second career” in the early 20th century as a sporting artist. His etchings of waterfowl and other inhabitants of the marshes of New England were widely popular and critically acclaimed and helped to popularize the genre. Benson had been an avid birdwatcher and hunter in the coastal marshes of Massachusetts since boyhood, and had originally wanted to be an ornithological illustrator. When he took up etching in the 1910s, he finally returned to his original love of the marshes and of the birds that lived there. In 1935 Benson designed the second Federal Duck Stamp for the program established by the government in 1934 to raise money for wetlands conservation.