Two Boys in a Boat
Signed and dated F.W. Benson 1920
Inscribed To Henry Chaplin (lower right). Oil on canvas. Executed circa 1904
Two Boys in a Boat is a quick oil study of George Benson and his close friend Henry Chaplin. The boys were inseparable, spending their days together collecting arrowheads, hunting, bird watching, sailing or rowing the Benson’s many boats and going on “rambles.” It was Henry’s father Heman Chaplin who first introduced the Bensons to the island of North Haven in Maine’s Penobscot Bay. The Bensons later bought an old farmhouse across the road from where Chaplin had built a summer house.
This painting was done in 1904, about the same time as Benson’s famous Calm Morning, now at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. While Calm Morning is a finely finished painting of George and his sisters, Elisabeth and Eleanor, Two Boys in a Boat looks as though it was completed in an hour. That was about as long as George could sit still. In order to finish Calm Morning, Benson had to complete two studies – one of Eleanor and Elisabeth in the stern of the boat and another of George in the bow. After that, George was excused from his modeling chores.
Distracted by other work, Benson put the little oil painting aside in the old barn that he used as a summer studio. In 1920, when Henry returned from World War I, he and his new wife, Elsa, visited the Bensons at their island home “Wooster Farm.” As the Chaplin’s summer home had burned a few winters previous, Benson invited the young couple to set up a tent on land near the Benson’s well. Benson completed a charming watercolor of the couple’s summer retreat and called it Henry’s Tent.
Just before Henry and Elsa left the island, Benson found the painting he’d done of his son and Henry, inscribed it “To Henry Chaplin” and the date of their visit, and gave it to him.
Copyright September 18, 2024 Faith Andrews Bedford