Frank Weston Benson (Born 1862) was born in Salem, Massachusetts into a prosperous seafaring family. He was the eldest son in a family that encouraged creativity and experimentation. The spiritual and social needs of the children were fulfilled with dancing lessons, music classes, and compulsory attendance of Episcopal Church services weekly. Benson always described himself as a "wedding and funeral" churchgoer type, though he would later marry into the Unitarian Church. Benson together with his family escaped the heat of the Salem summer and went to Marblehead, south of Salem. And at the age of twelve, he had became an accomplished sailor his and had his own sailboat. By the age of seventeen, Benson turned lanky and tall (over 6 foot 3 and was an avid sportsman. In the winter he excelled at boxing and he played tennis almost every afternoon.
Benson and his father took frequent trips to hunt waterfowl that were many along the North Shore. One day he shot 2 birds on one of these outings and the birds became the subject of his first oil painting. Benson’s mother was also a painter and she persuaded Benson’s father to allow him to enter the newly formed School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. His father was skeptical of his son's ability to support himself as a painter. He was allowed to enter the school in 1880 and it was there that he developed a lifelong friendship with Joseph Lindon Smith. Three years later, Benson and his father traveled to Puerto Rico and Cuba. Inspired by foreign travel, Benson filled several sketchbooks with scenes of native life. He felt that he had outgrown the Museum School and decided to join the American artists who were studying abroad.
