Robert Benney research materials

1926-1978

Robert Benney, illustrator and painter, was born in Romania in 1904. He came to New York as a toddler. He studied art at New York's Cooper Union from 1921 to 1925. While in art school at the age of 19, he opened his own studio. Once the studio opened, New York newspapers and magazines began commissioning Benney for his illustration work.

He drew portraits of leading actors and actresses for New York City theater productions. These drawings were printed along side an article about the production in newspapers such as the Herald Tribune, The New York Times, Brooklyn Daily Eagle, The New York World and Telegraph, and other Greater New York newspapers of that era. Beginning in the late 1930s, the large Hollywood movie studios, such as Twentieth-Century Fox and United Artists, began commissioning Benney for his illustration talents.

Benney captured theater productions and stage personalities in his drawings in a number of ways. He set appointments with actors or actresses to sketch them during a sitting in their dressing room. He also attended rehearsals and used photographs to sketch his subjects.

While earning a living as a commercial artist, Benney continued going to school. After graduating from Cooper Union, he attended the National Academy of Design from 1928 to1932. He also studied under Frank A. Nankivell. Later he educated future artists at the Pratt Institute between 1949 and 1952 and Dutchess County College between 1964 and 1973.

Benney is most celebrated for his time as a war artist correspondent in the Pacific during World War II. In 1943, Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company based out of Illinois, hired Benney to paint the Naval Aviation Department's contributions to the war. In 1944, Abbott brought Benney back to paint the Army Medical Department's work in the South Pacific. While in WWII, Benney produced four series of paintings; Combat Medicine, Naval Aviation, Oil in Warfare, and Amphibious Operations. His depictions were published in 1944, in Our Flying Navy, and in 1945, in Men Without Guns. As a life member of the Society of Illustrators, he volunteered his services in 1954 to the US Air Force to draw their operations in North Africa. He spent two months with the US Marine Corp as a war artist correspondent documenting their work in Danang, Vietnam in 1968.

Besides the military and the theater industry, Benney worked as a commercial artist for large corporations such as American Sugar Refining Company, American Tobacco Company, General Foods, Shell Oil, Standard Oil Company and Western Electric. He also worked as a freelance illustrator for advertising agencies. When asked one time how an artist should approach a commercial project, Benney said, "The question, 'Is it fine art or commercial art?' is of little interest to the director of a large corporation which exists only for selling company products. The primary factors are: "Does the picture tell the story, does it do it with taste and dignity becoming to the product or industry; and, in the case if institutional advertising, will its art or aesthetic content carry over in the public's subconscious mine the good that is so much coveted?'"

His works for the military are housed in permanent collections at such places as the Smithsonian Institution and the US Army, US Navy, US Marine Corp and US Air Force Combat Art Collections. The Museum of the City of New York exhibited Benney's theater drawings as early as 1933. The Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center displayed a collection of Benney's illustrations spanning 1926 to 1942 at the Amsterdam Gallery between May 3, 1978 and June 19, 1978.

By the 1950s, Benney operated studios on West 57th Street in New York City, and in Wallkill, New York. Benney belonged to professional organizations such as the Art Students League, Artists and Writers Association and the Society of Illustrators. Robert Benney died in Boston in June of 2001.