Journey for Margaret by William Lindsay White

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. His depictions were published in 1944, in Our Flying Navy, and in 1945, in Men Without Guns. While in WWII, Benney produced four series of paintings Combat Medicine, Naval Aviation, Oil in Warfare, and Amphibious Operations. In 1944, Abbott brought Benney back to paint the Army Medical Department's work in the South Pacific. In 1943, Abbott Laboratories, a pharmaceutical company based out of Illinois, hired Benney to paint the Naval Aviation Department's contributions to the war. Later he educated future artists at the Pratt Institute between 19 and Dutchess County College between 19.īenney is most celebrated for his time as a war artist correspondent in the Pacific during World War II. After graduating from Cooper Union, he attended the National Academy of Design from 1928 to1932. While earning a living as a commercial artist, Benney continued going to school. He also attended rehearsals and used photographs to sketch his subjects. He set appointments with actors or actresses to sketch them during a sitting in their dressing room. 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.īenney captured theater productions and stage personalities in his drawings in a number of ways. 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. He drew portraits of leading actors and actresses for New York City theater productions. Once the studio opened, New York newspapers and magazines began commissioning Benney for his illustration work. While in art school at the age of 19, he opened his own studio.

He studied art at New York's Cooper Union from 1921 to 1925. Robert Benney, illustrator and painter, was born in Romania in 1904.

Journey for Margaret by William Lindsay White