Benjamin Russell (artist)
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Benjamin Russell (October 16, 1804 - March 3, 1885) was an American artist best-known for his accurate watercolors of whaling ships working in New England. Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to a wealthy family, Russell started drawing and painting in his late 30s, after a few years spent working as a cooper aboard a whaling ship.
Russell was never a brilliant artist, as his depiction of perspective and depth are stiff and flat. However, most of his work is perfectly to scale, resembling control drawings, and Russell watercolors remain the best images of the mid-19th century American whaling industry, until photography became available in the 1850s.
Russell began making lithographs in 1848, and began teaching art in Rhode Island, after the American Civil War ended in 1865.
He attended the University of Virginia, where he was a member of the Alpha chapter of the Chi Phi fraternity.
