This book focuses on Frank W. Benson’s life and work in Maine, where he spent summers on North Haven Island, at Wooster Farm. It was there that he painted almost all of his brilliant, light-filled Impressionist paintings, launched his prolific etching career, and began his highly successful watercolor period, many.

Mrs. Andrews Bedford has drawn on a rich store of family memories, diaries, letters and archives to create an intimate biography of the artist. Her research both here and abroad have created an authoritative portrait of the artist and his personal and professional milieu. This rare material allows intriguing insights.

In mid-life, after an extremely successful career as a portraitist and painter of plein air canvases, Frank W. Benson returned to the wildfowl and sporting subjects that were his lifelong passion. Over the next forty years, in etching, lithography, watercolor, and oil and wash, he portrayed birds beloved since childhood.

In the corner of my daughter's room is a little four-poster bed. On it lies my favorite doll, which I saved for my children to play with. She's covered with a tiny pink coverlet edged in hand-tied fringe. The coverlet was my first sewing project, made when I was nine..

The queen was slim and elegant as she moved slowly among her attendants. I could not take my eyes off her. But Miss Henderson told us our time at the Nature Center was over; the fifth graders had to return to school. I took one last look at the little.

I always thought of Dad as the Fix-it Man; he could mend anything. His motto was "Use it up. Wear it out. Fix it well or do without." With three little girls and an old house, he had a lot of fixing to do. In the small town where I grew.

I am the tailored type, most comfortable in well-worn denim or comfortable tweeds. My sister, Ellen, has been trying to update my look for years with little success. A little while ago, when she became engaged, I told her I had nothing to wear to an evening wedding. Today she's taking.

  As my sister's car disappears over the top of the hill, her faint toot in farewell tells me she has turned onto the main road. The dust settles on our lane as I look to the pile of boxes she just left behind. When Mother died last year, Dad gave.