An “artist turned photographer of artists,” Edwin Scott Bennett (1847-1915) is the subject of a forthcoming article.
Edwin Scott Bennett lived and worked in New York in the late nineteenth century. Bennett initially studied landscape painting under William De Haas and figure painting under William Morgan, and then later took up photography. He took photographs of prominent American painters and sculptors including George Inness, John George Brown, Eastman Johnson, William Merritt Chase, Daniel Chester French, John Henry Twachtman, and Childe Hassam. During the early to mid-1890s, Bennett exhibited many of his photographs of artists at the annual exhibitions of the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York. Later in that decade, he took photographs to accompany many articles by the American writer Theodore Dreiser. At the time of his death, Bennett lived at 51 West 10th Street, the Tenth Street Studio building, where many artists whose photographs had been taken by him had maintained studios over the years.
Anyone with information on Bennett’s life or career or who has photographs or paintings by him is asked to contact Carol Lowrey, Ph.D., by either mail, 2373 Broadway, Apr. 909, New York, NY 10024 or e-mail, lowrey2373@verizon.net.
Image: Henry Bayley Snell in His Studio by Edwin S. Bennett, c. 1894. Courtesy of Paul M. Hertzmann, Inc., San Francisco.
