Leaping Grilse

Additional Information

A native of Salem, Massachusetts, Frank Benson’s interest in art took him to Paris, where he studied at the famous Academie Julian amid the fervor of the Impressionist movement. On his return to the States, he rose to fame as a painter of sunlit portraits. Along with Childe Hassam, Benson became part of an influential group of American Impressionists known as The Ten. In 1900, Benson began to summer in Maine where, recalling youthful rambles in the woods and marshes near his home, he began to paint sporting watercolors and oils and to embark on a series of masterful etchings. Leaping Grilse depicts a year-old Atlantic salmon—called a grilse, after a word from Middle English—that has returned to its home river to spawn after only one winter at sea. They are tough creatures, hurling themselves upriver over any and all obstacle. To the angler, they are fierce fighters that leap and scramble to the last as this magnificent specimen does, executing every imaginable acrobatic move to fling the fly away. With virtuosity, Benson captures the rough of the water and the smoothness of the salmon’s silver sides.

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Please note that the first unframed photo is most accurate for color. Framed photographs are to show the frame and are not color corrected to the painting.

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