Bill Moore, son of Richard C. Moore profiled on another Local Artists page, brought us the name Ben Collins. Bill writes:
He was kind of a mentor to my dad and was well-known for these kinds of stylized New England and beach scenes. Once you get a sense of his style, you can easily recognize his work.
He may have been the one to introduce my dad to Newman Galleries in Philadelphia. His work was reproduced quite a bit and I think hung in a lot of homes all over the East Coast… Sadly, he’s not well represented online.
Sleuthing for more clues about this prominent American artist, Bill Moore found some information on collectorsweekly.com.
A comment by JWolfschmidt six years ago on collectorsweekly.com helped identify a painting bought at an estate auction:
Hi there – I am Ben Collins’ great granddaughter. This painting was of Newfane, Vermont. Every fall during the foliage season he and his wife would travel to New England to look for scenes for him to paint. He lived in Riverton, New Jersey and later in Medford, New Jersey. He enjoyed scene painting, but also did portraits as well. Most of their summers were spent in Ocean City where he did dune paintings, although the Barnegat Lighthouse on Long Beach Island was one of his favorite subjects. He studied art at the Museum School in Philadelphia, and soon after began working at Beck Engraving. He became the art director there and designed book covers and did illustrations.
Askart.com provided another snippet: Born in 1895 in Philadephia, Pennsylvania, Ben Collins studied at the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and became the art director at The Beck Engraving Co. in New York, New York. He was a member of the Philadelphia Artists Alliance and the Art Directors Club. Collins is known for beach scenes (dunes) as well as other landscapes and paintings of buildings.
I assembled the following gallery by getting images from eBay, Facebook, and various auction websites. We do not own any of these items, but we can wish. -JMc, Editor
