Sep 29, 2022 - Sale 2615

Sale 2615 - Lot 40

Price Realized: $ 750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(CALIFORNIA.) Collection of pencil sketches by Will Benshoff of the Arcade Sketch Club of Pasadena. 52 pencil sketches, most about 4 x 6 inches or slightly larger, and 11 in larger formats up to 13 3/4 x 10 inches; condition generally strong. [Pasadena, CA], 1894-1907

Additional Details

William Alton Benshoff (1859-1949) was an Ohio-born architect who was married in Pasadena, CA in 1895, and remained there through his death. Offered here is a collection of his accomplished amateur pencil portrait sketches, done over a period of 14 years. Several of the earliest drawings from 1894 and 1895 are signed as a member of the Arcade Sketch Club, which was founded in Pasadena in January 1894. The club made sketches of paid models. The 18 January 1894 Los Angeles Times states that they sometimes paid hoboes 50 cents for a sitting, and two March 1894 sketches in this lot appear to depict exactly that. Benshoff did not usually identify his sitters; one is an aged African-American man named Clark, sketched in 1894. At least two show his daughter Hazel (1896-1991) as a young girl, and another shows his son Max (1898-1968) hiding behind curtains. A handful are "after" well-known artists of the day, such as Alice Barber Stephens, Charles Dana Gibson, and Edward Winsor Kemble; one is a portrait of the late President Lincoln, after a photograph.