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Benton Murdoch Spruance
1904–1967
BirthplacePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Death placePhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Biography
A mainstay of Philadelphia's mid-twentieth-century art scene, Benton Murdoch Spruance was an influential teacher and painter best known as a consummate printmaker in many media, especially lithography. Spruance grew up in an affluent suburb of Philadelphia and began working as an architectural draftsman after he graduated from high school. While studying in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Architecture, he attended courses in drawing and etching at the Graphic Sketch Club, a free art school. A life-long interest in the subject of labor began when he worked in a West Virginia logging camp for several months in 1924–25. Following that, he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to fulfill his ambition of becoming an artist.
In 1928 a Cresson scholarship from the Academy enabled Spruance to spend several months in Paris with his new wife. Spruance studied at the Académie Montparnasse under French painter André Lhote (1885–1962), a practitioner of the style known as cubism, in which forms are abstracted as series of their component planes and angles. He was introduced to lithography at the distinguished Paris print workshop of Edmond Desjobert, which whom he would later work producing many of his lithographs. On his return to Philadelphia, Spruance began working for an interior design firm; he also resumed part-time teaching at Beaver College (now Arcadia College), a private women's college in suburban Glenside, Pennsylvania, where he had taught beginning in 1926.
Spruance studied painting further with Lhote in Paris on a second Cresson scholarship in 1930. Although he continued to paint, he was most active as a printmaker. He exhibited widely and soon was recognized as one of his generation's most accomplished artists in the medium, winning numerous awards. In addition to teaching at Beaver, where he chaired the Department of Fine Arts from 1933 until his death, he joined the faculty at the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts). Spruance actively promoted the arts, for example by lobbying the Philadelphia City Council to set aside one per cent of the cost of new public buildings for fine art in 1959, a now-common practice in American cities. Spruance was a prolific printmaker who created a total of more than five hundred images in various print media, and including portraits, figural works, semi-abstract compositions, and religious subjects.
In 1928 a Cresson scholarship from the Academy enabled Spruance to spend several months in Paris with his new wife. Spruance studied at the Académie Montparnasse under French painter André Lhote (1885–1962), a practitioner of the style known as cubism, in which forms are abstracted as series of their component planes and angles. He was introduced to lithography at the distinguished Paris print workshop of Edmond Desjobert, which whom he would later work producing many of his lithographs. On his return to Philadelphia, Spruance began working for an interior design firm; he also resumed part-time teaching at Beaver College (now Arcadia College), a private women's college in suburban Glenside, Pennsylvania, where he had taught beginning in 1926.
Spruance studied painting further with Lhote in Paris on a second Cresson scholarship in 1930. Although he continued to paint, he was most active as a printmaker. He exhibited widely and soon was recognized as one of his generation's most accomplished artists in the medium, winning numerous awards. In addition to teaching at Beaver, where he chaired the Department of Fine Arts from 1933 until his death, he joined the faculty at the Philadelphia Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts). Spruance actively promoted the arts, for example by lobbying the Philadelphia City Council to set aside one per cent of the cost of new public buildings for fine art in 1959, a now-common practice in American cities. Spruance was a prolific printmaker who created a total of more than five hundred images in various print media, and including portraits, figural works, semi-abstract compositions, and religious subjects.