Benjamin West Clinedinst
American, 1859 - 1931
Birth-PlaceStaunton, VA
BiographyBenjamin West Clinedinst (1859–1931) was an American illustrator and painter, born at Staunton, Virginia. He studied for a year in Baltimore and for five years in Paris under Cabanel and Bonnat and first attracted attention in New York with his illustrations for Leslie's Weekly. He was best known as the illustrator of Thomas Nelson Page's Unc' Edinburg, the works of Julian Hawthorne, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Mark Twain, although he worked also in oils and water colors. His sympathetic collaboration with the various authors gave his work an especial charm. He was awarded the Evans prize of the American Watercolor Society in 1900.Clinedinst, who attended Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia, is also noted for painting a mural of V.M.I. cadets at the 1864 Battle of New Market. The mural is today on display in V.M.I.'s Jackson Memorial Hall.
In 1947, the nonprofit Artists' Fellowship, Inc. established the Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal for exceptional artistic merit. Past winners include Will Barnet, Stanley Bleifeld, Paul Cadmus, Lois Dodd, Jane Freilicher, Robert Beverly Hale, Paul Jenkins (painter), Morton Kaish, Everett Raymond Kinstler, Robert Kipniss, Louise Nevelson, Pat Oliphant, Philip Pearlstein, Norman Rockwell. In October 2012, the painter Knox Martin will be awarded the Benjamin West Clinedinst Memorial Medal.
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