The Benson Altar

Although the featured artist for this month’s installment of The Artist of the Abbey series has been mentioned more than once in previous articles, it is time for him to be recognized for his own contributions to the beauty and art of our campus. Finally taking his rightful place is the late stone-carver, sculptor and calligrapher, John Howard Benson (1901-1956). He was first mentioned in the initial column of this series in September 2021 when we highlighted the ongoing work of a young stone carver in the Benson tradition named Adam Paul Heller of Connecticut. Adam is responsible for carving the names and dates into the slate tombstones in our monks’ burial ground. In his editor’s note to that story, Dr. Blake Billings made mention of the fact that Adam had begun working in 1998, two years out of the University of Vermont, at the John Stevens Shop in Newport, founded in 1705.

John H. Benson
 

Old prayer book from School, with Lamb similar to altar

John Howard Benson bought that business in 1927 after it had been owned by the Stevens Family for 220 years. A few years after the purchase, Benson became involved with the Portsmouth Priory School, as it was known in those days, and was a member of the faculty in the school’s earliest years. During the 1930-31 academic year he is listed as a “Non-Resident Master in Drawing, Painting and Woodwork.” Another “student” of the Stevens/Benson shop was our featured artist for May 2023, the late James Peter Casey (1924-2017) who worked with Benson in the mid-20th century. Casey’s singular example of “lapidary lettering” on campus is the 1957 pavement stone in the narthex of the Abbey Church commemorating the blessing of the site of the future structure. Aside from these references to Benson in The Artist of the Abbey series, a comprehensive study of “The Benson Altar” (as distinct from the several George Nakashima wood altars in the upstairs gallery) was undertaken by Dr. Billings and appeared in a separate Archives series in the June 2022 issue of this newsletter.

Inside the 1960 Abbey Church, visually marking the separation of the rather untraditional nave, with its octagonal soaring lantern of colored glass, from the more traditional monastic choir area, is the 1937 limestone main altar designed and crafted by John Howard Benson. The 23-year time gap comes from the fact that the altar was originally situated in the monks’ former chapel, no longer extant. Early photographs show the altar against a wall and atop the predella in the chapel configured inside of the former billiard hall which came with the purchase of Hall Manor in 1919. When the Pietro Belluschi church was nearly completed, the altar was carefully moved up the hill to its present resting place, less than five years after Benson’s death in 1956. The distinctive Benson touches which complete the altar’s design are carvings which mostly face the monks’ side and therefore not visible from the nave. Combining brief verses from Exodus in the Old Testament and St. John in the New Testament, the carving wraps around the altar’s two short ends and one long side. Also facing the monks’ choir is a modern, Art-Deco angular take of the traditional Agnus Dei, or Lamb of God, image executed in bas-relief, the low carving highlighted with gold-leaf. The Scripture carvings have been printed on bookmarks explaining their meaning to the students and others on tours of the church:

Sapientia, J.H. Benson

Another more dimensional figural sculpture by Benson is located in the monastic garden below Cross Hill and portrays the Blessed Virgin Mary standing behind a young Jesus. Set into a high stone wall, the inscription on its base reads Sapientia, or Wisdom, and it is surrounded by an ornate wrought-iron framework topped with a crown proclaiming Salve Regina. Originally in the church, it was moved when the monks were gifted with a 14th-century French Burgundian Madonna and Child, carved in limestone, and given to Portsmouth by the Hearst Foundation.

It is one thing to have the skillset to incise stone with precise lettering, quite another to do the preliminary lay-out and spacing of the required text. Such was the task put forth for Benson when called upon to assist Fr. Peter Sidler in realizing the priest’s design of the main doors of the Abbey Church. While it fell to Fr. Peter to patiently emboss the verses from Ephesians on the reverse of the copper sheeting, thus raising the letters on the obverse, it was Benson who carefully laid out the wording in Latin to perfectly span the double doors from top to bottom and side to side.

From museum catalog, Two Thousand Years of Calligraphy (Organized by The Baltimore Museum of Art, The Peabody Institute Library, and The Walters Art Gallery, on view June 6-July 18, 1965)

Upon the death of John Howard Benson in 1956, the John Stevens Shop was later taken over by his son, John Everett “Fud” Benson (b. 1939) and his grandson, Nicholas “Nick” Benson, who assumed ownership of the historic business in 1993. The Benson connection with Portsmouth continues to this day. John Howard Benson’s granddaughter, Abby Benson ’92, was the School’s first female graduate and now occupies a seat on the Board of Directors (formerly the Board of Regents).

John Everett Benson (son of John H. Benson)
with his son Nicholas Waite Benson
(from the John Stevens Shop website)

It is remarkable to think about an American company that is 319 years old and has only ever had two families as owners. Most if not all of their earliest commissions dating back to 1705 were most likely tombstones. These simple but suitable memorials have impacted many over all these years. One of particular note, from 1983, I saw and prayed in front of many times in St. Louis. I had attended the wake, funeral and burial of the playwright, Tennessee Williams, who died in New York City on February 25, 1983. I knew his brother, Dakin, a lawyer, who arranged for his brother to be buried from my parish at the St. Louis Cathedral Basilica. For years afterwards, when called upon to lead tours around the area, we often finished at Calvary Cemetery to pay our respects, not realizing that the tombstone was a Benson original.