Bena Frank Mayer (1900 – 1994)

Untitled (New York), c. 1930s, oil and mixed media on canvas, estate stamped verso, 30 x 25 inches

$4250

Bena Frank Mayer was a New York-based painter. Together with her husband, fellow artist Ralph Mayer, she was also an art technologist. Born in Norfolk, Virginia, Bena studied at the Cooper Union, where she won awards for drawing, Hunter College, and at the Art Students League with Gifford Beal, Stuart Davis, and Kenneth Hayes Miller. She also studied portraiture with Cecelia Beaux and privately with George Luks. She spent 1925-26 studying painting in France. Mayer first came to the attention of New York critics as a portrait painter while studying with Beaux. By the late 1920s, her practice expanded to include urban scenes of New York, some painted in a manner similar to Glenn O Coleman, and others like the present example, in a more expressive style.

Mayer was a member of the Brooklyn Society of Artists, Art Students League, Allied Artists of America, Salons of America, and United American Artists, and often exhibited with these groups as part of their periodic shows, as well as at the Carnegie Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Norfolk Museum of Art, and Riverside Museum, among others. She served in leadership positions with the American Society of Contemporary Artists (Board member and chair of committees), National Association of Women Artists (committee), New York Society of Women Artists (President) and Artists Technical Research Institute. In 1951, she won the Marcia Brady Tucker Prize and in 1959, the Lena Newcastle Prize, both from the National Association of Women Artists.

Mayer became involved with art technology after her marriage to fellow artist and chemical engineer, Ralph Toch Mayer. For many decades, Bena worked alongside Ralph, including on The Artists Handbook of Materials and Techniques, the most widely published technical manual on painting in 20th century America. Ralph paid a fitting tribute to Bena, “Th[e] record of my activities in the art world for the past thirty-five years would not be complete without recording the important part played in these activities by my wife, Bena Frank Mayer. A highly accomplished and sensitive, creative painter whose life has been dedicated to her work, she has also been deeply devoted to the furtherance of my own efforts, and her unswerving support has been an essential part of what I have accomplished.” Bena was also Ralph’s introduction to becoming a practicing artist and his first and most important painting instructor. The Mayers often shared studio space, including renting Stefan Hirsh’s studio for a short time. Bena Frank Mayer is extensively listed in Who Was Who in American Art and other standard references.