The frank bensow collection

Uppsala Auktionskammare is delighted to present a selection of more than two hundred museum-quality Old Master engravings, woodcuts, and etchings, spanning the 15th to the early 19th century from the collection of the renowned Swedish print collector Frank Bensow (1883-1969).

Uppsala Auktionskammare is grateful to specialist Todd Weyman for cataloguing and expertise in bringing The Bensow Collection to auction. For nearly three decades Todd Weyman was the Vice President and Director of Prints and Drawings at Swann Auction Galleries, New York, and is among the leading international print specialists. He is a featured appraiser and prints expert on the American version of the Antiques Roadshow and is now based full-time in Stockholm.

The Bensow Collection is sold as a part of our Decorative Sale 19 March 2025.

Frank Bensow (1883-1969) was born in Göteborg and was a distinguished civil engineer as well as a major in the Swedish Army, serving in the Road and Waterway Construction Service Corps. He amassed his collection of more than eight hundred sheets of Old Master prints over several decades. Bensow assembled an encyclopedic collection, not unusual for connoisseurs like himself during the early to mid-20th century golden age of print collecting. His acquisitions devote particular attention to many of the important artistic movements of the centuries that the collection spans as well as the key artists and schools of each era.

Pencil notes made by Bensow on many of the sheets appear to indicate that his earliest acquisitions, made during the mid- to late 1940s, were the familiar cornerstone artists of many other traditional print collections, including Albrecht Dürer, Hendrick Goltzius, Claude Lorrain, and Jacques Callot, to note several. These acquisition notes reveal that his focus during the 1940s and 1950s was German and Dutch prints, while his collecting interests shifted to Italian and French works in the 1960s.  Additional inscriptions on some sheets and personal correspondence indicate that Bensow tracked auction sales through houses such as Gutekunst & Klipstein (Bern, 1920s-1950s) and Galerie Gerda Bassenge (Berlin, 1960s), as well as venerable print galleries including P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., Ltd., London (he had sent Colnaghi a long list of desiderata in 1952), William H. Schab (New York, 1940s-1960s) and C.G. Boerner (Düsseldorf), from whom he likely also acquired some of the prints in his collection.

Though it is unclear what sparked Bensow’s initial print collecting interest, with a technical background and civil engineer profession such as his, it seems probable that his wife, the Swedish painter and illustrator Sigrid Bensow (1882-1954), who he married in 1910, would have provided him with at least an early appreciation of art. Noteworthy in Bensow’s collection are a significant number of works acquired from the renowned Stockholm print collector Dr. C. Axel Widstrand (1866-1956), whose print collection, among the largest in Sweden and once totaling over 40,000 works, forms the core of the graphics collection at the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, and who must certainly have influenced Bensow.  The attention to the superior quality of the early impressions he acquired and the referencing of their states and catalogue raisonné details, with pencil notations in Bensow’s hand on many sheets, stemmed from his close study of printmaking techniques and literature, an acute knowledge of comparable impressions, and to some degree a similar precision that was demanded by his technical profession. As Bensow noted in a brief introduction of an exhibition of graphic works from his collection shown at the Norrköpings Museum in 1961, “If you come across an old, decent ‘copper engraving,’ you often develop a certain appreciation for the image’s content–it gives a proper sense of time period, line work, and values. Upon closer inspection, you usually find the engraver’s name or signature and look it up in reference books like Nagler, Bartsch, and the like–both sources provide information about the artist and what they are known for. And then you discover a lot.”

The Italian prints in Bensow’s collection predominantly belong to the early 16th century school of engravings made by the artist Marcantonio Raimondi and his circle after the designs of Michelangelo, Raphael, and other Renaissance masters, or to the Italian painter-etchers of the late 16th and 17th century. In the former group he acquired a stunning, early impression of Raimondi’s iconic engraving after Raphael, “The Judgment of Paris”, circa 1510-20, and in the latter important etchings by Federico Barocci, Guido Reni, Giovanni B. Castiglione, Bartolomeo Biscaino, and many others.  The Italian works are also distinguished by vivid examples by Gian Giacomo Caraglio, “The Battle with a Shield on a Lance” and ”The Virgin and Child with St. Elizabeth and the Infant St. John the Baptist (The Small Holy Family)”, from circa 1527 and circa 1550 respectively, both early printings on blue laid paper after designs by Raphael, and Giorgio Ghisi, “The Rest on the Flight into Egypt”, 1578, from the scarce first state, remarkably well preserved (and also notably among the prints Bensow acquired earlier in his collecting during the 1940s, according to his pencil notation).

The Dutch prints in Bensow’s collection mainly concentrate on the late 16th and early 17th century Mannerists or the painter-etchers of Rembrandt’s circle and the subsequent generation, along with some outlying gems like the scarce and important engraving of “The Last Judgment” triptych based on Hieronymus Bosch from circa 1550-1570.  Bensow appears to have acquired several of the highlights by Hendrick Goltzius in his collection in 1947, including the complete set of six engravings that comprise “The Life of the Virgin” from 1593-1594, all richly-inked and early impressions, and “The Massacre of the Innocents”, Goltzius’s virtuoso and unfinished engraving from 1585-1586, the same impression of this scarce and desirable engraving that had previously been in the Widstrand collection. Among the Dutch painter-etchers of Rembrandt’s circle and the subsequent generation, Bensow’s collection contains rarities by Jan Lievens, Ferdinand Bol, Salomon Savery, and Jan Gillisz van Vliet, including some subjects by these artists which are currently known in existing impressions in only a handful of public collections.

Among the German prints in his collection, Bensow possessed works by well-known artists such as Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder, while he also acquired significant works by the so-called German “Little Masters” including Hans Sebald Beham, Virgil Solis, Albrecht Altdorfer, Heinrich Aldegrever, and Georg Pencz, printmakers who worked during the first half of the 16th century and specialized in very small, intricately detailed engravings and woodcuts.  Bensow’s collection also includes fine examples by the German printmakers, Daniel Hopfer and Hans Lautensack, who were among the earliest practitioners of the etching technique.

Bensow’s French holdings include both mainstay artists, including Jacques Callot and Claude Lorrain, and other peripheral printmakers – particularly for the time that he was collecting – notably Étienne Delaune, the 16th century engraver whose work resembles the German “Little Masters”, and the French (and Italian) printmakers who worked at the court of King François I at the palace of Fontainebleau, the so-called School of Fontainebleau. There are exquisite, early impressions of scarce subjects by some of the most significant School of Fontainebleau printmakers, including Léon Davent’s “Dance of Fauns and Bacchantes”, etching, circa 1547, and Jean Mignon’s “The Judgment of Paris”, etching, circa 1544-1545. Completing the French prints in the collection, Bensow possessed works by well-known artists of the Rococo movement that include Antoine Watteau, François Boucher, and Jean-Honoré Fragonard.

The Frank Bensow Collection is an outstanding example of Old Master print connoisseurship, a comprehensive overview of five centuries of art history, with multiple highlights that showcase significant printmaking achievements. Bensow’s collection conveys a strong awareness of printmaking history and a thorough knowledge of the techniques of engraving, etching, and woodcut.  He was a collector who acquired the fundamental prints that formed many collections like his during the early to mid-20th century as well as prints that were by little known or lesser appreciated artists.  These once unfamiliar graphic works are equally as thrilling as the cornerstone Old Master showpieces. Bensow’s keen eye, along with his ability at locating the best and earliest impressions, and his originality in exploring areas of the Old Master field that were then under-appreciated profoundly aided him in assembling one of Sweden’s most exceptional print collections of the past century.

Live Auction: Wednesday 19 March at 10 AM.
Saleroom: Magasin 1, Södra Hamnvägen 8 in Stockholm.

Viewing: 10 – 18 March at Nybrogatan 20 in Stockholm.
Open Weekdays 10 AM – 5 PM, Weekend 11 AM – 4 PM.