Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin
Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin (February 13, 1837 – July 19, 1914) was an American statesman.
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His parents were American missionaries in Greece. He was born in Argos, Greece, but then educated in the United States, receiving an A.B. from Williams College in 1859.[1][2] He pursued careers as a journalist, author, artist, and diplomat. In 1883, he was appointed as the first American Minister to Persia (modern-day Iran), a post he occupied for two years, leaving in 1885; previously, he had been appointed as the Chargé d'Affaires to Persia but did not proceed to this post.[3]
It was he who first drafted the diplomatic code used by the American legation in Persia.
As a journalist, Benjamin served as American art editor for the Magazine of Art and covered the Crimean War with the London Illustrated News. He was also a marine painter and illustrator.[1] Benjamin wrote poetry and books on Persia, Greece, Turkey, and American and European art.[4] In his autobiography, "The Life and Adventures of a Free Lance," Benjamin commented on his friendships with artists in New York including William Holbrook Beard, Frederic Edwin Church, Sanford R. Gifford, and Launt Thompson.[5]
Benjamin died in Burlington, Vermont in 1914 and is buried in Lakeview Cemetery.[1]
See also
- US-Iran relations
References
- "Samuel Green Wheeler Benjamin". Find A Grave. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
- "Portrait of S.G.W. Benjamin, 1859". Unbound: Williams Digital Collections. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
- "Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin". Office of the Historian, Foreign Service Institute. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
- "S.G.W. Benjamin". The Online Books Page - University of Pennsylvania. Retrieved May 21, 2020.
- Benjamin, S.G.W. (1914). The Life and Adventures of a Free Lance: Being the Observations of S.G.W. Benjamin. Burlington, VT: Free Press Company.
- Lorentz, J.: Historical Dictionary of Iran, 1995. ISBN 0-8108-2994-0.
- Olsen, T.: S. G. W. Benjamin, Thomson-Gale 2005/06. URL last accessed 2007-02-20.
- Political Graveyard: Benjamin, Samuel Greene Wheeler. URL last accessed 2007-02-20.
External links
- Works by S.G.W. Benjamin at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about S.G.W. Benjamin at Internet Archive
- Works by or about Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin at Internet Archive
- Hudson River school visions: the landscapes of Sanford R. Gifford, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Benjamin (see index)