Robert Benjamin (Ben) Norris (1910-2006) Manoa Rainforest XIX 29 1/2 x 41 1/4 in. (74.9 x 104.8 ...

Robert Benjamin (Ben) Norris (1910-2006) Manoa Rainforest XIX signed and dated 'Norris 1998' (lower right) watercolor on paper 29 1/2 x 41 1/4 in. (74.9 x 104.8 cm) Painted in 1998. Footnotes: Provenance The artist. Childs Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, 2001. Private collection, California, acquired from the above. Private collection, California, acquired from the above by descent. Literature Ben Norris, Margaret Norris Castrey, ed., Ben Norris: American Modernist, 1910-2006, An Autobiography, Copley Square Press, 2009, cover illustration (as 'Rain Forest No. 19 - Expansive View'). As an undergraduate at Pomona College, Ben Norris knew he wanted to become an artist. The harsh reality of the Depression made him very aware of the potential financial struggles of this career path, so he combined his studies in art with taxonomic botany. His studies took him from Pomona to the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University and then to the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1936, he moved to Hawaii as an educator, first at the Kamehameha School for Boys and then at the University of Hawaiʻi. He called Hawaiʻi home for the next 40 years, painting and photographing its lush landscapes and shores. He initially focused on watercolors but studied printmaking during World War II and worked in oils and acrylics as well. After his retirement, Norris moved to the East Coast – first to New York and then Pennsylvania – in 1976. He maintained strong connections to Hawaiʻi and returned in 1993 for an exhibition at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. This visit was the inspiration for his Rain Forest Series which he began in 1995. His decades-long love of the Hawaiian rain forests of the Tantalus watershed and the head of the Manoa Valley, in conjunction with his interest in botany and the changing flora of the area lead to a series of thirty-five large scale watercolors. Each was specific in its accuracy to the landscape, its plants, and quality of light. Norris completed the last of the series in 2001, at the advanced age of 91. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing