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Samuel Greene Wheeler Benjamin (February 13, 1837 – July 19, 1914) was an American statesman.
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
- ^ a b c "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)