Draft:William Benson (color theorist)

William Benson (1819 – 22 September 1903) was a British architect and colour theorist who encouraged the adoption of scientific colour models amongst decorative artists.

Biography

Benson was the second son of the Reverend John Benson (1783–1860) and Frances Benson (née Gilpin, 1794–1865), born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire and baptised by his father on 11 May 1819. He is best known for his Principles of the science of colour, a scientific guide to mixing colours aimed at architects and decorative artists.

He married Edmunda Bourne (1819-1900), third daughter of the painter James Bourne, on 8 October 1850 at St Marylebone Church. By 1851 Benson was employed as a surveying clerk at the Metropolitan Buildings Office, working on building regulations. He later worked as a decorative painter and architect.

In the 1860s Benson read a journal article by James Clerk Maxwell on compound colours in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. Inspired by Maxwell's theories on the nature of light and colour, he published his Principles as a scientific guide to colour mixing aimed at decorative artists. Benson's colour guide made use of Maxwell's research on mixing coloured lights and proposed the use of the secondary colours of 'sea-green' (cyan), yellow and 'rosy-pink' (magenta) when mixing pigments.

After a review of his book was published in The Builder, a public debate arose in a series of open letters between Benson and the designer John Gregory Crace. Benson's new theory of colour mixing was a shock to Crace, who refused to believe that red, green and blue worked as primary colours as opposed to red, yellow and blue. Benson later met Crace in person on 15 February 1869 whilst delivering a paper on colour science at the Royal Institute of British Architects, which was largely not understood by the primarily non-scientific audience.

In order to recruit more likeminded individuals to his cause, Benson wrote to John Herschel in May 1869 and sent a copy of his publication to the Royal Society. From a letter dated 1871, it is also clear that Maxwell and the mathematician Cecil James Monro (1833-1882) were aware of Benson's work and his efforts to educate artists on colour theory. Benson also published his second treatise on colour theory in 1871, Manual of the Science of Colour was a smaller book with fewer illustrations that put a greater emphasis on the anatomy of the eye.

In 1872, Benson published a second edition of Principles, updating his notes on dichromacy to take account of the latest research. However, by this point he had moved to Hertford to take over the ministry of Port Vale Chapel from his late uncle, Bernard Gilpin (1803-1871). Benson spent the last 30 years of his life as a nonconformist minister, mostly giving up his scientific endeavours other than to publish a third edition of Principles in 1876 with an updated preface.

Following Edmunda's death in 1900, Benson died on 22 September 1903. Port Vale Chapel has since been demolished, although some of the church documents survive at the Hertfordshire Archives and Records Office. Benson's estate was left to his children, including Margaret Jane Benson, one of the first female members of the Linnaean Society.

Works

Principal works

• Principles of the science of colour concisely stated to aid and promote their useful application in the decorative arts (1896)
• Manual of the Science of Colour on the true theory of the colour-sensations and the natural system (1871)

Additional works

• Letters by the late James Bourne, with outlines of his life written by himself, and an account of his death. Edited by his son-in-law, W. Benson. (1861)
• Light in Darkness. A discourse occasioned by the death of Mary Blake, a granddaughter of the late William Huntington (1869)
• A Short Account of the Life and Death of Edmunda Benson. Written by her father. (1874)
• Universal Phonography, an attempt to select and classify the principal sounds of human speech, and to denote them by one set of symbols. With an appendix on the use of phonography for the blind. (1887)
• Memoirs of Six Sisters, daughters of the Rev. W. Gilpin, M.A., sometime rector of Pulverbach, Salop; mainly autobiographical. Edited by W. Benson (1895)