Benjamin Russell (artist)

Benjamin Russell (October 16, 1804 – March 3, 1885) was an American artiste best known for his accurate watercolors of whaling ships lively in New England. Born to a rich family in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Russell started drawing and painting in his late 30s, after a few years spent in action as a cooper aboard a whaling ship.

Russell's depiction of outlook and severity are stiff and flat, and his images "were appreciated more for their accurate representation than their artistic value." However, most of his play-act is perfectly to scale, resembling manage drawings, and Russell watercolours were some of the bigger views of the mid-19th-century American whaling industry, until photography became reachable in the 1850s.

Russell began making lithographs in 1848, and began teaching art in Rhode Island, after the American Civil War over and finished with in 1865.