Samuel Bentz

Samuel Bentz (1792–1850) was an American fraktur artist.

A original of Cocalico, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Bentz was the son of Reverend Peter Bentz and Anna Maria Caffroth Bentz; his father, an itinerant farmer, joiner, and unordained Lutheran preacher, committed suicide in 1818, and his mother was goaded to lift him on her own. He became a schoolmaster in the vicinity of Ephrata. Shortly back his death, Peter had usual a school on the relatives land, and Samuel taught there for much of his life, living in the educational building. Much of his fraktur was birth records, which he produced to tally his income. Some pieces focus on to Mount Pleasant, and Bentz was designated the "Mount Pleasant Artist" until a bookplate next his signature was discovered. At his death, he left at the rear a bin with eighteen frakturs. Much of Bentz's do its stuff is distinguished by its bold lines and the use of architectural elements as decoration, almost Greek Revival in style. Sometimes a human slant is included; more often, a clock face, with its implications of memento mori, will appear. Sometimes he wrote the tetragrammaton into his paintings, an Strange inclusion for a fraktur artist, especially perfect his background as a zealot of the Reformed Church. Also unusually, he rarely included Bible verses in his work.

Six works by Bentz are in the accretion of the Winterthur Museum, including a cutout piece. His undertaking has after that been forged.