Benjamin Stahl (1910 - 1987) large reclining nude. Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. Inscribed "Tampa" verso. Sight size: 29.5 x 37.5 inches. Benjamin Albert Stahl was a painter and illustrator, who was born in Chicago, Illinois, lived in Weston, Connecticut in the 1940s and 1950s, and then settled in Sarasota, Florida. There he was Vice President of the Sarasota Art Association. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and then became a magazine and book illustrator whose publications included American Artist, Saturday Evening Post, Magazine World, the anniversary edition of Gone With The Wind and Blackbeard's Ghost. Commissions included the depiction of the fourteen stations of the cross for the Catholic Bible and Catholic Press in Chicago in 1955. He taught at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts and was a founding faculty member of the Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut.