Ben Stahl was an American artist

Artist

An artist is a person engaged in one or more of any of a broad spectrum of activities related to creating art, practicing the arts and/or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse is a practitioner in the visual arts only...

, illustrator

Illustrator

An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...

 and author

Author

An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

. He showed precocious talent, winning a scholarship to the Art Institute of Chicago

Art Institute of Chicago

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...

 at age twelve. His artwork appeared in the International Watercolor Show at the Art Institute when he was sixteen. He later taught at the Art Institute, as well as at the American Academy of Art, the Art Students League of New York

Art Students League of New York

The Art Students League of New York is an art school located on West 57th Street in New York City. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists, and has maintained for over 130 years a tradition of offering reasonably priced classes on a...

, Brooklyn's Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute

Pratt Institute is a private art college in New York City located in Brooklyn, New York, with satellite campuses in Manhattan and Utica. Pratt is one of the leading undergraduate art schools in the United States and offers programs in Architecture, Graphic Design, History of Art and Design,...

 and at various universities.

Stahl won many prizes, including the Saltus Gold Medal of the National Academy of Design

National Academy of Design

The National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts, founded in New York City as the National Academy of Design – known simply as the "National Academy" – is an honorary association of American artists founded in 1825 by Samuel F. B. Morse, Asher B. Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E...

. His work appeared in Women's Home Companion, Cosmopolitan (magazine)

Cosmopolitan (magazine)

Cosmopolitan is an international magazine for women. It was first published in 1886 in the United States as a family magazine, was later transformed into a literary magazine and eventually became a women's magazine in the late 1960s...

, American Artist, North Light

North Light

North Light is a retired Thoroughbred racehorse, and active sire, bred in Ireland but trained in the United Kingdom. He is best known as the winner of the Epsom Derby in 2004. He currently stands at the Adena Springs Stud in Aurora, Ontario, Canada.-Background:North Light was bred in Ireland by...

, Esquire

Esquire (magazine)

Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...

, the Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

 Magazine, Picture Post

Picture Post

Picture Post was a prominent photojournalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months...

, Southwest Art and in some 750 stories in The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post

The Saturday Evening Post is a bimonthly American magazine. It was published weekly under this title from 1897 until 1969, and quarterly and then bimonthly from 1971.-History:...

. He was featured in the 1976 television series Journey into Art with Ben Stahl, 26 half-hour programs consisting of lectures and painting demonstrations by the artist. Stahl was one of the founding faculty for the Famous Artists School

Famous Artists School

Famous Artists School has offered correspondence courses in art since it was founded in 1948 in Westport, Connecticut, U.S.A. The idea was conceived by Albert Dorne as a result of a conversation with Norman Rockwell...

.

Stahl also produced advertising artwork for various companies, and posters for several movies, including Ben-Hur

Ben-Hur (1959 film)

Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...

. He illustrated a number of books, including The Innkeeper's Wife

The Innkeeper's Wife

The Innkeeper's Wife is a 1958 Christmas story, written by A. J. Cronin for The American Weekly. The story is about the wife of the innkeeper in Bethlehem who had no room for Mary and Joseph to spend the night. It originally appeared in the December 21 issue before being printed in book form by...

by A.J. Cronin, a limited edition of Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary

Madame Bovary is Gustave Flaubert's first published novel and is considered his masterpiece. The story focuses on a doctor's wife, Emma Bovary, who has adulterous affairs and lives beyond her means in order to escape the banalities and emptiness of provincial life...

, and the 25th anniversary edition of Gone with the Wind

Gone with the Wind

The slaves depicted in Gone with the Wind are primarily loyal house servants, such as Mammy, Pork and Uncle Peter, and these slaves stay on with their masters even after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 sets them free...

. Stahl wrote two novels: Blackbeard's Ghost was published in 1965 by Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is an educational and trade publisher in the United States. Headquartered in Boston's Back Bay, it publishes textbooks, instructional technology materials, assessments, reference works, and fiction and non-fiction for both young readers and adults.-History:The company was...

, and made into a movie by The Walt Disney Company in 1969

Blackbeard's Ghost

Blackbeard's Ghost is a 1968 live-action fantasy comedy Disney film starring Peter Ustinov, Dean Jones, and Suzanne Pleshette, directed by Robert Stevenson. It is based upon the novel of the same name by Ben Stahl and was shot in Walt Disney Studios. The Disney Channel aired this film until the...

; The Secret of Red Skull, a sequel to Blackbeard's Ghost, was also published by Houghton Mifflin.

Ben Stahl also served as an official U.S. Air Force artist and as an officer in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. In 1986, he guest starred on The Joy of Painting

The Joy of Painting

The Joy of Painting was an American television show hosted by painter Bob Ross that taught its viewers basic techniques for landscape oil painting. Although Bob Ross could complete a painting in half an hour, the intent of the show was not to teach viewers speed painting. Rather, he intended for...

.

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