Benson's lifelong love of birds and his appreciation of Japanese design, fashionable in Paris and in Boston as well, are readily apparent in "Early Morning." Benson had explored the abundant bird life in the marshes near his childhood home in Salem and early on had even aspired to ornithological illustration. His first known oil paintings are still lifes of birds. Later, flying birds silhouetted against the sky became a favorite subject for Benson, just as they were popular motifs in the Japanese art Benson admired, especially when depicted in juxtaposition against the still features of a landscape. "Early Morning" bears a striking similarity to an eighteenth-century Japanese screen entitled "Geese Flying over a Beach" (Freer Gallery of Art) by Maruyama Okyo, and it is possible Benson saw that screen at the importer Bunkyo Matsuki's shop in Boston or the Matsuki home in Salem before it was purchased by Charles Freer in 1898. The decorative nature of "Early Morning" is enhanced by Benson's choice of a long, horizontal canvas. When the painting was exhibited in New York in 1900, the "New York Times" critic singled it out for praise, finding it "especially good…with the ducks in flight and the gray expanse of marsh and sky rose-flushed in the east with the dawn."

This text was adapted by Janet Comey from Erica Hirshler, "Impressionism Abroad: Boston and French Painting," exhibition catalogue, Royal Academy of Arts, 2005.

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