Books and Manuscripts

From The Sporting Library Of American Adventurer, Naturalist, and Sportsman, Brooke Dolan II

Benson, Frank W.
Old Tom
1926. Etching, signed by Benson bottom left. From an edition of 150. 17 1/4 x 12 1/4 in. (438 x 311 mm). Light mat burn. In mat and in frame, 23 1/4 x 17 1/2 in. (590 x 444 mm). From the sporting library of American adventurer, naturalist, and sportsman, Brooke Dolan II. Paff 246

A fine impression of this portrait, memorializing Thomas Nickerson, caretaker of the Eastham, Massachusetts hunting lodge often visited by Benson.

Brooke Dolan II (1908-45) was an American adventurer, naturalist, sportsman, and book collector. Educated at Harvard University and Princeton University, he later became a trustee of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. During the 1930s he led two notable expeditions to China and Tibet, collecting numerous specimens that he sent back for the Academy's collection. In 1942, during World War II, he was recruited to serve in the OSS (precursor of the CIA) and traveled to Lhasa with Ilya Tolstoy (grandson of Russian writer Leo Tolstoy), searching for supply routes to China for the Allied Forces. During this time they established contact with the Tibetan government and met the seven-year-old 14th Dalai Lama--the first Americans to ever do so. He then joined the Army Air Forces, and the United States Military Observer Group in Western China, behind Japanese lines near Mao’s headquarters. He died in 1945.