The freckled face of Anne of Green Gables is likely what many know as Ben F. Stahl’s masterpiece, used in L.M. Montgomery’s “Anne of Green Gables” books and featured on a Canadian stamp. 

Stahl, 91, died June 15 at Queen Elizabeth Hospital on Prince Edward Island, Canada, leaving his wife, two sons, a daughter, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and a host of extended family and friends, according to his obituary. Stahl lived for years in Connecticut, including in Southport, Weston and Litchfield. 

His son, Keith Stahl, lived in Litchfield with Ben Stahl and his first wife, Carolyn, and siblings Kees, Kellen and Kathleen. 

“I was there with him in Litchfield, and then after my mother died of cancer in 1977, we stayed until my younger brother graduated from high school; I graduated in 1980, and my brother in 1984,” Keith Stahl said. “That’s when Dad moved to Prince Edward Island.

“I remember Litchfield as a nice place to live,” he said. “It was beautiful.”

Born in Chicago in 1932, Benjamin Franklin Stahl moved to San Francisco in 1949; after high school, he was drafted into the Army’s 21st Topographical Battalion at the Presidio in San Francisco, to be trained as a mapmaker, according to his obituary. In 1955 he relocated his family to Southport, Conn., to begin his 17 years with Famous Artist School, which included more than three years in Amsterdam, Netherlands. After he returned to the U.S., he began working in commercial art and moved his family first to Weston and eventually Litchfield.

According to his son, Stahl illustrated for major book publishers, including Bantam, Putnam, Random House, Franklin Library, and Houghton Mifflin — and also for CBS and NBC. His hundreds of images, for popular novels such as “The Immigrants,” by Howard Fast; for children’s books and  television, such as his black and white, crosshatched, “Little House on the Prairie” promotion; earned the artist membership to the prestigious Society of Illustrators, listings in "Who’s Who in American Art?" and "The Illustrator in America," along with multiple honors from the American Institute of Graphic Arts. His “Anne of Green Gables” paintings are featured online at Gallery 18. 

Despite having had no formal art training himself before his freelance career as an artist-illustrator, Ben Stahl taught art in Bridgeport; at the Ringling School of Art, in Sarasota, Fla; and was head of art instruction at Famous Artist School, a correspondence operation founded by his father, Ben A. Stahl, that included Norman Rockwell on its faculty, according to his obituary.

After his first wife’s death and second marriage to Pat Sorrells, Ben Stahl moved to Prince Edward Island. His landscape paintings were extremely popular there, his son said. 

“He had to convince Pat to move there,” Keith Stahl said. “He told me that when he went there to do research, that stepping off the plane was like stepping back in time for him, that it reminded him of Wisconsin and how beautiful it was. He and Pat were working in New York City at the time, and they bought a farmhouse up there, and moved. He loved it, and she loved it.

“They started a poster shop, and Pat encouraged him to paint. He became kind of a local icon up there,” his son said. “It was inspiring.”

After Sorrells' death, Stahl spent his remaining years on Prince Edward Island with his partner Sally Cole.

Stahl’s painting evolved over time; after decades of illustrations and paintings for commercial clients and publishers, he began painting, and sold landscape paintings on the island, where the community embraced him as a resident artist, his son said. He also did a series of nudes in Montauk, Long Island. When COVID-19 hit in 2020, he took advantage of the pandemic’s isolation and began working on abstract works, including mixed media. 

“He did 19 pieces in 19 days; he was just pumping them out,” his son said. “He was using wood, fabric, paint; he was getting a little crazy, but he really enjoyed it.”

The Stahl family is hoping to organize a retrospective show featuring Stahl’s various phases of his career, at the Confederation Centre for the Arts in Charlottetown on Prince Edward Island. 

“The retrospective would include 'the Annes,' and his work from the late 1980s to the early 1990s, and then his straight painting on Prince Edward Island, as well as the abstract work,” said Keith Stahl. 

“'Anne of Green Gables' made him very famous, but the last stages of his career, with the paintings and the abstract work, no one’s ever seen,” he said. 

His father wasn’t a fan of the internet or cell phones, and not a lot of the artist’s massive body of work includes the actual paintings themselves; no digital files on websites.

“It was tricky, because he refused to put stuff online,” Keith Stahl said. “It would have been helpful. But he had a gallery on the island where he sold his work.”

Getting a retrospective show off the ground is a promise from a son to a father. “The last time I saw him, nine days before he died, his concern was 'Don’t drop the ball. I need to sell this work,'” Keith Stahl said. “Now it’s a chance for everyone to see it.”

Having an artist for a father is something of which Keith Stahl is exceedingly proud.  “Art was always number one; it was his passion,” Keith Stahl said. 

Ben Stahl is survived by his loving longtime partner Sally Cole, sons Keith (Mary) and Kees Stahl (Marion), daughter, Kathleen Stahl (Fred), sister Gail Stahl, sister-in-law Terry Sochet, grandsons Cody Stahl and Gary Grigg, his great-grandchildren, the extended Myers-Stahl family including David and Regina Stahl, dear friends Ann Sherman, Gail and Susana Rutherford, Gary Torlone, Norman MacDonald, Richard Vickerson and Vicki Armstrong. He was predeceased by his wives Carolyn (Litchfield) Stahl and Pat Sorrells, his son Kurt (Kellen) Stahl, his mother, Margaret Eubank Stahl, and his father, Ben A. Stahl.

No funeral service is planned. Memorial donations may be made to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.