 His work was shown in the Exposition Universelle at Paris in 1889, and the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.Irwin had studios in San Francisco, Boston, New Bedford, and New York.Benoni Burdeau Irwin was born on June 29, 1840, in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada to Jared Irwin (1803–1873) and Lydia Kennedy (1807–1871) and moved to upstate New York as a young man.