Many of his paintings and engravings were based on his travels in the Near and Middle East, China and India, often featuring camel caravans, Arab scenes and depictions of Indian life.

Joseph Austin Benwell married Marian Boulton (1821–1892), also an exhibiting artist, at St George's, Bloomsbury, London on 13 July 1854.

[2][3][4] His entry in The Dictionary of Indian Biography describes him as '...conspicuous for original and pleasing delineations of native life, landscape and buildings in India, evidently drawn on the spot: ...exhibited at the Royal Academy up to 1883:...he painted a series of dissolving views of Indian life, exhibited in London before 1862.'

Also in the context of the Crimean War, he produced a coloured lithograph depicting the aftermath of the Battle of Alma, The Heights of Alma- the Day after the Battle 1854, and Her Majesty taking leave of the Fusilier Guards previous to their departure to the East which was published in The History of the War with Russia by Henry Tyrrell, 1858.

Benwell was a prolific illustrator for various Victorian religious publications, particularly those published by the Religious Tract Society and with a missionary theme, for example The Sunday at Home: A Family Magazine for Sabbath Reading, The Leisure Hour, a Family Journal of Instruction and Recreation and The Picture Scrap Book series (the latter aimed at Victorian youth) during the 1850s through to the mid-1860s.

He illustrated several books, including The Three Presidencies of India: a History of the Rise and Progress of the British Indian Possessions, from the Earliest Records to the Present Time by John Capper, 1853; Our Indian Army: A Military History of the British Empire in the East by Captain Rafter, 1855[2] and Romance of Modern Missions: A Home in the Land of Snows and other Sketches of Missionary Life by Cecilia Lucy Brightwell, 1870.

His first cousin, William Arnee Frank (1809–1897), the son of his aunt Hannah Benwell, was also an artist who published a series of lithographs of Bristol views in 1831 held at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

[27] His landscape watercolours were mostly of views around Bristol, the Wye Valley and North Wales and he was active well into his eighties, still showing work at the West of England Academy in 1891.

Another first cousin, son of his aunt Rebecca Benwell, was David Holt (1828–1880), a published poet (including Poems, Rural and Miscellaneous, publ.