Thomas Hart Benton - part 3 lithographs

This is part three of a four-part post on the works of American 'Regionalist' artist Thomas Hart Benton. For biographical notes see part one. During the 1930's Benton began to produce signed, limited edition lithographs which were sold at $5.00 each through the Associated American Artists galleries. He continued to make lithographs for the rest of his life. Part four will look at Benton's work during WWII.  
Note: sizes where given have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole centimetre:

1934 Minstrel Show 
23 x 30 cm

1936 Huckleberry Finn 
43 x 56 cm

1936 Jesse James 
42 x 56 cm

1937 A Drink of Water 
26 x 37 cm

1937 Going Home

1938 Approaching Storm

1938 Distress

1938 Edge of Town 
23 x 28 cm

1938 Haystack 
26 x 32 cm

1938 In the Ozarks 
26 x 33 cm

1938 Rainy Day 
22 x 34 cm

1938 The Poet 
23 x 31 cm

1939 Departure of the Joads 
33 x 47 cm

1939 Down the River (The Young Fisherman) 
32 x 25 cm

1939 Frisky Day 
20 x 30 cm

1939 Planting (Spring Plowing) 
25 x 32 cm

1939 Prodigal Son 
26 x 33 cm

1939 Shallow Creek 
36 x 24 cm

c1940 (Scene) 
24 x 32 cm

1941 Aaron 
33 x 24 cm

1941 Slow Train Through Arkansas 
25 x 32 cm

1942 The Race 
23 x 34 cm

1943 Letter from Overseas 
25 x 33 cm

1945 Island Hay 
25 x 32 cm

1946 Gate-side Conversation 
25 x 35 cm

1967 Ten Pound Hammer 
35 x 25 cm

1967 The Little Fisherman 
36 x 25 cm

1969 Discussion 
25 x 30 cm

1972 Forward Pass 
46 x 63 cm

Thomas Hart Benton - part 2

1971 Self-Portrait 
lithograph 50 x 35cm

This is part two of a four-part post on the works of American 'Regionalist' painter Thomas Hart Benton. For biographical notes see part one. 

Note: Sizes where shown are rounded up or down to the nearest whole centimetre:

1939 Frisky Day

1939 Weighing Cotton 
tempera and oil on canvas 81 x 100 cm

c1939-41 Prodigal Son 
oil and tempera on panel 66 x 77 cm

1940 The Departure of the Joads 
tempera and oil

1940 The Hailstorm 
tempera on panel 83 x 101 cm

1941 Aaron 
tempera and oil on canvas 77 x 62 cm

1941 The Cotton Picker

1941 Threshing

1943 July Hay 
tempera, methyl cellulose and oil on masonite 96 x 68 cm

1943 The Wreck of the Ole '97 
tempera on masonite 71 x 112 cm

1944 Cut the Line

1945 Field Workers (Cotton Pickers) 
oil on canvas 22 x 34 cm

1945 Spring on the Missouri  
tempera and oil on masonite 77 x 102 cm

1947 Daily Yonder 
detail from 'Aschelons and Hercules'

1948 Poker Night (from “A Streetcar Named Desire”) 
tempera and oil on canvas 91 x 122 cm

1949 Portrait of a Musician 
casein, tempera and oil varnish on canvas

1951 Flood

1954 The Kentuckian

c1955-60 Sheepherder 
oil on canvas 122 x 168 cm

1964 The Twist

1964-5 Trail Riders 
oil on canvas 143 x 188 cm

1967 Wheat 
oil on wood 51 x 53 cm

1973 Jon Boat 
tempera and acrylic on board 31 x 91 cm

The Sources of Country Music

Thomas Hart Benton - part 1

This is the first of a four-part post on the works of American painter and muralist Thomas Hart Benton (1889 – 1975). Benton was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. He was born in Neosho, Missouri in 1889 into an influential family of politicians and powerbrokers. In 1907 Benton enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago, but left for Paris in 1909 to continue his art education at the Académie Julian. In Paris, Benton met other North American artists, such as the Mexican Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright.

After studying in Europe, Benton moved to New York City in 1913 and resumed painting. During World War I he served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed at Norfolk, Virginia. His war-related work had an enduring effect on his style. He was directed to make drawings and illustrations of shipyard work and life, and this requirement for realistic documentation strongly affected his later style. (Note: Part 4 of these posts will feature Benton’s war art)

On his return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism"; he began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism. Benton was active in leftist politics. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930-31. These now hang in the lobby of the AXA building at 1290 Sixth Avenue in New York City. He was strongly influenced by the works of the Spanish artist El Greco.

1930 City Activities with Dance Hall

1930 City Activities with Subway

Benton broke through to the mainstream in 1932. A relative unknown, he won a commission to paint the murals of Indiana life that were the state's contribution to the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, Illinois. In 1932 he also painted The Arts of Life in America, a controversial set of large murals for an early site of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

In 1934 Benton was featured on one of the earliest colour covers of Time magazine. Benton's work was featured along with that of fellow Mid-westerners Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in an article entitled "The U.S. Scene". The trio were featured as the new heroes of American art, and Regionalism was described as a significant art movement.

He settled in Kansas City, Missouri and accepted a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute. Kansas City afforded Benton greater access to rural America, which was changing rapidly. Benton's sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer. In the late 1930s, he created some of his best-known work, including the iconic allegorical nude Persephone, which for a while hung in Billy Rose’s nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe. It is now held by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City.

1938-9 Persephone oil on canvas 183 x 142 cm

During this period, Benton also began to produce signed, limited edition lithographs which were sold at $5.00 each through the Associated American Artists galleries. (Note: Part 3 of these posts will feature Benton’s lithographs)
During World War II, Benton created a series titled The Year of Peril, which portrayed the threat to American ideals by fascism and Nazism. The prints were widely distributed.

The Year of Peril - Embarkation

The Year of Peril - Sowers

Following the war, Regionalism fell from favour, eclipsed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism. Benton remained active for another 30 years, but his work portrayed less social commentary and showed bucolic images of pre-industrial farmlands. Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio.

Note: Sizes given have been rounded up or down to the nearest whole centimetre:

n.d. Cotton Bin 
oil on tin 23 x 33 cm

1920 People of Chilmark (Figure Compostion) 
oil on canvas 166 x 197cm

1921 The Cliffs 
oil on canvas 74 x 88 cm

1922 Chilmark Landscape 
oil on paper 39 x 58 cm

1922 Self-Portrait with Wife Rita

1926 The Lord is my Shepherd 
tempera on canvas 84 x 69 cm

1928 Boomtown 
oil on canvas 117 x 138 cm

1928 The Cotton Pickers

1931-2 Romance 
tempera and oil on panel 114 x 84 cm

1932 Arts of the West

1932 The Arts of the City

1934 Lord, Heal the Child

1934 The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley 
tempera and oil on canvas 105 x 133 cm

1936 A Social History of the State of Missouri, Huckleberry Finn

1936 Kansas City from Politics, Farming and the Law

1938 Roasting Ears

1938 The Flood

1938 Threshing Wheat

1938 TP and Jake