Joseph Vorst
Benton Family
1941
Lithograph
13 1/2 x 11 3/4 in. (34.3 x 29.8 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right.
Thomas Hart Benton at home with his family. According to an old label accompanying the print, the figures are Benton, his wife Rita, their son T.P. reading a Dick Tracy comic, and their daughter Jessie, with Benton's painting Lonesome Road on the wall behind.
Vorst and Benton were colleagues in Missouri in the 1930s and early 1940s and are recorded as having shared a studio for a time; this informal domestic portrait is a rare view of the Benton household by a fellow artist.
Joseph Paul Vorst (1897–1947)
Joseph Paul Vorst was born in Essen, Germany, studied at the Folkwang school in Hagen, and was left with a permanent limp from service in the First World War. He continued his training in Berlin under Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt and worked in both Expressionist and New Objectivity idioms before emigrating to the United States in 1930. He settled in Missouri near relatives in Ste. Genevieve, became associated with the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony, and taught in St. Louis. Vorst worked for the New Deal art programs, painting post office murals for Vandalia (Corn Harvest) and Bethany (Time Out), and he is recorded as having shared a studio for a time with Thomas Hart Benton. His paintings and lithographs of the Depression years address drought, flood, sharecropping and rural faith. His work is in the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He died in Overland, Missouri.
Thomas Hart Benton at home with his family. According to an old label accompanying the print, the figures are Benton, his wife Rita, their son T.P. reading a Dick Tracy comic, and their daughter Jessie, with Benton's painting Lonesome Road on the wall behind.
Vorst and Benton were colleagues in Missouri in the 1930s and early 1940s and are recorded as having shared a studio for a time; this informal domestic portrait is a rare view of the Benton household by a fellow artist.
Joseph Paul Vorst (1897–1947)
Joseph Paul Vorst was born in Essen, Germany, studied at the Folkwang school in Hagen, and was left with a permanent limp from service in the First World War. He continued his training in Berlin under Max Liebermann and Max Slevogt and worked in both Expressionist and New Objectivity idioms before emigrating to the United States in 1930. He settled in Missouri near relatives in Ste. Genevieve, became associated with the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony, and taught in St. Louis. Vorst worked for the New Deal art programs, painting post office murals for Vandalia (Corn Harvest) and Bethany (Time Out), and he is recorded as having shared a studio for a time with Thomas Hart Benton. His paintings and lithographs of the Depression years address drought, flood, sharecropping and rural faith. His work is in the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He died in Overland, Missouri.
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