Jessie and Jake
Jessie and Jake
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1942
Lithograph
13 3/8 x 9 7/8 in. (34.0 x 25.1 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 250.
Benton's daughter Jessie, then about three, plays Red Riding Hood in a wood lot on Martha's Vineyard, with Jake, the family's shepherd dog, cast as the wolf. Massive, writhing tree trunks frame the pair, and the path behind them leads toward the home of Benton's mother on the island. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
The lithograph is drawn from Benton's 1941 painting of the same subject, a picture he kept for himself, and it stands among the most personal images in his printed work: a family portrait set in the Vineyard landscape where he summered for more than half a century. (Fath 55)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Rejecting the European modernism of his early years, he became, with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a leader of American Regionalism, painting the farmers, laborers, and folklore of the Midwest and South in a dynamic, sculptural style. His major murals include America Today (1930–31, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) in the Missouri State Capitol, and in 1934 he became the first artist to appear on the cover of Time. Beginning in 1934, Associated American Artists published his lithographs in editions sold by mail at modest prices, making them among the most widely collected American prints of the century. Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock was his student, and later at the Kansas City Art Institute. He died in his Kansas City studio in 1975.
Benton's daughter Jessie, then about three, plays Red Riding Hood in a wood lot on Martha's Vineyard, with Jake, the family's shepherd dog, cast as the wolf. Massive, writhing tree trunks frame the pair, and the path behind them leads toward the home of Benton's mother on the island. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
The lithograph is drawn from Benton's 1941 painting of the same subject, a picture he kept for himself, and it stands among the most personal images in his printed work: a family portrait set in the Vineyard landscape where he summered for more than half a century. (Fath 55)
Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975)
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Académie Julian in Paris. Rejecting the European modernism of his early years, he became, with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, a leader of American Regionalism, painting the farmers, laborers, and folklore of the Midwest and South in a dynamic, sculptural style. His major murals include America Today (1930–31, Metropolitan Museum of Art) and A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) in the Missouri State Capitol, and in 1934 he became the first artist to appear on the cover of Time. Beginning in 1934, Associated American Artists published his lithographs in editions sold by mail at modest prices, making them among the most widely collected American prints of the century. Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock was his student, and later at the Kansas City Art Institute. He died in his Kansas City studio in 1975.
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