Shallow Creek
Shallow Creek
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1939
Lithograph
14 1/4 x 9 5/16 in. (36.2 x 23.6 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 250.
A small, clear-water Ozark creek, with a boy wading across the shallows. Benton identified the figure as his son, T.P., and drew the creek in 1938; he described the scene as characteristic of the small clear-water streams of the Ozarks. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
The lithograph follows drawings and a painting of the same subject, both of 1938, and belongs to the run of Ozark river and creek subjects that Benton returned to throughout his life. (Fath 32)
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.
A small, clear-water Ozark creek, with a boy wading across the shallows. Benton identified the figure as his son, T.P., and drew the creek in 1938; he described the scene as characteristic of the small clear-water streams of the Ozarks. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
The lithograph follows drawings and a painting of the same subject, both of 1938, and belongs to the run of Ozark river and creek subjects that Benton returned to throughout his life. (Fath 32)
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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