Coming 'Round the Mountain
Coming 'Round the Mountain
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1931
Lithograph
11 1/8 x 8 3/8 in. (28.3 x 21.3 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right; inscribed and dedicated in pencil lower left.
Country musicians play for dancers outside a mountain cabin by moonlight. Benton called it his first lithograph of such a subject, the beginning of his long engagement with American folk song. Printed for the artist and distributed by Benton himself; also known as Missouri Musicians.
This impression is inscribed in pencil "To D.L. James – Christmas '35" and "She'll be coming round the mountain." Daniel Lewis James of Kansas City, a playwright and kinsman of Jesse James, was a friend of Benton. Impressions are in the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Ackland Art Museum. (Fath 4)
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.
Country musicians play for dancers outside a mountain cabin by moonlight. Benton called it his first lithograph of such a subject, the beginning of his long engagement with American folk song. Printed for the artist and distributed by Benton himself; also known as Missouri Musicians.
This impression is inscribed in pencil "To D.L. James – Christmas '35" and "She'll be coming round the mountain." Daniel Lewis James of Kansas City, a playwright and kinsman of Jesse James, was a friend of Benton. Impressions are in the New Britain Museum of American Art and the Ackland Art Museum. (Fath 4)
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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