Ben Ragan and Trouble
Ben Ragan and Trouble
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1941
Lithograph
11 x 7 1/4 in. (27.9 x 18.4 cm)
Signed in the plate lower right. Edition of 100.
A young hunter stands on a low rise with his gun lowered, his hound at his side, isolated against a plain ground. The figures are Ben Ragan, the protagonist of Vereen Bell's novel Swamp Water, and his dog, Trouble.
One of six lithographs Benton made in 1941 for Twentieth Century Fox to publicize its film of Swamp Water, set in the Okefenokee Swamp. Impressions are in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art. (Fath 50)
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 young hunter stands on a low rise with his gun lowered, his hound at his side, isolated against a plain ground. The figures are Ben Ragan, the protagonist of Vereen Bell's novel Swamp Water, and his dog, Trouble.
One of six lithographs Benton made in 1941 for Twentieth Century Fox to publicize its film of Swamp Water, set in the Okefenokee Swamp. Impressions are in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art. (Fath 50)
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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