Down the River
Down the River
Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 - 1975
1939
Lithograph
12 1/2 x 10 in. (31.8 x 25.4 cm)
Signed in pencil lower right. Edition of 250.
A boy fishes from the bank of the White River in the Ozarks. Benton made the drawings in August 1939 on a float trip and identified the boy as his son, T.P. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
Benton noted that the stretch of river shown was later flooded by the Bull Shoals Dam; the print records the spring and autumn float trips he made on Ozark rivers for many years. (Fath 33)
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 boy fishes from the bank of the White River in the Ozarks. Benton made the drawings in August 1939 on a float trip and identified the boy as his son, T.P. Published by Associated American Artists, New York.
Benton noted that the stretch of river shown was later flooded by the Bull Shoals Dam; the print records the spring and autumn float trips he made on Ozark rivers for many years. (Fath 33)
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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