20th Century Art 
1 October 2020
20th Century Art 
115

Thomas Hart Benton 1889–1975

Leisure and Literature (study for Cultural Panel 8 from A Social History of the State of Indiana mural)

1932
graphite on paper 24 h × 37½ w in (61 × 95 cm)
estimate: $15,000–20,000
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In 1932 Benton was commissioned by the Indiana Department of Conservation to create a mural for the Indiana state exhibition (supervised by Wallace Richards) at the 1933 A Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago. The sixteen panels illustrated the political and cultural history of Indiana; the mural now resides at the Indiana University Auditorium in Bloomington, IN.
provenance: Acquired directly from the artist | Wallace Richards | Gwin Richards | Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York | Nardin Fine Arts, Ltd., Cross River, NY | Acquired from the previous in 1990, Collection of David and Vivian Campbell, Toronto
exhibited: Urban and Suburban America, 26 March - 27 April 1988, Sid Deutsch Gallery, New York
literature: Urban and Suburban America, Sid Deutsch Gallery, unpaginated

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A Social History
of the State of Indiana

Thomas Hart Benton's American Murals

In 1932 Thomas Hart Benton was commissioned by the Indiana Department of Conservation to create a mural for the Indiana state exhibition at the 1933 A Century of Progress International Exposition in Chicago. Richard Lieber, the director of the department, wanted to present a story that went beyond what most people associated with Indiana—farmland, flat plains and county fairs—and proclaim Indiana’s rich history.

Benton had completed the mural The Arts of Life in America at the Whitney Museum the same year that he was chosen to glorify the Hoosier State. A Social History of the State of Indiana was a similar undertaking—both murals are vast and passionate studies of the struggles and triumphs of American life and culture, rendered in a grand style inspired by Mexican muralists and the spirit of the WPA.

Cultural Panel 8 from A Social History of the State of Indiana. Image: Indiana University.

Benton spent six months traveling the state creating character and mise-en-scène sketches for what would become a sixteen panel, two-hundred-foot painting on the cultural, political and industrial history of Indiana. The mural fixed an unsparing eye on American history, with scenes that range from celebrations of indigenous potters to the forced removal of Native Americans, a Socialist rally led by Eugene V. Debs, the stronghold the KKK had on regional politics in the 1920s, and their eventual removal from power, thanks to the tenacious efforts of the Indiana press. Benton also honored Indiana’s farmers, wildlife, writers and artists and the steel and railroad industries.

The current lot is a sketch of a portion of Cultural Panel 8, titled Leisure and Literature and depicts the Indiana-born Impressionist painter William Forsyth at an easel, a fair vendor with his curious dog, a burly bartender and his wobbly patron at a saloon and scholars in the foreground reading. Benton gifted this sketch to Wallace Richards, one of the supervisors of the exhibition. The mural, in its entirety, now resides at the Indiana University Auditorium in Bloomington.

I visualized this history as realistic and factual. Realistic as to form, and factual as to content.

Thomas Hart Benton

David & Vivian Campbell

20th Century Collectors and Philanthropists

David and Vivian Campbell were prominent philanthropists of the arts in Canada and collectors of early modern masters. Over the course of half a century, David and Vivian built a collection around intimate and dazzling works by giants of early 20th century art—Picasso, Matisse, Gris, Gauguin, Munch and Rodin among them—as well as later 20th century artists such as Will Barnet, Saul Steinberg and David Hockney, who grew out of the traditions of earlier masters, with a reverence for landscape and portraiture.

The scope of the century, along with the Campbells' distinct tastes within its vastness, are presented in the selection offered here; a landscape study of Le Pont Neuf by Paul Signac from 1895, the earliest work in the sale, shares the same musicality of color as Andy Warhol's screenprint of Beethoven from nearly one hundred years later. Portraits by Matisse and Hockney, done forty years apart, both present subjects that are quirky and grounded, executed with an economy and confidence of line. Irving Penn photographs Igor Stravinsky with the same adulatory nod seen in a portrait by André Kertész of his predecessor, Brassaï. An exuberant collage by Picasso celebrates the birth of his son, while Old Man's Afternoon by Will Barnet meditates on loss and aging. A thread evident throughout the selection is the ability for the art that we love to reflect the life that we live.

David and Vivian Campbell in their home in Toronto, 1997,
with Picasso's Jacqueline tricottant. Image: Jeff Goode.

Thomas Hart Benton 1889–1975

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American Regionalist artist Thomas Hart Benton was born in 1889 into a political family in Neosho, Missouri. Benton's father was a United States congressman and his great-great uncle was one of the first two senators from Missouri. Benton's father sent him to military school and he also spent considerable time in Washington, DC given his father's profession. During his teens, Benton drew cartoons for Missouri's Joplin American newspaper. With his mother's support, Benton attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago starting in 1907 before studying in Paris at Académie Julian in 1909. In France, Benton met Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, whose abstract/musical philosophy, Synchromism, inspired Benton to experiment with non-representational painting briefly.

In 1912, Benton moved to New York City before World War I took him to Norfolk, Virginia to serve as a naval artist. After the war, he resettled in New York and turned against modernism with an exaggerated yet realist style. From 1926 to 1935, Benton taught at the Art Students League, where he instructed the likes of Jackson Pollock and Charles Green Shaw. Teaching also introduced Benton to his future wife, Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant; they would stay together for the rest of Benton's life and have two children. In 1930 and 1931, Benton created his America Today murals for the New School for Social Research, which drew on sketches he made while touring the country extensively. Suggestive of El Greco, these works are now housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Benton was hired to paint murals for Indiana at the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago and, in 1934, he was featured on the cover of Time magazine with fellow American Regionalists Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry.

At odds with the New York art world, Benton moved back to Missouri with his family in 1935 and soon completed what many consider his master work, a large mural entitled A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936), which adorns the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. Included are images of slavery, Mark Twain's Huck Finn and Jim, outlaw Jesse James, political boss Tom Pendergast, and others. From 1935 to 1941, Benton taught at the Kansas City Art Institute. In this period, he produced an engaging autobiography, An Artist in America (1937), and a provocative nude painting, Persephone (1939). Benton also traveled to Hollywood in 1937 on a LIFE magazine assignment for which he created scenes of the film business. This project subsequently influenced Benton's artistic process by intensifying his interest in sweeping narrative and exposing him to techniques that he found useful, such as making preliminary clay models of figures and scenery.

To oppose fascism during World War II, Benton released his series, The Year of Peril (1942), but Abstract Expressionism gained prominence after the war, sidelining Regionalist painters. In the decades leading up to his death in 1975, Benton continued making art, albeit in a nostalgic, pre-industrial style. Among his high-profile mural commissions was Independence and the Opening of the West (1961) at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri; Benton and Truman became friends thereafter. Works by Benton may be viewed today throughout the Midwest, at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and elsewhere.

Auction Results Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton

Mining Village

estimate: $15,000–18,000

result: $23,275

Thomas Hart Benton

The Parade

estimate: $15,000–20,000

result: $17,640

Thomas Hart Benton

Untitled

estimate: $8,000–12,000

result: $11,875

Thomas Hart Benton

Chain Gang, circa 1934

estimate: $10,000–20,000

result: $8,450

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