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Lot Essay
As the twentieth century’s champion of rural America, Thomas Hart Benton portrayed the honest and hardworking people he met during his travels throughout the country. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago and in Paris, in 1918 Benton was assigned by the U.S. Navy to sketch the machinery and activities around his base, which galvanized his passion for art. From then on, the subject of his works took priority over the style. For Benton and his Regionalist contemporaries, modern and eventually Post-War “art for art’s sake” lacked social meaning and would become obsolete without an effort to recapture it. As exemplified by A Gateside Conversation of 1945, Benton established his renown by deftly blending his emphasis on social narrative with dynamic artistic technique, resulting in a profound and engaging meditation on American rural life and community.
With an outspoken great uncle who served as Missouri’s first Senator and a father who was a congressional representative, Benton grew up in a political household that fostered a strong sense of American values. To reflect these in his art, he traveled to the heart of the country for inspiration. Choosing a realistic and figurative approach, Benton’s stylized form of regionalism was deemed opposed to abstraction, the predominate form of western art in the teens and twenties. However, Benton later countered that assumption in his autobiography: “Contrary to general belief, the ‘Regionalist’ movement did not in any way oppose abstract form. It simply wished to put meanings, recognizable American meanings, into some of it.” (An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography, Lawrence, Kansas, 1970, p. 77)
Benton based the present work on drawings he made while visiting Southern Louisiana in the early 1940s—one of his many trips South that yielded subsequent lithographs and paintings. A likely testament to the work’s importance, Benton exhibited Gateside Conversation at his first one-man exhibition in Chicago, mounted by the Associated American Artists. The Association eventually produced and circulated a lithograph in an edition of 250 of the present work. Benton wrote to Creekmore Fath on the lithograph: “From a drawing made in southern Louisiana in the early 40s; a painting of this subject is owned by John Paxton of Fort Worth, Texas.” (as quoted in C. Faith, ed., The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton, Austin, Texas, 1969, p. 158)
Benton’s choice of subject in Gateside Conversation, depicting a lone farmer pausing for a brief talk with a man and woman in a carriage, evokes a palpable sense of both narrative and community. Leo Mazow writes of the lithograph: “Gateside Conversation is, in effect, about conversing and the visual forms that sonic discourse can take. And on this front, Benton provides several clues and cues. The laborer places his hand atop the wheel, his own form echoing the arch of the wheel, his protruding hat at left roughly fitting into the jigsaw puzzle-like void between the hat rim, mouth, and torso of the driver. The standing figure’s hat compositionally acts as the base of an implied arc formed by the headwear of the three individuals, as if he is the recipient of some sort of orders or other communication. Conversely we might read the discursive line as running in the opposite direction, with the carriage-bound men listening to the laborer’s report or other statement. The formal dynamics of this lithograph point to a recurring motif in Benton’s work: conversing or relaying information as subject matter, either in tandem with or as a subtext to more obvious themes.” (Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2012, pp. 13-14)
Poignant and endearing, in Gateside Conversation, Benton’s three figures occupy the center of the landscape, with their forms mimicking the curves of the rolling hills and the ominous sky. Benton organizes his complex composition into horizontal bands of color—a typical modernist approach used by both European and American artists. The dynamism of the work can also be credited to Benton’s study of the twisting compositions of Mannerist and Baroque artists like Jacopo Pontormo and El Greco. The sculpture-like painted figures in Michelangelo’s paintings he saw at the Louvre would also remain with Benton and inspire the almost tactile elements in his paintings. Putting his own spin on these concepts, Benton imbues Gateside Conversation with a sense of motion through his use of sinuous line, expressive brushwork and rich color. As is typical of his most celebrated paintings, the composition has a spiraling configuration, which pulls each individual element into a unifying scheme of visual rhythm.
Bold, bright and visually compelling, Gateside Conversation exemplifies the Regionalist master’s signature style at a peak in his career, as Matthew Baigell explains: “In his easel paintings completed since the war, Benton has explored older themes and styles…Some of his best portraits have been painted in these later years….In many ways, though, it would appear that Benton’s overwhelming love for America found its true outlet—in the streams, hills, and mountains of the country, populated by people unsuspectingly living out of their time, quietly enjoying themselves, living easily on the land, celebrating nothing more than their existence. Perhaps cumulatively these works glorify ‘America the Beautiful,’ a dream America where every prospect pleases.” (Thomas Hart Benton, New York, 1974, p. 183) Indeed, Gateside Conversation in many ways embodies Benton’s personal reflection on his career: “I have some sort of inner conviction, that for all the possible limitation of my mind…I have come to something that is in the image of America and the American people of my time.” (as quoted in H. Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, New York, 1989, p. 343)
With an outspoken great uncle who served as Missouri’s first Senator and a father who was a congressional representative, Benton grew up in a political household that fostered a strong sense of American values. To reflect these in his art, he traveled to the heart of the country for inspiration. Choosing a realistic and figurative approach, Benton’s stylized form of regionalism was deemed opposed to abstraction, the predominate form of western art in the teens and twenties. However, Benton later countered that assumption in his autobiography: “Contrary to general belief, the ‘Regionalist’ movement did not in any way oppose abstract form. It simply wished to put meanings, recognizable American meanings, into some of it.” (An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography, Lawrence, Kansas, 1970, p. 77)
Benton based the present work on drawings he made while visiting Southern Louisiana in the early 1940s—one of his many trips South that yielded subsequent lithographs and paintings. A likely testament to the work’s importance, Benton exhibited Gateside Conversation at his first one-man exhibition in Chicago, mounted by the Associated American Artists. The Association eventually produced and circulated a lithograph in an edition of 250 of the present work. Benton wrote to Creekmore Fath on the lithograph: “From a drawing made in southern Louisiana in the early 40s; a painting of this subject is owned by John Paxton of Fort Worth, Texas.” (as quoted in C. Faith, ed., The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton, Austin, Texas, 1969, p. 158)
Benton’s choice of subject in Gateside Conversation, depicting a lone farmer pausing for a brief talk with a man and woman in a carriage, evokes a palpable sense of both narrative and community. Leo Mazow writes of the lithograph: “Gateside Conversation is, in effect, about conversing and the visual forms that sonic discourse can take. And on this front, Benton provides several clues and cues. The laborer places his hand atop the wheel, his own form echoing the arch of the wheel, his protruding hat at left roughly fitting into the jigsaw puzzle-like void between the hat rim, mouth, and torso of the driver. The standing figure’s hat compositionally acts as the base of an implied arc formed by the headwear of the three individuals, as if he is the recipient of some sort of orders or other communication. Conversely we might read the discursive line as running in the opposite direction, with the carriage-bound men listening to the laborer’s report or other statement. The formal dynamics of this lithograph point to a recurring motif in Benton’s work: conversing or relaying information as subject matter, either in tandem with or as a subtext to more obvious themes.” (Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, University Park, Pennsylvania, 2012, pp. 13-14)
Poignant and endearing, in Gateside Conversation, Benton’s three figures occupy the center of the landscape, with their forms mimicking the curves of the rolling hills and the ominous sky. Benton organizes his complex composition into horizontal bands of color—a typical modernist approach used by both European and American artists. The dynamism of the work can also be credited to Benton’s study of the twisting compositions of Mannerist and Baroque artists like Jacopo Pontormo and El Greco. The sculpture-like painted figures in Michelangelo’s paintings he saw at the Louvre would also remain with Benton and inspire the almost tactile elements in his paintings. Putting his own spin on these concepts, Benton imbues Gateside Conversation with a sense of motion through his use of sinuous line, expressive brushwork and rich color. As is typical of his most celebrated paintings, the composition has a spiraling configuration, which pulls each individual element into a unifying scheme of visual rhythm.
Bold, bright and visually compelling, Gateside Conversation exemplifies the Regionalist master’s signature style at a peak in his career, as Matthew Baigell explains: “In his easel paintings completed since the war, Benton has explored older themes and styles…Some of his best portraits have been painted in these later years….In many ways, though, it would appear that Benton’s overwhelming love for America found its true outlet—in the streams, hills, and mountains of the country, populated by people unsuspectingly living out of their time, quietly enjoying themselves, living easily on the land, celebrating nothing more than their existence. Perhaps cumulatively these works glorify ‘America the Beautiful,’ a dream America where every prospect pleases.” (Thomas Hart Benton, New York, 1974, p. 183) Indeed, Gateside Conversation in many ways embodies Benton’s personal reflection on his career: “I have some sort of inner conviction, that for all the possible limitation of my mind…I have come to something that is in the image of America and the American people of my time.” (as quoted in H. Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, New York, 1989, p. 343)