Thomas Hart Benton

We wish to thank Dr. Henry Adams for his help researching this artwork and his assistance with the following lot note.

Lot Essay:
The present drawing, with its masterful handling of composition and shading, is uncommon in Benton’s oeuvre, with its large size and very finished execution. The composition is based on a painting traditionally titled Construction, which Benton made about 1923-34, currently unlocated. There are two oil studies for this painting, both of which were in the Benton Trust, and one of which is reproduced in Dr. Henry Adams' book Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original (Knopf, New York, 1989, page 92). The rhythmic organization of form in these two paintings anticipates the skillful organization of figures and setting in Benton’s mural America Today of 1930, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

According to Dr. Adams, the present drawing was made later than the two oil studies, likely around 1932-33. Benton’s preliminary studies on paper for his murals were typically swiftly drawn, and do not render the whole composition with the level of detail and attention to the overall pattern of light and shade seen here. Around 1922-23, the artist made 26 full-page illustrations and a roughly equal number of smaller illustrations for Leo Huberman’s book We, the People, published by Harper & Brothers in 1933. Many of these are based on the travel drawings Benton made during a cross-country sketching trip in 1928. Most of these illustrations are only known from the reproductions, but they appear to have been executed in a manner similar to this drawing, in pen and charcoal, and it is possible that this work was conceived for Huberman’s book, but ultimately not published.