The year 2014 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of Missouri native and Kansas City resident Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975). Drawn from the permanent collection of Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and part of a year-long tribute, Benton in Black and White: Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton highlights the peripatetic artist’s achievements as a social historian and chronicles his dedication to telling the many stories that shape our national narrative. This installation comprising four decades of lithographs also underscores the various ways these widely popular and extensively collected prints functioned for Benton himself. Some served as preparatory tools to aid in the conception of fully realized paintings, while others provided opportunities for Benton to revisit drawings, paintings, and murals, many of which he had executed decades earlier.

Prints held a particular attraction for Benton throughout much of his long career. The relative affordability of this democratic medium matched Benton’s objective to challenge museums’ monopoly on direct experiences with art and aligned with his goal to make his art available to as many viewers as possible. The bulk of Benton’s nearly one hundred lithographs were printed by the New York-based former commercial lithographic printer turned master fine art lithographer George C. Miller.1 Published in editions of roughly 250, each print that Miller pulled from the lithographic stone passed before Benton for his approval. The majority of these lithographs were then circulated by the Associated American Artists (AAA), a New York firm established by the art dealer and public relations agent Reeves Lewenthal in 1934.2 The mission of the AAA to bring American art to the American public matched Benton’s own aims.

The AAA offered Benton’s lithographs for sale in department stores from coast to coast, marketed them in popular magazines and art-focused periodicals, and sold them by mail order. According to an article published in Better Homes and Gardens in 1945, one result of the AAA’s business model was that it removed cost as a barrier to acquiring art. It upended the perception that art collecting was a luxury only the wealthy could enjoy. No longer was anyone “too poor to buy a masterpiece. Original works of art which once only museums and the rich could afford are now yours to live with at home.” 3 Due to Benton’s embrace of lithography and his affiliation with the AAA, he could rightly boast that people across the nation lived with his art—art that they had purchased for a price that seems unbelievable today. Aspiring art collectors could acquire a signed Benton lithograph for the modest sum of five dollars—seven dollars if they preferred to receive their new acquisition wall-ready and framed.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), Ploughing, 1934.
Lithograph on paper, 8 x 13⅜ inches.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. Gift of Trustees and Friends, 35-46/11. Photo: John Lamberton. © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

Although the theme of agrarian labor is timeless, Ploughing relates to a particular moment in this nation’s history. The year before Benton made the drawing that inspired this lithograph, the first Benton lithograph to be circulated by the Associated American Artists, the controversial Agricultural Adjustment Act was introduced, which aimed to increase crop prices by cutting back production. By the time the legislation passed, spring crops had already been planted. In order for the Act to accomplish its goal, farmers, like this one Benton saw in South Carolina, were paid to plow under 10.4 million acres of cotton.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), Aaron, 1941.
Lithograph on paper, 12¾ x 99⁄16 inches.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. Gift of Mrs. Peter T. Bohan, 64-34/11. Photo: John Lamberton. © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.






It was common for Benton to go out and find subjects for his art, but in the case of Aaron, the subject was brought to him. One of Benton’s students at the Kansas City Art Institute met the eighty-two-year-old man depicted here along East 18th Street in Kansas City and persuaded him to model for the class. The deeply empathetic, sensitive treatment of this elderly man in both the original painting (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) and this later lithograph distributed by the Associated American Artists, stands in stark contrast to the more stereotyped images of African Americans from the period.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), Wreck of the Ol’ 97, 1944.
Lithograph on paper, 105⁄16 x 1415⁄16 inches.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. Donated by the artist for the 6th War Bond Auction; purchased and given by the Kansas City Power and Light Company, 44-51/3. Photo: John Lamberton. © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

Benton’s inspiration for Wreck of the Ol’ 97 was a folk ballad based on an accident involving the Southern Railroad’s Train No. 97 at Stillhouse Trestle, outside Danville, Virginia, in 1903. The tragedy resonated for decades, in part because the ballad became the first record to sell a million copies in the United States. Despite the widely known details of the catastrophe, Benton exercised artistic license for his interpretation. He changed the locale from the Virginia mountains to the Midwest and heightened the drama by introducing a horse and wagon into the scene. According to Benton, “The song doesn’t say who saw the affair, but somebody must have, and it could just as well have been people like those in the wagon. I put ’em in anyhow.” 4

Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975), The Boy, 1948.
Lithograph on paper, 9½ x 13¾ inches.
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo. Gift of Robert M. White II in honor of his father, L. Mitchell White, F97-2/6. Photo: John Lamberton. © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

“We Americans are restless. We cannot stay put,” Benton declared in his autobiography, An Artist in America, first published in 1937.5 For an artist as nomadic as Benton, this scene of an Ozark boy casting a final glance back at his parents as he sets out from home down a winding road must have carried special resonance. In fact, although the print was eventually circulated by the Associated American Artists, Benton noted that it was “done for myself.” 6 Whereas he often made lithographs inspired by existing paintings, Benton created this print prior to committing the touching farewell to canvas.

Benton in Black and White: Lithographs by Thomas Hart Benton is on view at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, through February 15, 2015. For information call 816.751.1278 or visit www.nelson-atkins.org.

 

Stephanie Fox Knappe is the Samuel Sosland Curator of American Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.

This article was originally published in the Winter 2014 issue of Antiques & Fine Art magazine, a digitized version of which is available on afamag.com. InCollect.com is a division of Antiques & Fine Art, AFAnews, and AFA Publishing.