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Benton was the leader of the Regionalist artists who favored images of America, especially the rural Midwest.

The rhythmic curving lines of the composition suggest the vitality of nature and are characteristic of Benton’s work .

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Thomas Hart Benton

Henry Look Unhitching, about 1942

oil on canvas

22 1/2 x 26 7/8 in.

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Cantor

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Thomas Hart Benton was born in Missouri. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago  and then at the Acadèmie Julian in Paris. While in Paris he was influenced by the Synchronist school of painting, which took an abstract approach, rather than a realistic one, to color to express emotion and mood.  Benton rejected modernism in the early 1920s and adopted a style that was called Regionalism. His paintings feature familiar scenes and characters from small-town life in Middle America, and his technique is characterized by undulating, rhythmic lines and vibrant colors. He also painted numerous murals of American life; one of his most important commissions is The History of Indiana,  made for the 1933 Century of Progress exhibition in Chicago and now at Indiana University. Benton’s goal was to produce a uniquely American art that focused on the heartland. In addition to painting, Benton taught at the Art Students League in New York, where Jackson Pollock, who would become one of America’s most important abstract painters, was one of his students. In 1935, Benton became the director of the City Art Institute and School of Design in Kansas, where he lived for the rest of his life.      

In Henry Look Unhitching, the fertile earth and cloud-filled sky are drawn with rhythmic curving lines that suggest the vitality of the forces of nature. However, the dynamism of the landscape is subdued by the reverie of the stooped farmer, who unhitches his horse after a day’s work.

References

Kathleen A. Foster, Nanette E. Brewer and Margaret Contempasis. Thomas Hart Benton and the Indiana Murals. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2001. ISBN-13: 978-0253337603

James M. Dennis. Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. Milwaukee, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. ISBN-13: 978-0299155841