Thomas Hart Benton (Neosho, Missouri 1889–1975 Kansas City, Missouri), Shallow Creek, 1938-9, Lithograph, The Dorothy Braude Edinburg (Class of 1942) Collection, 1986.56

Thomas Hart Benton is best known for his portrayals of regional American life and landscape in the twentieth century. His lithograph, Shallow Creek, is based on a painting of the same name completed in 1938 and depicting the artist’s son, Thomas Piacenzia Benton (T.P.), crossing a stream in the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas and southern Missouri. The sinuous lines in this lithograph are characteristic of Benton’s figurative work: from the almost parallel curving forms of the trees, to the roundness of the boulder that mirrors the billowing clouds above, to the bends in the stream as it recedes into the background. The log in the foreground creates a diagonal echoed in the slant of the boulder and the arc of small rocks around T.P., demonstrating Benton’s skills in representing space and perspective.

Benton produced this lithograph while on contract with Associated American Artists (AAA), a gallery in New York City. In 1934 the president of AAA, Reeves Lewenthal, gathered a group of American Scene artists, including Benton, to produce etchings and lithographs of their works in editions of 250 and sold them through mail-order catalogues. This business model brought art-collecting to middle-class consumers while also providing a source of income for artists in the midst of the Great Depression. Thus, works by acclaimed artists like Benton, such as Shallow Creek, could be owned by the very people he sought to represent.

-Veronica Mora, Class of 2018

The Dorothy Braude Edinburg (Class of 1942) Collection 1986.56