Sold Lot #20 Thomas Hart Benton Indian Print to Harry S. Truman

Thomas Hart Benton Indian print with inscription to President Harry S. Truman on his birthday.
Nicely framed under glass in wooden frame.
Framed size measures 16" x 22"
Condition: no damage noted.
Bio:
Thomas Hart Benton was a 20th-century American artist who led the movement known as regionalism. He scorned the avant-garde and instead focused on his native Midwest and the Deep South as his most significant subject matter. His style did draw influence from elements of modernist art, but his work was unique and immediately recognizable.Born in southeastern Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton was part of a family of noted politicians. His father served four terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, and he shared his name with a great-great-uncle who was one of the first two U.S. senators elected from Missouri. The younger Thomas attended Western Military Academy with an expectation that he would follow in the family's political footsteps.

Benton rebelled against his father, and, with the encouragement of his mother, he enrolled in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907. Two years later, he relocated to Paris, France to study at Academie Julian. While studying, Benton met Mexican artist Diego Rivera and synchromist painter Stanton Macdonald-Wright. Their approach saw color as analogous to music, and it heavily influenced the developing painting style of Thomas Hart Benton.

In 1912, Benton returned to the U.S. and settled in New York City. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War I, and while stationed in Norfolk, Virginia, he worked as a "camoufleur" to help apply camouflage painting schemes to ships, and he drew and painted the everyday shipyard life. The 1921 painting "The Cliffs" shows both the influence of Benton's precise naval work and the sweeping movement shown in paintings from the synchromist movement.

In addition to his notable work as a painter, Thomas Hart Benton had a long career as an art educator. He taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935. There, one of his most notable students was Jackson Pollock, later a leader of the abstract expressionist movement. Pollock later claimed that he learned what to rebel against from Benton's teaching. Despite his declaration, the teacher and student were close at least for a time. Pollock appears as the model for a harmonica player in Benton's 1934 painting "The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley."

After returning to Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton taught at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 through 1941.

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