Cotton Pickers

Thomas Hart BentonWW-1945-115254

1945·Oil on canvas·81.3 × 121.9 cm (32 × 48 in.)

<p>Thomas Hart Benton first saw laborers cultivating cotton on a trip to Georgia in the late 1920s, and he returned to the subject in this painting in 1945. In <em>Cotton Pickers</em>, the artist rendered the figures with a sinuous, curvilinear style to articulate the exertion of their movement along the landscape. Cotton sharecropping, a system of tenant farming that developed after the Civil War, allowed landowners to rent land to poor farmers in return for a portion of the crops. Because the practice kept agricultural workers impoverished, it became a symbol of a racially and economically unjust system. Benton’s vision of modernism was firmly rooted in figuration. He often explored themes of US history, centering African Americans in those shared narratives.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1945
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 81.3 × 121.9 cm (32 × 48 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: Thomas Hart Benton

Artist

Thomas Hart Benton

Printmaking

American muralist and painter Thomas Hart Benton was an influential Regionalist painter who avidly rejected abstraction and Modernism, and was eventually championed by populist right wing politics. The works for which he is best known focus on rural life in America, and the industrial laborer, who was depicted as the cultural backbone of the country and of Regionalism. Although Benton experimented with Modernist techniques and modes, his style became increasingly narrative and realist as he continually abandoned these tactics. The Regionalist movement and Benton’s career garnered its greatest popularity during the Great Depression, as it projected a reassuring image of America’s heartland which viewers were drawn to as a means to cope during the national crisis.

Missouri, USA

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