67126: Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) Woodlan

Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889-1975) Woodland Stream, Martha's Vineyard (recto) and Chilmark Landscape (verso) (double--sided), circa 1922 Oil on tin 4-3/8 x 7 inches (11.1 x 17.8 cm) Woodland Stream, Martha's Vineyard 3-1/2 x 3-3/4 inches (8.9 x 9.5 cm) Chilmark Landscape PROVENANCE: The artist; Charles Pollock, brother of Jackson Pollock, acquired from the above, 1929; Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, acquired from the above, 1981; Richard York Gallery, New York, 2003; Private collection, acquired from the above. EXHIBITION: Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, Inc., New York, "Thomas Hart Benton: Synchromist Paintings 1915-1920," 1981. LITERATURE: M. Baigell, Thomas Hart Benton: Synchromist Paintings 1915-1920, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1981, no. 12, illustrated (recto and verso). We would like to thank Dr. Henry Adams for providing the following essay: In the early 1920s both Charles Pollock and his younger brother Jackson studied painting with Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League, and frequently visited him on Martha's Vineyard. In 1929 they sublet an apartment from him on East 4th Street in New York, and at the time Charles found a suitcase full of studies by Benton in a closet, which Benton gave to him. This is one of those studies. In 1981, Charles sold these studies to the Salander-O'Reilly Gallery in New York, and when they were exhibited there they stirred up considerable interest and commentary because of their modernist qualities. Indeed, many of them were purely abstract. When they were first exhibited they were thought to date from circa 1916-17, when Benton was experimenting with Synchromist painting, but many of them portray the landscape of Martha's Vineyard, which Benton first visited in 1920. For that reason, and also because some of the paintings are studies for larger painting datable to the period 1922, makes it likely that these studies were all made on Martha's Vineyard in 1922-22, when Benton was just starting to make the transition from a modernist to a regionalist style. This double-sided study seems to fit well with Benton's work of 1921-22. The painting in a lunette is particularly interesting since it's clearly a study for a mural project, but apparently not one that Benton ever carried out at full scale. Only two of Benton's murals of the 1930s, the History of New York (1927; private collection) and The Arts of Life in America (1932; New Britain Museum of American Art), features lunettes, but the imagery of this design is different from either of them. Most likely it's an early study for Benton's first mural cycle, The American Historical Epic, which he worked on from about 1922-1928. It's known that he originally projected 70 panels for this project, but ultimately completed only 17, ten of which are now in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City. As finally realized, the American Historical Epic does not contain lunettes, but most likely he considered including some at an early phase of planning the series. Given the pure landscape imagery of this panel, it seems likely that Benton considered it for the very opening of his narrative program, most likely juxtaposed with scenes of Native American life. The other painting is so generalized that it's difficult to specifically identify, but it may well represent the Benton home, from the hill behind the house, looking out on Menemsha Pond—which is not a true pond, but an inlet of the ocean protect by a peninsula and sandbar. In the early 1930s Jackson Pollock made several studies of Menemsha Pond from a vantage point similar to this vista. HID03101062020 © 2020 Heritage Auctions | All Rights Reserved
Condition Report: Metal sheet size is approx. 7.625 x 5.125 inches. Scattered beginnings of tarnish and oxidation to the sheet. Woodland Stream, Martha's Vineyard: Under UV exam, extremely tiny touches of inpaint in the white background and a 1 inch vertical line of inpaint above the stream as well of tiny dashes of inpaint in the stream. . Mild wear along the extreme edges of the image. Chilmark Landscape: under UV exam, there does not appear to be inpaint.
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