This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Thomas Hart Benton Catalogue Raisonné Foundation. Committee Members: Dr. Henry Adams, Anthony Benton Gude, Andrew Thompson and Michael Owen.

Thomas Hart Benton’s The Sheepherder captures a view of the Grand Tetons’ Cathedral Group in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, the view is likely captured from the area between Jenny Lake and the Snake River, looking west. Benton recaptured the quality of light inherent to Western landscapes that he witnessed on his travels through the West in the 1950s and again in the 1960s. The composition features distant mountain peaks, undulating hills, aspen foliage, dark evergreens, and a horse, so small that he emphasizes the large scale of the mountains. The Grand Tetons in western Wyoming are renowned for their dramatic, rugged peaks and natural beauty. Part of the Rocky Mountains, they are located within Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. The range was formed when the mountains were uplifted along fault lines, creating the sharp, dramatic peaks that characterize it.

Throughout his career, Benton was drawn to remote and rugged terrains as sources of artistic inspiration. His daughter, Jessie Benton, recounted how he dedicated years to mastering the depiction of mountains, considering them some of the hardest subjects to paint: "You know, he took aside many, many years to paint the mountains. He said it was the damndest hardest things he ever did, the mountains are impossible to paint. And it took him years to finally paint a picture that he was satisfied with. But you know that’s why I think he paid no attention to all those critics and stuff because he would get these things that he had to do. And while they were still quibbling over Persephone, he was off in Wyoming trying to paint the Tetons for three, four, five years. And really literally off, you know, in the woods in Jackson Hole driving around by himself for years. And he’d come home every now and then. . . . He was always going off on sketching trips and going off here and there. And then he’d come home." [1]


[1] Jessie Benton, quoted from Thomas Hart Benton, directed by Ken Burns, written by Geoffrey C. Ward, aired on Nov. 1, 1989, on PBS as part of Ken Burns’ America series.