Thomas Hart Benton 1889-1975
101.6 x 86.4 cm
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 Portrait of Stanton Macdonald-Wright brings together two artists whose friendship and shared engagement with Modernism had a profound influence on Benton’s early career. Benton first met Macdonald-Wright in Paris in 1908, where the young artists were immersed in the radical experimentation that characterized the European avant-garde. Macdonald-Wright, together with Morgan Russell, had recently developed Synchromism, an innovative movement founded on color theory that made a significant contribution to the development of abstraction in both Europe and America. Benton encountered Synchromism through Macdonald-Wright and, during the 1910s, experimented extensively with its color-saturated, non-objective vocabulary.
Decades later, in 1961, Benton traveled to Los Angeles to receive an award from the American Institute of Architects and took the opportunity to visit his old friend. He began the present portrait during his stay in California and completed it in his Kansas City studio. Macdonald-Wright is depicted seated before one of his own Synchromist compositions, the planes of saturated color forming a vibrant backdrop and recalling Benton’s own early experiments with the movement. The portrait thus creates a visual dialogue between the two artists across more than five decades. In its frank depiction of Macdonald-Wright as an older man at work, the portrait also recalls Benton’s late self-portraits. Here, too, Benton does not shy away from the physical signs of age, presenting Macdonald-Wright seated before his work as an artist whose storied career is fully visible in his appearance.
Provenance
The artist; toThe Thomas Hart and Rita Piacenza Benton Testamentary Trusts
Exhibitions
Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, organized by the Mid-America Arts Alliance; Department of Parks and Recreation, St. Louis, Missouri; Fort Hays State University, Hays, Kansas; Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, Lincoln, Nebraska; Oklahoma Art Center, Oklahoma City; Wichita Art Center, Kansas; Spiva Art Center, Joplin, Missouri; Charles H. MacNider Museum, Mason City, Iowa; David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Illinois; The Arkansas Art Center, Little Rock, Arkansas; Springfield Art Museum, Missouri; Huntsville Museum of Art, Alabama; Tennessee State Museum, Nashville, Tennessee; Minnesota Museum of Art, St. Paul, Minnesota, Benton's Bentons: Selections from The Thomas Hart Benton and Rita P. Benton Trusts, July 13, 1980-June 26, 1983, no. 2, p. 50, illus. in color
The Boise Gallery of Art, Idaho; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska; Yellowstone Art Center, Billings, Montana; Utah Museum of Fine Arts; Cheney Cowels Memorial Museum, Spokane, Washington; Lakeview Museum of Art & Sciences, Peoria, Illinois; Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, Tennessee; Center for the Arts, Vero Beach, Florida; Albany Museum of Art, Georgia; Museum of Fine Arts, Museum of New Mexico, Santa Fe; Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi; and Springfield Art Museum, Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton: An Intimate View, 1986-1988
The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, April 16, 1989–July 22, 1990, no. 63 p. 19, illus.
Museo d’Arte Moderna della Citta di Lugano, Villa Malpensata, Lugano, Switzerland, Thomas Hart Benton, September 5–November 15, 1992, no. 69, p. 142-143, illus. in color and illus. in photograph in a preliminary state, p. 172, illus.
Lester-Thompson Fine Art, Brooklyn, New York; and Surovek Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, Thomas Hart Benton: Mechanics of Form, February–May 2019, p. 57 illus. in color
Literature
Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An Intimate View, Kansas City, Missouri: The Lowell Press, Inc., with Smith Kramer Art Connections, 1986, p. 35
Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1989, p. 48, illus. in color and illus. in photograph in a preliminary stateRudy Chiappini, Thomas Hart Benton, Lugano, Switzerland: Museo d'Arte Moderna, 1992, pp. 142-143, illus. in color, no. 69, 172, illus.
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