Thomas Hart Benton’s Jon Boat, Buffalo River – Study depicts three men fishing in a jon boat, a specialized fishing boat with a flat body. Located in Northern Arkansas and originating in the Ozarks, the Buffalo River was the first national river designated in the United States in 1972, the year before this watercolor was produced. The present work is a study for the painting Jon Boat, Buffalo River and it is related to a lithograph Making Camp, both also made in 1973. River landscapes are a recurring motif in Benton’s body of work, and the Ozarks region held special significance for the artist as he fished the rivers of the area with his father as a child. Describing this composition, Benton recalled: “As I’ve said lots of times, I like rivers. I especially like those clear free flowing rivers of the Ozarks which have escaped the attention of the Army Corps of Engineers. For years I’ve floated down these rivers every spring either by canoe or ‘jon’ boat, an extra long sort of skiff. Sometimes the water is fast and rough, at other times it slows up in deep pools. Generally the river floaters I run with make camp at the end of the day on the gravel bars lining one of these pools and fish them while supper is cooked...The pool is under some bluffs in the Buffalo river in northwest Arkansas.” [1]

[1] Creekmore Fath, The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton: New Expanded Edition, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990 p. 192