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 Trail Riders captures the grandeur of the Canadian Rockies. Inspired by a 1964 trip, Benton documented his nine-and-a-half-hour horseback journey from Banff to Mount Assiniboine with his friend Lyman Field. At 75 years old, this adventure marked Benton’s first horseback riding trip in over thirty years. He sketched Mount Assiniboine on-site before returning to his studio to complete further works. This approach was consistent with Benton’s habit of rigorous planning before he completed a group of paintings. After sketching from life, he would return to his studio and sketch ideas for his compositions, posing figures to work out their positions and spatial relationships. To aid in this process, he would make clay models. Using these clay models as references, he would produce further studies and paintings, often including a black-and-white version of his composition to decipher the tonal values. Lastly, Benton would often translate his composition into prints, as seen with Trail Riders.

Trail Riders features a wide-angle view of a valley leading up to the towering, snow-covered Mount Assiniboine. Flanked by dark ridges, the mountain’s peak nearly touches the edge of the composition. In the foreground, three tiny horses and two riders, representing the artist himself and his traveling companion traverse the valley. The third horse, the “remount” was likely kept on hand to allow the riders to switch horses when one became tired or needed rest. The scale of the horses and riders emphasize the vastness of the majestic landscape. Known as the “Matterhorn of North America” due to its triangular shape, Mount Assiniboine is situated on the Continental Divide, straddling the border between British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. Benton’s portrayal includes Lake Magog at the center.

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.” [1]

Additional examples of this composition are held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the Denver Art Museum, Colorado. The National Gallery of Art’s example, Trail Riders (1964-65) was selected repeatedly for loans to various cabinet members and ambassadors, representing the best of American painting, both at home and further afield. President Barack Obama even had the work on extended loan at the White House during his time in office.

[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.