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 Spring (1944) is an ambitious still life composition featuring verdant flora and a rich palette. Anything but static, the painting exemplifies Benton's signature style with its rhythmic, undulating forms. Set against a dark silhouetted background, the work evokes the beguiling still-life paintings of the Dutch Golden Age and also references the tradition of memento mori painting, which rose to prominence in the seventeenth century. Such paintings aim to remind viewers of life's ephemerality through the depiction of symbolic items like clocks, extinguished candles, fruit, and flowers. In Benton's piece, a yellow and black tiger swallowtail butterfly takes center stage, the creature’s well-known life cycle further emphasizing the passage of time.