- Thomas Hart Benton, a portraitBy Polly Burroughs
- Thomas Hart Benton and the American SouthBy J. Richard Gruber
- Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart CurryBy James M. Dennis
Important Art by Thomas Hart Benton
Self-Portrait with Rita (1922)
Painted in Martha's Vineyard, in this work Benton renounces his earlier experimentation in cubist-inspired abstractions. Standing bare chest alongside his scantily clad wife, Rita, Benton's self-portrait is among the most startling figure subjects of the early 1920s. Here, Benton classicized his own musculature, stressed the highly physical modern male body. The image of Rita conveys Benton's solid knowledge of 16th-century Italian art.
City Building (Part of American Today Mural) (1930)
Commissioned by New York City's innovative and progressive New School for Social Research, Benton's America Today murals joyfully celebrate an America before the full impact of the Great Depression had been realized. Here, a multi-racial labor force - this in itself is modern and utopian image because of heavily segregated labor in America - busily build the city. Emphasis is placed on the producer, rather than on material consumption. Benton pictures high skyscrapers, which were markers of the new modern city, urbanism, and industrialism. The presence of a ship recalls Benton's earlier work for the US Navy, and reminds us of New York's prominence as a port city. Benton applied wood molding to the canvas to separate one vignette from the other, which gives a modern, cinematic quality to the overall composition. (Benton had earlier worked in the film industry as well.) His rapid compositional shifts in depth between the foreground and deep background recall cinematic effects. In addition to Benton's murals, the New School also commissioned the great Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco to paint a suite of frescoes which complement Benton's tribute to the national by focusing on the international. Standing in front of this monumental and brightly colored image, one senses the city humming and pulsating with new energy.
The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley (1934)
The work illustrates an old Ozark folk song of the same name in which a man stabs his wife on account of her supposed infidelity, only to find out later that his suspicion was unfounded. This work is typical of Benton's devotion to sound and music-making in his painting career. Elements of Synchromism - the musical characteristics of color - are evident such as the radiant layered halo connecting the man and wife in the background, which suggests music resonating. Early works by Pollock echo the undulating forms and use of space evident here in his teacher's painting, and in fact, Pollock who was close to Benton and his family, modeled for the harmonica player in the foreground.
Influences and Connections

- Michelangelo
- El Greco
- Diego Rivera
- Morgan Russell
- John Marin
- John Steuart Curry
- Grant Wood
- José Clemente Orozco
- Thomas Craven
- Stanton Macdonald-Wright
- Renaissance
- The Baroque
- Synchromism
- American Modernist Painting