Prayer
Framed: 72 1/8 × 78 1/4 inches (183.2 × 198.76 cm)
Thomas Hart Benton initially conceived of American Historical Epic while serving in the Navy during World War I. He set to work on it soon after the end of the war, aspiring to create seventy-five panels illustrating American history from the arrival of European explorers to his own day. He abandoned the series in the winter of 1926, having grown tired of its historical subject matter. He had completed two “chapters,” including the ten panels on view here. Related panels are held by various public and private collections across the country.
Benton was likely f irst exposed to mural painting at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., where he lived for nearly eight years as a child while his father served in the House of Representatives. This experience also sparked the aspiring artist’s interest in American history. His studies in Paris from 1908 to 1911 also provided exposure to public murals in the European tradition.
In composing American Historical Epic, Benton rejected traditional mural painting. His series contains no classically inspired personifications of abstract concepts, such as “Truth” or “Progress,” or representations of specific great feats. Rather, it focuses on the shared experiences and struggles of groups of anonymous, ordinary individuals. Benton believed American history was often taught with too much emphasis placed on the actions and accomplishments of “great men.” Filled with undulating forms and vibrant color, the murals also look ahead to Benton’s signature style of painting, which gained widespread attention in the 1930s and ’40s.
These five panels show the advance of settlers into the interior of the country and its consequences.
The Pathfinder, ca. 1926
Over the Mountains, ca. 1924–26
Jesuit Missionaries, ca. 1924–26
Struggle for the Wilderness, ca. 1924–26
Lost Hunting Ground, ca. 1924–26
Thomas Hart Benton;
His gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1975.
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Thomas Hart Benton: A Giant in American Art, exh. cat. (Tucson: University of Arizona, 1962), unpaginated (as Symbolic History of the United States in Two Chapters; Jesuit Missionaries as The Jesuits; Struggle for the Wilderness as French and Indian Wars).
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Phillip Dennis Cate, Thomas Hart Benton: A Retrospective of His Early Years, 1907–1929, exh. cat. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Art Gallery, 1972), unpaginated.
John Canaday, “Thomas Hart Benton: ‘Impossible to Pigeon-hole,’” Columbia Missourian, January 7, 1973, Vibrations sec., 5.
Thomas Hart Benton: A Personal Commemorative, exh. cat. (Joplin: Spiva Art Center, Missouri Southern State College, 1973), 65–69 (as The Epic of America).
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Stephen Polcari, “Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton,” Arts Magazine 53 (March 1979), 120–24.
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Victor Koshkin-Youritzin, “Thomas Hart Benton: ‘Bathers’ Rediscovered,” Arts Magazine 54 (May 1980), 100–101.
Benton’s Bentons, exh. cat. (Lawrence, Kans.: Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of Art, 1980), 24–25, 62.
Patricia Ewing Pace, “You’ll Find Some Authentic Bentons . . . Right under Your Very Nose,” Kansas City Star, April 27, 1981, 1B.
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Gail Levin, “Thomas Hart Benton, Synchromism, and Abstract Art,” Arts Magazine 56 (December 1981), 144, 148.
Polly Burroughs, Thomas Hart Benton: A Portrait (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1981), 58, 74, 76–78, 85, 98.
Erika Lee Doss, “Regionalist in Hollywood: Painting, Film, and Patronage, 1925–1945,” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1983, 60–62, 79n44.
Matthew Baigell, “Recovering America for American Art: Benton in the Early Twenties,” in Thomas Hart Benton: Chronicler of America’s Folk Heritage, ed. Linda Weintraub, exh. cat. (New York: Bard College, 1984), 13.
Robert W. Butler, “Walls of Art of Thomas Hart Benton,” Kansas City Star, August 11, 1985, 11E.
Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An Intimate View, exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, 1985), 19.
Emily Braun, “Thomas Hart Benton and Progressive Liberalism: An Interpretation of the New School Murals,” in Braun and Thomas Branchick, Thomas Hart Benton: The America Today Murals, exh. cat. (New York: Equitable Life Assurance Society of the U.S. and the President and Trustees of Williams College, 1985), 12–13, 31nn13–15, 62, 69.
Karal Ann Marling, Tom Benton and His Drawings: A Biographical Essay and a Collection of His Sketches, Studies, and Mural Cartoons (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1985), 10, 12n33, 13, 21, 114–17, 119–20, 124, 134, 222.
Donald Hoffmann, “Benton Murals Go into Shop for Cleaning,” Kansas City Star, June 22, 1986, 1K.
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“Gallery Faces,” Independent (Kansas City, Mo.), November 15, 1986, 23.
Linda Downs and Ellen Sharp, eds., Diego Rivera: A Retrospective (New York: Founders Society Detroit Institute of Arts, 1986), 160.
Elizabeth Broun, “Thomas Hart Benton: A Politician in Art,” Smithsonian Studies in American Art 1 (Spring 1987), 60–62.
Charles Burke, “Benton Paintings Receive Cleaning, Sprucing Up,” Independence (Mo.) Examiner, July 15, 1987, Suburban Life sec., 1.
“Benton Art Restored at Museum,” Grit (Williamsport, Pa.), September 6, 1987, 28.
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Toni Wood, “ Redressing Benton’s Creative Abandon,” Kansas City Star, March 12, 1989, 1D.
“Name Dropping,” Independent (Kansas City, Mo.), March 18, 1989, 10.
Donald Hoffmann, “Artist’s Stylistic Bombast Rings Very Loud but Very Hollow,” Kansas City Star, April 16, 1989, 10E.
Kyle MacMillan, “Painter Has Earned a Place of Respect with Distinct Vision,” Kansas City Star, April 16, 1989, 10E.
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Verlyn Klinkenborg, “Thomas Hart Benton Came from Missouri—and He Showed ’Em,” Smithsonian 20 (April 1989), 98.
“At Whitney, a Look Back at Thomas Hart Benton,” New York Times, November 17, 1989, C30.
Arthur R. Railton, “Tom Benton: Chilmarker,” Dukes County (Mass.) Intelligencer 31 (November 1989), 68–69.
Bob Priddy, Only the Rivers Are Peaceful: Thomas Hart Benton’s Missouri Mural (Independence, Mo.: Independence Press/Herald Publishing House, 1989), 25n1.
Erika Doss, “The Art of Cultural Politics: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism,” in Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of Cold War, ed. Lary May (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 200–201.
Douglas Hurt and Mary K. Dains, eds., Thomas Hart Benton: Artist, Writer, and Intellectual (Columbia: State Historical Society of Missouri, 1989), 39, 40, 65, 67, 69–73, 124–26.
Robert L. Gambone, Art and Popular Religion in Evangelical America, 1915–1940 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 5–7.
Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1989), 87–90, 124–31.
Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, exh. cat. (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1989), 21–23.
Andrew Delbanco, The Puritan Ordeal (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), cover (Prayer repro.).
Calvin J. Goodman, “Benton’s Enduring American Art Part Two,” American Artist 54 (January 1990), 68.
William Wilson, “Benton’s Epics from the Soil,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1990, 92.
Henry Adams, Thomas Hart Benton: Drawing from Life, exh. cat. (New York: Abbeville Press, 1990), 23–24, 94, 110–12, 128–32, 139, 155, 157.
Alan Wallach, “Regionalism Redux,” Art Quarterly 43 (June 1991), 267.
Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 182–89.
Benton’s America: Works on Paper and Selected Paintings, exh. cat. (New York: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1991), 61.
Erika Doss, Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 5, 9–65 passim, 67, 83.
World War II through the Eyes of Thomas Hart Benton, exh. cat. (San Antonio: Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum, 1991), 9, 12.
Rudy Chiappini, ed., Thomas Hart Benton, exh. cat. (Lugano, Switzerland: Museo d’Arte Moderna, 1992), 48, 50, 52, 59, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 73–75, 92, 96, 155–59.
Michael Kammen, Meadows of Memory: Images of Time and Tradition in American Art and Culture (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1992), 60.
Mark Thistlethwaite, “A Fall from Grace: The Critical Reception of History Painting, 1875–1925,” in Picturing History: American Painting, 1770–1930, ed. William Ayres (New York: Rizzoli, 1993), 197.
Paul Wood, Francis Frascina, Jonathan Harris, and Charles Harrison, Modernism in Dispute: Art since the Forties (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 11.
Michael Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 1933–1993 (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 96.
Edward Lucie-Smith, American Realism (London: Thames & Hudson, 1994), 94–96, 235.
Nina Allen, “Thomas Hart Benton and John Steinbeck: Populist Realism in the Depression Era, 1929–1941,” Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1995, vii–viii, 10, 15, 30–43, 32n39, 46, 56, 65, 244–48, 251–53.
Larry A. James and Sybil Jobe, Neosho, Tom Benton’s All-American City: A Tribute to the Neosho Daily News (Neosho, Mo.: Newton County Historical Society, 1997), 121.
A Selection of American Paintings from Our Current Inventory (Farmington, Me.: Tom Veilleux Gallery, February 1998), unpaginated.
Marco Sioli, “Huguenot Traditions in the Mountains of Kentucky: Daniel Trabue’s Memoires,” Journal of American History 84 (March 1998), 1330.
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Barbara Jaffee, “The Abstraction Within: Diagrammatic Impulses in Twentieth Century American Art, Pedagogy, and Art History,” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1999, 135, 258.
Kathleen A. Foster, Thomas Hart Benton and the Indiana Murals (Indianapolis and Bloomington: Indiana University Art Museum, in association with Indiana University Press, 2000), 140–41.
Matthew Baigell, Artist and Identity in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 70, 118, 119, 125.
Randall R. Griffey, “Bingham to Benton: The Midwest as Muse,” American Art Review 17 (April 2005), 95–96, 98–99.
Bill Athens, Native Moderns: American Indian Painting, 1940–1960 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006), 115.
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Lois Fichner-Rathus, Understanding Art (Boston: Wadsworth, 2007), 71 (Palisades repro.).
Annett Claudia Richter, “Fiddles, Harmonicas, and Banjos: Thomas Hart Benton and his Role in Constructing Popular Notions of American Folk Music and Musicians,” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2008, 164.
Sherman Reed Anderson, “James Ormsbee Chapin and the Marvin Paintings: An Epic of the American Farm,” Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 2008, 17.
Austen Barron Bailly, “Painting the ‘American historical Epic’: Thomas Hart Benton and Race, 1919–1936,” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2009.
Marion Wardle, ed., The Weir Family, 1820–1920: Expanding the Traditions of American Art, exh. cat. (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Museum of Art, 2011, 38, 52 (Discovery repro.).
Teresa A. Carbone, ed., Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties, exh. cat. (New York: Skira Rizzoli, 2011), 248–49, 255–57, 259, 261–62 (Aggression, Discovery, Prayer, Over the Mountains repro.).
Leo G. Mazow, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), 7, 118, 159, 163.
Justin Wolff, Thomas Hart Benton: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 177, 180–84, 189, 195, 199, 289 (Aggression repro.).
Randall R. Griffey, Elizabeth Mankin Kornhauser, and Stephanie L. Herdrich, Thomas Hart Benton’s America Today, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015), 8–10, 36.
Austen Barron Bailly, ed., American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood (Munich: Del Monico Books Prestel, 2015), 16, 30, 32–36, 43, 44–49, 112, 144, 189, 190, 192, 193, 220n16 (repro.).
Stacy I. Morgan, Frankie and Johnny: Race, Gender, and the Work of African American Folklore in 1930s America (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 2017), 88.
