Fire in the Barnyard

Throughout his career, Benton used his art to tell the stories of America, and recollections from his childhood often contributed chapters to that greater narrative. Like his work, Spring Tryout, a boyhood memory provided the source for Fire in the Barnyard. Made many years after the incident, this lithograph focuses on the heroics of the men who battled the blaze on a farm that neighbored Benton’s maternal grandfather’s outside of Waxahachie, Texas. It was an experience Benton recalled as “immensely impressive to young ’uns.”