Recent Acquisition at Surovek Gallery: Jessie on the Couch by Thomas Hart Benton

I have a sort of inner conviction that for all the possible limitations of my mind and the disturbing effects of my processes, for all the contradicting struggles and failures I have gone through, I have come to something that is in the image of America and the American people of my time.
– Thomas Hart Benton

 

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975), one of America’s most distinguished and popular artists, was also a study in dichotomy.

 

He is best known for his depictions of life in the Midwest, particularly Missouri, where he was born and raised, but spent twenty years living and working in New York City and studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris after two years at The Art Institute of Chicago.

 

 

Benton taught at the Art Student’s League, and though he called himself an "enemy of modernism,” his students spoke highly of him and of his teaching, especially Jackson Pollock, who became one of the most famous Abstract Expressionists. Pollock kept in touch with Benton throughout his life.

 

Benton received much recognition in the 1930s for his public murals and was featured on the cover of Time magazine in 1934, although he was not popular with art critics who lauded Abstract Expressionists at the time.

 

Benton moved back to Missouri in 1935, with his wife, Rita. The couple had two children, a son, Thomas Piacenza Benton (1926–2010) and a daughter, Jessie Benton (1939–2023).

 

Every year, Benton painted a portrait of Jessie for her birthday. Jesse on the Couch was painted for her ninth birthday.

 

Although Benton had a reputation for being opinionated and difficult at times, Jessie told an interviewer that, “My father moved through the echelons of social worlds with great ease, brought them home and taught me that all men are created equal. Daddy and Jimmy Cagney used to fight about politics, but that did not mean they could not dance and drink and have dinner together.”

 

The family invited guests to what were called “sings” at the family home, where Jessie said that many truly great and remarkable people gave her special attention. According to the Martha’s Vineyard Times, “The novelist Somerset Maugham read her bedtime stories at the age of three. Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU, taught her how to ride a bike. Musicologists George Seeger and Alan Lomax brought Jessie her first songbooks. She learned her first song (“She’ll be Comin’ Round the Mountain”) from Pete Seeger’s mother, Ruth Crawford Seeger. The poet Carl Sandburg suggested Jessie take up playing the guitar.”

 

Thomas Hart Benton was elected to the National Academy of Design and was chosen as one of 50 outstanding Americans by vote of the National Panel of Distinguished Americans of the Academy of Achievement.

 

Please contact us if you would like more information about the works of Thomas Hart Benton available at Surovek Gallery.

 

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April 24, 2025