?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
THOMAS HART BENTON (1889-1975)
Abstract Composition (The Aquinnah Cliffs, Gay Head, Martha's Vineyard). Pencil on wove paper. 215x203 mm; 8½x8 inches.
Provenance: Lafayette Parke, Ltd., San Francisco, with the label; private collection, Chicago.
Benton was born, raised and called his primary home Missouri, though he visited Martha's Vineyard, the Massachusetts island, regularly and mainly during the summer months from the 1920s until his death. He frequently painted throughout his career the landscape and coastlines of Martha's Vineyard and particularly the dramatic cliffs of "Gay Head" at the western end of the island.
Benton was already seen as a leader in the Regionalist movement and a celebrated muralist by the time the WPA started the Federal Arts Program. He had been commissioned to paint murals of life in Indiana for the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago, which caused controversy. In 1934, his work was featured on the cover on Time magazine, which legitimized Regionalism as an art movement. His murals were influential for many of the artists hired as muralists under the WPA.
