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Estimate: $ 8,000 - $ 12,000
THOMAS HART BENTON (1889-1975) Landscape with Trees.
Oil on paper laid on board, circa 1920. 217x280 mm; 8½x11 inches.
Provenance The artist. Gift to Charles Pollock, New York and Paris, 1929. Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York, 1981 (label). Private collection, New York. Heritage Auctions, Dallas, May 7, 2016, lot 68134. Private collection, New Jersey.
Exhibited "Thomas Hart Benton: Synchromist Paintings 1915-1920 from a Private Collection," Salander O'Reilly Galleries, New York, December 2, 1981–January 30, 1982, number 17, Collection #22 (illustrated). "Nature in Early Modern American Art," Heath Gallery, Atlanta, May 17-31, 1986 (label).
Note This work will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné being prepared by the Thomas Hart Benton Catalogue Raisonné Foundation. Committee Members: Dr. Henry Adams, Jessie Benton, Anthony Benton Gude, Andrew Thompson and Michael Owen.
While living in Paris in 1909, Thomas Hart Benton became acquainted with the American artist Stanton Macdonald-Wright. Macdonald-Wright and his circle, who would become to be known as the Synchromists, influenced Benton to experiment with Impressionist and Pointillist techniques and to use a broader range of color. Synchromists united Cubism's fractured compositions with a dynamic, harmonious rainbow guided by Percyval Tudor-Hart's color theories. Their compositions, often taking on a spiral form, were inspired by formal elements utilized by Renaissance artists, including Michelangelo.
When Benton arrived in New York in June 1912, he continued to study the French painters, including the Impressionists and Paul Cézanne. By the end of 1913, Macdonald-Wright had also come to New York, and eventually shared an apartment with Benton. Though in 1914 Benton was still a skeptic of Synchromism, he helped to promote an exhibition of Macdonald-Wright and Morgan Russell's paintings at Carroll Galleries. Benton attended this exhibition and was notably most impressed with the rhythmic compositions and the abandonment of colors found in nature. Benton came to use Synchromist color theory in his own figurative paintings during the 1910's and exhibited these alongside Macdonald-Wright and Russell in the 1916 Forum "Exhibition of Modern Painters." Although met with some criticism, he continued to experiment with non-representational styles, including geometric abstraction, through the end of the decade. Like the Synchromists, Benton looked to the Old Master painters when conceptualizing his figural compositions. He could not wholly abandon a natural palette and realistic representation, but Benton's experiments in Synchromism were important, as the movement influenced how he incorporated rhythm and depth into his artwork and expanded his capability to render voluminous forms.
