Jun 05, 2003 - Sale 1973

Sale 1973 - Lot 21

Price Realized: $ 3,450
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 3,000 - $ 5,000
THOMAS HART BENTON
The Swamp.

Pencil on cream wove paper, circa 1941. 245x210 mm; 10x81/4 inches. Initialed "B" in pencil, lower right recto.

A study for the lithograph Swampland, one of a series of 6 lithographs commissioned by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation to publicize a film based on Vereen Bell's Saturday Evening Post novel Swampwater. It was the first American film of the French director Jean Renoir. According to Benton, "The drawing, minus the skull, was made in the southern Louisiana area--forgotten--but within 50 or 60 miles of Abbeville, La." Fath p. 118.