Lot Essay
RELATED WORKS:
July Hay, oil and egg tempera on canvas mounted on panel, 38 x 26¾in., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
July Hay (Verso: Studies of Clouds), oil on tin, 11½ x 8in. (Sotheby's sale, May 25, 1988, lot 252)
This preparatory sketch is one of two known studies for one of Thomas Hart Benton's most successful images titled July Hay in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Benton painted the final version of July Hay in 1943 from his home in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard. This work which was purchased by the museum during the year it was completed is a fine example of the artist's representations of agricultural labor. Benton had previously explored this subject in his work of 1938, Cradling Hay; however, this earlier example depicted several laborers in a more expansive and open landscape. In July Hay and in this study, Benton has provided the viewer with a more intimate and close-up view of two men working in harmony with nature.
This study, like the other known preliminary work for July Hay, was painted on tin, a frequent practice of the artist during the 1940s. As well as working on tin, Benton is thought to have made clay models in preparation for this work. The use of clay models for design purposes is apparent in the broad, generalized forms of the figures, land, trees and leaves. This study reveals much of Benton's working methods which included creating a general scheme of the composition which would later be refined and enriched with intricate detail with little alteration to the original design.
This broadly handled work depicts two laborers working in sun-drenched fields of uncut hay. The undulating forms of the wheat fields are echoed in the "jig-saw puzzle shaped clouds" and in the rounded, swirling forms of the leaves and shrubs. The two blocky figures, who in thus study lack their scythes, are framed by a foreground of oddly shaped vegetation which leads up through a tree whose sketchy branches enclose a swirling sky of blues and purples. The overall composition forms a rythmic pattern of bold contrasts between light and dark colors.
The following statement nicely summarizes the overall impact of Thomas Hart Benton's July Hay. "It is the nature of work rather than the specific personalities of workmen that is conveyed. The men, the trees, the leaves, the foreground insect [not in the study] are all given equal emphasis in their hard and massively simplifying detail. Benton has presented us with a totally woven pattern, almost tapestry-like in the identity of its elements and means." (H. Geldzahler, American Painting in the Twentieth Century, New York, 1965, p. 94)
July Hay, oil and egg tempera on canvas mounted on panel, 38 x 26¾in., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
July Hay (Verso: Studies of Clouds), oil on tin, 11½ x 8in. (Sotheby's sale, May 25, 1988, lot 252)
This preparatory sketch is one of two known studies for one of Thomas Hart Benton's most successful images titled July Hay in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Benton painted the final version of July Hay in 1943 from his home in Chilmark on Martha's Vineyard. This work which was purchased by the museum during the year it was completed is a fine example of the artist's representations of agricultural labor. Benton had previously explored this subject in his work of 1938, Cradling Hay; however, this earlier example depicted several laborers in a more expansive and open landscape. In July Hay and in this study, Benton has provided the viewer with a more intimate and close-up view of two men working in harmony with nature.
This study, like the other known preliminary work for July Hay, was painted on tin, a frequent practice of the artist during the 1940s. As well as working on tin, Benton is thought to have made clay models in preparation for this work. The use of clay models for design purposes is apparent in the broad, generalized forms of the figures, land, trees and leaves. This study reveals much of Benton's working methods which included creating a general scheme of the composition which would later be refined and enriched with intricate detail with little alteration to the original design.
This broadly handled work depicts two laborers working in sun-drenched fields of uncut hay. The undulating forms of the wheat fields are echoed in the "jig-saw puzzle shaped clouds" and in the rounded, swirling forms of the leaves and shrubs. The two blocky figures, who in thus study lack their scythes, are framed by a foreground of oddly shaped vegetation which leads up through a tree whose sketchy branches enclose a swirling sky of blues and purples. The overall composition forms a rythmic pattern of bold contrasts between light and dark colors.
The following statement nicely summarizes the overall impact of Thomas Hart Benton's July Hay. "It is the nature of work rather than the specific personalities of workmen that is conveyed. The men, the trees, the leaves, the foreground insect [not in the study] are all given equal emphasis in their hard and massively simplifying detail. Benton has presented us with a totally woven pattern, almost tapestry-like in the identity of its elements and means." (H. Geldzahler, American Painting in the Twentieth Century, New York, 1965, p. 94)