Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and lived in Paris and New York, but upon returning to his native Missouri in the mid-1930s he rejected the avant-garde art movements and urban themes of those centers for a folksy, nationalistic realism that he developed in paintings and murals. Together with the painters John Steuart Curry, Joe Jones, and Grant Wood, he became a leading exponent of American Regionalism. The roughened hands of the husband and wife depicted in The Lord Is My Shepherd testify to decades of hard work, and a Bible sampler on the wall affirms their faith. The couple assume a symbolic stature in this painting as emblems of a pious, simple life, though they were modeled on two specific individuals, Sabrina and George West. In Chilmark, the town where Benton summered for more than fifty years on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts, a particular form of hereditary deafness was prevalent and affected the Wests, among many others of Benton’s neighbors.

Poker Night (from A Streetcar Named Desire) was a commission from producer David O. Selznick, a surprise gift for his wife, Irene Mayer Selznick, who produced the Tennessee Williams play on Broadway in 1947. The painting portrays a dramatic moment when the refined but fallen Blanche Dubois, holding a mirror and wearing a revealing gown, taunts her drunk, violent brother-in-law, Stanley Kowalski (pictured in a white undershirt). While Benton’s figurative style had remained relatively consistent over two decades, his subject here is more provocative and takes narrative liberties. Indeed, Jessica Tandy, who played Dubois onstage opposite Marlon Brando’s Kowalski, was offended by her portrayal in this painting—her costumes in the play had been considerably more demure.