Corn and Winter Wheat

1948

Thomas Hart Benton

Painter, American, 1889 - 1975

Six bunches of harvested corn close to us lead back to two people planting fields, which in turn lead back to a red barn and white house in this horizontal landscape painting. The shocks of corn are tied into rounded, pyramidal shapes on a ground streaked with brown dirt and green growth. In the center of the composition and in the distance, a person on a horse-drawn wagon hands a sack or other object down to a person standing at the back of the wagon. Vibrant green hills roll back to red and white structures to the left and a row of dark green trees on the horizon to the right. In the top third of the painting, a wave of white clouds seems to crest against a jewel-blue sky. The curves of the land are slightly exaggerated, giving the painting a stylized look. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “Benton 48.”
This object’s media is not available for download. Contact us about image usage.

In the years following World War II, American regionalist art fell out of fashion, its popularity superseded by the promotion of modernist abstraction. After the deaths of Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in 1942 and 1946, Thomas Hart Benton was the sole survivor of the movement’s three major artists. Benton retreated from the controversial social commentary characteristic of his murals from the previous decade and painted a number of landscapes representing agricultural activities, such as Corn and Winter Wheat. In the shocks of corn prominently displayed in the foreground, as well as the farmers planting winter wheat in the distance, Benton depicts a labor-intensive, traditional method of farming that was being rendered obsolete by mechanization. Corn and Winter Wheat, like other landscapes by Benton during this period, is a nostalgic look back in time to the Midwest’s agrarian, pre-industrial past.

Not on view See artworks now on view

Artwork overview

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Corn and Winter Wheat, 1948

Six bunches of harvested corn close to us lead back to two people planting fields, which in turn lead back to a red barn and white house in this horizontal landscape painting. The shocks of corn are tied into rounded, pyramidal shapes on a ground streaked with brown dirt and green growth. In the center of the composition and in the distance, a person on a horse-drawn wagon hands a sack or other object down to a person standing at the back of the wagon. Vibrant green hills roll back to red and white structures to the left and a row of dark green trees on the horizon to the right. In the top third of the painting, a wave of white clouds seems to crest against a jewel-blue sky. The curves of the land are slightly exaggerated, giving the painting a stylized look. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower left corner, “Benton 48.”

Video:  The Panorama and the Globe: Expanding the American Landscape in World War II

Wyeth Lecture in American Art presented by Cécile Whiting (2017)

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Sadie Miller, McPherson, Kansas, by 1950.[1] (Kodner Gallery, St. Louis); acquired jointly May 2000 by (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe) and (John Berggruen Gallery, San Francisco); sold January 2001 to (Owen Gallery, New York);[2] purchased January 2001 by Helen L. Henderson [1939-2021], Washington, D.C.; gift (partial and promised) 2001 to NGA; gift completed 2021.
[1] This Information is on the appraisal report, copy in NGA curatorial files.
[2] This Information was kindly provided by the Gerald Peters Gallery.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2000

  • Thomas Hart Benton, Owen Gallery, New York, 2000.

Inscriptions

lower left: Benton 48

Wikidata ID

Q20194168

You may be interested in

Loading Results