Departure of the Joads

1939

Thomas Hart Benton

Artist, American, 1889 - 1975

Printed with black and gray on cream-white paper, this horizontal lithograph shows nine people around or near a pickup truck to our right and a man sitting in front of a shed to our left under a moonlit sky. We are low to the ground, looking slightly up at the scene. Four men wearing hats load the back of the truck. The truck has a tractor-like cab with the windshield tilted out, lamp-like headlights, and the thin tires have spokes. A woman wearing a shin-length dress sits on the fender next to the door we can see, and she looks away toward the men to our left. A younger girl stands with arms crossed and young boy sits on the ground, both facing away from us, near the woman. Beyond the truck and to our left, an oil lamp sits on what might be a box or piece of furniture, next to a round basket. A person wearing a long garment, perhaps a coat, and a wide-brimmed hat faces away from us and seems to support a woman wearing a long dress, whose face turns up as she sways back. Another man sits next to an open door of the wooden shed to our left. A tree growing on the far side of the shed curves up over the sloping roof. A farmhouse sits on the horizon in the distance to our left. Two large, textured, sawn tree trunks lie on the ground close to us in the lower left corner. The land rises in low hills under the truck and shed. A crescent moon hangs in the dark sky above between two arms of clouds that sweep in from our right. On the paper under the printed image to the left, the artist inscribed the work: “To Patricia Syrett from Thomas H. Benton.” The artist also signed the work in the other lower corner, to the right: “Benton.”
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Artwork overview


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(Sotheby's, New York); Reba and Dave Williams, Greenwich, CT, 1971; purchased 2008 by NGA

Associated Names

Exhibition History

2016

  • Three Centuries of American Prints: from the National Gallery of Art, National Gallery of Art, Washington; National Gallery in Prague, Prague 1; Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City; Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, 2016 - 2017, no. 103.

Bibliography

1969

  • Fath, Creekmore. The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969, pp. 88-89, no. 34.

1979

  • Fath, Creekmore. The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979, pp. 88-89, no. 34.

Inscriptions

lower left in graphite: To Patricia Syrett from Thomas H. Benton; lower right in graphite: Benton

Wikidata ID

Q76440152


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