Cradling Wheat

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Most American art historians consider Benton, along with Grant Wood of Iowa, and the Kansan, John Steuart Curry, as the "Regionalists" of the 1930s-1940s because of their subject matter which was derived from their native areas. In their work, that of Benton is distinctive in its dependence on curvilinear forms and movement. Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri in 1889, studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Academie Julien in Paris, and then taught at the Art Students League in New York and also at one of his the Kansas City Art Institute. In New York, one of his students was Jackson Pollack who is usually credited with having developed "Action Painting," a style of "Abstract Expressionism" in the 1950s. Most significant among Benton's many murals are those of the Harry S. Truman Library, the New School of Social Research in New York, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

A lithograph is a print resulting from drawing on a fine-grained limestone block with a waxy crayon, covering the stone with water, and then inking it; the greasy ink adheres only to the areas of the drawing thus reproducing it. In the case is a letter from the artist offering this print as a gift to the Senior Class of 1939.