About this artwork
Thomas Hart Benton first saw laborers cultivating cotton on a trip to Georgia in the late 1920s, and he returned to the subject in this painting in 1945. In Cotton Pickers, the artist rendered the figures with a sinuous, curvilinear style to articulate the exertion of their movement along the landscape. Cotton sharecropping, a system of tenant farming that developed after the Civil War, allowed landowners to rent land to poor farmers in return for a portion of the crops. Because the practice kept agricultural workers impoverished, it became a symbol of a racially and economically unjust system. Benton’s vision of modernism was firmly rooted in figuration. He often explored themes of US history, centering African Americans in those shared narratives.
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Status
- On View, Gallery 263
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Department
- Arts of the Americas
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Artist
- Thomas Hart Benton
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Title
- Cotton Pickers
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Place
- United States (Artist's nationality:)
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Date
- 1945
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Medium
- Oil on canvas
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Dimensions
- 81.3 × 121.9 cm (32 × 48 in.)
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Credit Line
- Prior bequest of Alexander Stewart; Centennial Major Acquisitions Income and Wesley M. Dixon Jr. funds; Roger and J. Peter McCormick Endowments; prior acquisition of the George F. Harding Collection and Cyrus H. McCormick Fund; Quinn E. Delaney, American Art Sales Proceeds, Alyce and Edwin DeCosta and Walter E. Heller Foundation, and Goodman funds; prior bequest of Arthur Rubloff; Estate of Walter Aitken; Ada Turnbull Hertle and Mary and Leigh Block Endowment funds; prior acquisition of Mr. and Mrs. Frank G. Logan Purchase Prize; Marian and Samuel Klasstorner and Laura T. Magnuson Acquisition funds; prior acquisition of Friends of American Art Collection; Wirt D. Walker Trust; Jay W. McGreevy Endowment; Cyrus Hall McCormick Fund; Samuel A. Marx Purchase Fund for Major Acquisitions; Maurice D. Galleher Endowment; Alfred and May Tiefenbronner Memorial, Dr. Julian Archie, Gladys N. Anderson, and Simeon B. Williams funds; Capital Campaign General Acquisitions Endowment, and Benjamin Argile Memorial Fund
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Reference Number
- 2013.4
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Copyright
- © T.H. Benton and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trust / UMB Bank Trustee/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Extended information about this artwork
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