THOMAS HART BENTON
The Farmer's Daughter.
Lithograph, 1944. 248x337 mm; 9¾x13¼ inches, wide margins. Edition of 250. Signed in pencil, lower right. Published by Associated American Artists, New York. A very good impression with strong contrasts.The artist's description of this lithograph by Benton (1889-1975), which was selected for "Fifty Prints of the Year, 1944," by the publisher, reads, "Along the dirt roads that run at various angles off the highways of central Missouri, there are hundreds of houses that look just like this one. The tenant farmers who occupy them, for longer or shorter times, always have little children who play around the houses while the grownups work the fields. Even when the women folk are in the kitchen, the children of these places look lonely, lonely like the places themselves. The little girl who works the pump is doing so 'just because.' For a moment there is nothing else to do." Fath 62.