Title: Working Mules.
Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975)
Medium: Graphite drawing, c.1940.
Signed in pencil, lower right center.
A wonderful pencil sketch of mules attached to a wagon.
Image size 4 1/4 x 8 1/2" (10.5 x 21.5 cm).
Condition: Good condition, save for minor light discoloration, and one brown stain in the right margin.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) printmaker, painter, and muralist was born in Neosho, Missouri. His father convinced him to attend the Western Military Academy in Alton, Illinois in 1906. After less than a year he left the Academy and began studying at the Art Institute of Chicago. From 1908 to 1911 he lived in Paris and studied at the Academie Julien. The artist made his first lithograph in 1929. Starting in 1934 he began a long relationship, sometimes aggravating, with Associated American Artists in New York City, who circulated sixty-one of the artist's ninety-three known lithographs.