Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889 - 1975) Attributed: Tobacco Farmer, oil and tempera on card board, signed lower right, unframed.

Thomas Hart Benton was born into a politically charged midwestern family. His great uncle was Missouri’s first senator, and his father was a congressional representative. Coming of age in this atmosphere of nationalism and pride for the spirit of the American worker paired with the economic agricultural disaster of the dust bowl years gave birth to Benton’s subject forward style and inspired him to preserve and record the dignity and durability of the rural American.


In the early 1940’s the American Tobacco Company commissioned several artists to create works for an ad campaign depicting the humble yet strong American farmers as a means of connecting its consumers with the farmers who grew its product. These paintings depicted various steps of tobacco production: planting, harvesting, and curing. Benton’s work being both accessible while also carrying connotations of high-art legitimacy, made him a natural choice for this project.


Benton’s creative relationship with the American Tobacco Company was a bit tumultuous. In Benton’s first paintings, from his assignment in Georgia, ad executives complained that his depiction of people of color doing manual labor would cause African American institutions to boycott their product. The company was also concerned that depicting people of color as well-dressed upstanding citizens, the entire south would boycott them. Benton moved on to the North Carolina farms where he painted Tobacco Sorters. The scene depicts an aged tobacco farmer teaching a small girl about the family business, and how to grade tobacco. The executives again complained, this time, that the girl was too skinny. “Everything about tobacco must look healthy.” The company ultimately went with a picture with the girl removed and one of golden tobacco leaves with a very distant farmer working in the background.


After the ordeal Benton was quoted in New York newspaper PM in 1945, “Advertising is a lying art. Write that down. It depends on suggestions that aren’t wholly true. And you can’t expect art to deal in half-truths. Business can’t expect art to tell its lies for it. If we do, we are pure prostitutes and should be paid high. I am not a prostitute, and I’m sick of advertising.”
Despite his animosity with the American Tobacco Company, Benton did return to its subject matter in his 1943 Night Firing of Tobacco painting.

Dimensions: 25 x 19 inches board. 32.3 x 26 inches framed.

Provenance: Private Collection, Canada

Good condition, some ware along the border if the board.
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