Slaves

Thomas Hart Benton’s Slaves is a graphic indictment of the abuse enslaved Africans suffered in the United States from the seventeenth century to the 1860s. Representations of the mistreatment of African slaves were historically restricted to printed images in abolitionist publications, Northern political magazines, and travel literature, while fine art in the United States largely sidestepped the issue. In this work, however, Benton confronted the cruelty of human bondage through the depiction of a white overseer’s violent act: the whipping of a crouching, barely clad black man whose family shrinks behind him on the deck of a slave ship. Benton’s condemnation of slavery stemmed from family history as well as moral outrage. The artist's namesake, United States Senator Thomas Hart Benton (1782–1858), was a slaveholder who nonetheless eventually came to denounce slaery and was a fierce opponent of its extension into additional United States territories.

  The depiction in Slaves of Africans arriving on American shores situates the painting in the colonial and early Republic period prior to the 1808 embargo on the importation of enslaved people to the United States. The generic landscape that awaits the unwilling passengers provides no regional specificity, positing slavery as a national issue. The church steeple, included in the background, subtly alludes to the religious authorities who used their moral power to sanction the institution. Benton’s pictorial strategy keenly reinforces his social commentary: while dealing with a topic relegated to history—slavery was officially abolished in the United States in 1865—Slaves has an unabashedly contemporary look and feel, its composition and construction bringing to mind social realist works of the period that addressed contemporary issues. In this way, Benton critiqued the lasting effects of slavery, connecting Slaves to the continued mistreatment of African Americans in the twentieth century.

Slaves is one panel in Benton’s American Historical Epic. Produced between 1919 and 1928, American Historical Epic was a multi-painting series, not unlike a mural project, meant to represent a revisionist view of early American history through themes of racial conflict and economic exploitation, especially between settlers and Indians, planters and slaves, and the agnostic and the devout. The series was to comprise between fifty and seventy-five paintings in ten or more chapters encompassing America’s past, though only three chapters consisting of five paintings each and three related paintings were realized. Although The Spinners (TF 2003.3) was to be the central panel of Chapter II, its ultimate exclusion from the series placed Slaves and Planting (private collection, New York) at the center of Benton’s visual history of the colonization of America.

Despite its incomplete status, American Historical Epic was Benton’s first attempt at constructing a narrative across a large-scale, multi-paneled series. In the 1930s, several years after abandoning this initial project, Benton would establish his position as the leading muralist in the United States. The Terra Foundation collection also includes Benton’s print after Slaves titled Slave Master with Slaves (TFAA 2013.2), which was likely produced in preparation for a never-realized lithographic series based on the American Historical Epic.

Forty-Second Annual Exhibition, The Architectural League of New York, New York, NY (organizer). Venue: The Architectural League of New York, New York, February 21–March 5, 1927.

Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri (organizer). Venues: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, April 16–June 18, 1989; The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, Michigan, August 4–October 15, 1989; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York, November 17, 1989–February 11, 1990; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, April 29–July 22, 1990. [exh. cat.]

A Narrative of American Art, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, February 13–October 31, 2004 (exhibited partial run: February 13–April 13, 2004; exhibited partial run with The American Historical Epic: Colonization theme: April 14–October 31, 2004).

Les artistes américaines et le Louvre (American Artists andf the Louvre), Musée du Louvre, Paris, France and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venue: Musée du Louvre, Paris, France, June 14–September 18, 2006. [exh. cat.]

Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York, NY and Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL (organizers). Venues: National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China, February 9–April 5, 2007; Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China, April 30–June 30, 2007; Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, April 30–June 30, 2007 (Shanghai presentations ran concurrently); The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia, July 23–September 9, 2007; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, Bilbao, Spain, October 15, 2007–April 27, 2008. [exh. cat.]

Art Across America, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: National Museum of Korea, Seoul, February 4–May 12, 2013; Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea, June 7–September 1, 2013. [exh. cat.]

America: Painting a Nation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (organizers). Venue: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, November 9, 2013–February 8, 2014. [exh. cat]

American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas (organizers). Venues: Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, June 6–September 7, 2015; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri, October 10, 2015–January 3, 2016; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas, February 6–May 1, 2016; and Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, June 9–September 5, 2016. [exh. cat.]

Benton, Thomas H. “My American Epic in Paint.” Creative Art 3:6 (December 1928): 31–36. Ill. p. 35 (black & white).

M. K. P., “U.S. History in Panels: Murals are Good Examples of Thomas Hart Benton’s Art.” Kansas City Times (January 6, 1936): 106. Text p. 106.

Freund, Karl. “Thomas Hart Benton—Realist: Nothing But the Truth, with Hogarthian Vengeance.” Ringmaster: The World in Caricature 1:4 (November 1936): 33–38, 45. Ill. p. 34 (black & white), as “Slavery.”

Adams, Henry. Thomas Hart Benton: An American Original. (exh. cat., Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art). New York: Knopf, 1989. Ill. p. 124 (color).

Doss, Erika Lee. Benton, Pollock, and the Politics of Modernism: From Regionalism to Abstract Expressionism. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Fig. 1.3, p. 13.

“Quick Sketches: Benton Goes to Terra.” American Artist 68:744 (July 2004): 14. Text p. 14. Ill p. 14 (color).

Kennedy, Elizabeth and Olivier Meslay, eds. American Artists and the Louvre. (exh. cat., Musée du Louvre). Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art; Paris: Musée du Louvre Éditions, 2006. Text p. 140, cat. no. 25; ill. p. 141 (color).

Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation. (exh. cat., National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China). New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago, IL: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. Ill. p. 221 (color).

Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation. (exh. cat., National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China; Shanghai Museum, Shanghai, China). New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago, IL: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. (Chinese edition). Ill. p. 221 (color).

Art In America: 300 years of Innovation. Hong Kong: Wen Wei Publishing Co. Ltd, 2007. Text p. 123 (in Chinese); Ill. p. 123 (color).

Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in America: 300 Years of Innovation. (exh. cat., The Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, Moscow, Russia). New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago, IL: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. (Russian edition). Ill. p. 117 (color).

Davidson, Susan, ed. Art in the USA: 300 años de innovación. (exh. cat., Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao). New York, NY: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation; Chicago, IL: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2007. (Spanish edition). Ill. p. 165 (color).

Conrads, Margaret C., ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007. Text p. 69; Ill. p. 66 (black & white).

Bailly, Austen Barron. “Painting the American Historical Epic: Thomas Hart Benton and Race, 1919–1936.” PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, March 2009. Text p. xix [Fig. I.8, not illustrated], 2, 14–15, 97, 102, 108–109, 203–205, 208, 226–227, 252, 293, 296–297, 303, 341 n.6.

Bailly, Austen Barron. “Art for America: Race in Thomas Hart Benton’s Murals, 1919–19136.” Indiana Magazine of History 105:2 (June 2009): 150–166. Text pp. 151, 155, 159.

Art Across America. (exh. cat., National Museum of Korea, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation for American Art). Seoul, South Korea: National Museum of Korea, 2013. (English and Korean versions). Text pp. 41, 285; ill. p. 41, fig. 50 (color), p. 284 (color).

America: Painting a Nation. (exh. cat., Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Museum of Korea, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation for American Art). Sydney, Australia: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2013. Text p. 206; ill. cat. no. 71, p. 207, (color).

Bailly, Austen Barron, ed. American Epics: Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood. (exh. cat. Peabody Essex Museum). Salem, Massachusetts: Peabody Essex Museum; London: Delmonico Books, 2015. Text, pp. 32, 192; ill. p. 47 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 207; ill. p. 207 (color).