The Race (also titled Homeward Bound)

In Thomas Hart Benton's lithograph The Race, a galloping horse charges just ahead of a racing train silhouetted on the horizon beneath a plume of black smoke billowing from its engine. Near a hillock at left, a lone telephone pole stands as the only other sign of human presence on this treeless prairie. A looming dark cloud is echoed by a pool of water in the foreground. Benton's dramatically juxtaposed horse and train highlight two modes of transportation that brought settlers to America's Midwest and West. Representing the primary means of transport in the pre-industrial era, the horse appears to outrun the modern "horse power" machine, yet the train's superior speed soon will overtake the animal. Starting in the mid-nineteenth century, the railroad conquered the country's great expanses by connecting cities and remote frontiers, but was itself overtaken in the artist's lifetime by the automobile and airplane. Benton's image thus serves as a nostalgic record of America's transition from an agrarian society to an industrial one.

After 1926, Benton's art increasingly depicted scenes of rural American life, history, and folklore to document the country's unique regional character, which was being lost with the expansion of modern urban culture. In this he joined fellow so-called regionalist artists John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, who dedicated their accessible, representative art to honoring ordinary Americans in rural heartland settings. These artists regarded printmaking as a means of reaching a wider, more popular audience through less expensive, reproducible media. As with his Huck Finn (TF 1995.24), Benton created the lithograph print (in reverse) after his painting of the same subject. This print was published by Associated American Artists, New York, in an edition of 250 impressions.

Collection Cameo, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 1997.

On Process: The American Print, Technique Examined, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, January 13–March 2, 2001.

Fath, Creekmore. The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton. Rev. ed. Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1979. No. 56; ill. pp. 132–133.

Carey, Frances and Anthony Griffiths. American Prints, Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. (exh. cat., British Museum). London, England: Trustees of the British Museum, 1980. No. 106, p. 41.

American Master Prints from the Betty and Douglas Duffy Collection. Washington, D.C.: The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, 1987. No. 15.

The Race (also titled as Homeward Bound), Thomas Hart Benton. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, July 1997. Ill. (black & white). [specific reference to Terra print]