Study for Bootleggers (Primary Title)
Thomas Hart Benton, American, 1889 - 1975 (Artist)
Determined not to idealize the past, Thomas Hart Benton sometimes explored more unseemly aspects of the American story. Study for Bootleggers is a preliminary composition for the final work of the same title—in the collection of the Reynolda House Museum of American Art—and shows how the artist turned to issues of his own era through the depiction of illicit activities. Politically astute—he was the son of a Missouri congressman and the grandnephew of the state’s first senator—Benton comments on the failed policies and corrupting influences of Prohibition, the 1920 federal law restricting the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcohol. Overlapping vignettes picture an active black market where a bootlegger sells directly to a moneyed client while a man carries a crate of whiskey to a waiting airplane. Beneath a distant overpass and under the nose of a complicit policeman, gunmen hijack a truck conveying the illicit cargo. By filling the scene with speeding trains, a sleek airplane, cars, trucks, and telephone lines, Benton suggests that modern technology aids both progress and crime alike.
Roanoke Museum of Fien Arts, "The Grapes of Wrath", 7/29 - 8/31/89, Roanoke, VA
Artmobile, "Art of the 30's" VMFA, Jan 1980 - June 1981
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