Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889 – 1975
The Grand Tetons, 1955 – 60
Oil on tin, 10 x 11 3/4 inches
Gift of Peter M. Wege
2007.3

As one of the American Scene painters, emerging for recognition during the later 1920s and 1930s, Thomas Hart Benton, along with John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, sought to capture the many aspects of national identity as reflected in diverse locales. These three artists, numbering among an important group of American Regionalists, were drawn to nostalgic and heroic depictions of everyday life in small towns and open landscapes both agricultural and natural.

Although turning his artist's eye to the Eastern seaboard from New York to Martha's Vineyard and to the South, Benton is best known for his paintings and prints of the Midwest and western portions of the United States. In The Grand Tetons, an oil study for a larger oil painting, The Sheepherder (1956), Benton presents a mounted herder shepherding his flock of sheep against a majestic mountain range dominated by Grand Teton, its tallest peak at 13,000 feet above sea level. Located in Wyoming, south of Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Range is part of the Rocky Mountains. Famous for their dramatic elevations, the Tetons lack foothills that might obscure their view and rise sharply from 5,000 to 7,000 feet above the Jackson Hole valley floor.