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Mali, Bamana
Pair of Antelope Headdresses
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Thomas Cole
Romantic Landscape
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Frans Snyders
Market Scene on a Quay
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Balthasar van der Ast
Still Life with a Basket of Fruit
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Pierre-Jacques Volaire
The Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius
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Jean-Baptiste Louis Gros
Crater of Popocatépetl
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Focus Works of Art
Spring on the Missouri
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Thomas Hart Benton
(American, 1889 - 1975)
Spring on the Missouri,
1945 |
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Two sharecroppers struggle to load their meager belongings - mattress, cast-iron stove and blanket - into a mule wagon before rising floodwater reaches their small home. A darkening sky and lightening add a sense of urgency to their actions. Deep furrows in the mud and high water in the background suggest escape will be difficult.
Benton used compositional elements, such as color, line and shape, to increase the drama of his painting. He squeezes the activity of the scene between two wooden structures - the white house on the left and red barn on the right. He crops our view of these buildings, as a photographer does when zooming in on the action. This helps narrow our focus on the rectangular wagon, which repeats the shape and texture of the buildings. Benton also uses color to direct our attention to the wagon. The yellow of the man's shirt and the orange blanket catch our eye and encourage us to take inventory of the items being loaded. The artist also repeats round objects, such as the white jug, wagon wheels, metal tub and horses' bodies, to move our eye from the foreground to the middle ground of the painting. Diagonal lines in the mud and streaks of lightening suggest action and heighten anticipation about the outcome of this story. This drama is accentuated by the contrast of dark clouds on the left and a clear sky on the right.
Does this painting document a real occurrence?
This painting is based on drawings Thomas Hart Benton made on travels in the Midwest during the Great Flood of 1937. He was hired by the Kansas City Star newspaper to document this natural disaster, which ravaged much of the Ohio River Valley. He traveled through Missouri making sketches of the flood's effect on the land and its residents. He wrote, "the roads of the flood country were full of movers…Every once in a while seepage from under the levee would force the evacuation of a house and you would see a great struggle to get animals and goods out of the rising water."
What is Thomas Hart Benton's background?
Thomas Hart Benton was born in Missouri and went to art school in New York. Rejecting the abstract style popular in modern Europe and America, he chose to paint in a more illustrative manner. He is part of an art movement called American regionalism, characterized by images of everyday subjects that celebrate the virtues and struggles of rural America.
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Below are suggestions for using the Focus Work of Art with students in the classroom. The activity and discussion ideas are listed in order of difficulty. The activity instructions and italicized discussion questions may be presented directly to students. The icons below each suggestion note the related subject area(s). Click on each icon to determine which subject area it represents. Browse the thematic Lesson Plans for more ideas on how to use this work of art and theme in the classroom. |
- Predicting the Action
Benton's painting documents the damaging effects of the 1937 flood. Describe the action of this painting in a short sentence. Predict what might have occurred five minutes before and five minutes after the scene in the painting. Write a story about this event that includes your predictions. Add illustrations, if you wish. Share these stories with the class.
 
- The Great Flood of 1937
Visit the following web sites to learn about the 1937 flood: classzone.com and indiana.edu. Compare the documentary evidence you collect with Benton's memory of his encounters with flood victims. Which do you think tells you more about the event? Why? Compare this flood with the damage Hurricane Floyd brought to North Carolina in 1999.
- Preparing for Disaster
How are these people reacting to the flood? What kinds of items are they taking with them? Make a list of the items in your home or room you would take with you if you had to flee in a natural disaster. Why would you want to take those particular items along? Compare these lists as a class. Which one or two items do most people have on their lists? Compare this scene with Volaire's Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius.
- The Power of Colors
List the colors you see in Benton's painting. Note the location of those colors on a color wheel. Identify the type of colors he includes? Primary? Secondary? Complementary? Which colors does Benton use to catch your eye? Which make the scene more dramatic?
- Weather Conditions
What are the weather conditions in the painting? How do we adapt to our weather? Why would weather be very important to these figures? What does the weather mean for their crops? How does the weather affect Benton's choice of colors? How would they have been different if it had been a sunny day?
- Emergency Management
What are some natural disasters that occur in your region? How do you prepare for these? Visit FEMA to learn more about ways the government supports people in emergencies. Consider why it is important to help friends and neighbors during times of difficulty. Write and illustrate a story about an instance when one of your friends or family members helped you in an emergency.
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