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Swampland
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1941, Lithograph.
Fath 49. Edition
100. Signed in pencil.
Image size 17 3/4
x 12 5/8 inches (451 x 321 mm); sheet size 19 7/8 x 14 5/8 inches (505
x 371 mm).
A fine, rich impression,
on cream wove paper, with full margins (7/8 to 1 3/8 inches), in excellent
condition.
In 1941 Benton was
commissioned by Twentieth-Century Fox Film Corporation to do a series
of lithographs portraying the habitat and main characters of Vereen Bell's
Saturday Evening Post novel Swamp Water. This was the
first American film by the great French film director Jean Renoir.
"Nothing on the
face of the earth has a more forbidding beauty than a cypress swamp. The
trees with their fat curling bases rise out of the water like enormous
fungi. From their branches long whispers of moss hang in grey veils. Sometimes
a dead tree stands up stark, like a piece of white sculpture..."
–Thomas
Hart Benton, An Artist In America.
$5200. |