Thomas Hart Benton 1889-1975

Mr. and Mrs. E. Bradford Keith, Westwood, Massachusetts (acquired directly from the artist)
Gift to the present owner, 1999

On a July evening in 1920, Thomas Hart Benton and a small group of friends and fellow artists, including his student and future wife, Rita Piacenza, boarded the New Bedford Line’s night boat at Pier 14 on the Hudson River.  Their destination was an isolated fishing and farming community on Martha’s Vineyard called Chilmark. Rita was optimistic that time away from New York would be ideal for Benton’s mental health, and inadvertently, his creative output.  Chilmark was completely undeveloped at the time; electricity was largely absent, there was no refrigeration or running water and very few telephones lines.  The quiet community bespoke a peace and simplicity Benton craved.  With its “undulating gray stone walls rolling over the moors and reaching down to the sea, sheep grazing everywhere, fields ablaze with wildflowers, windswept beaches, and scattered clumps of scrub oak and pine sculptured close to the ground by relentless winds,”  it became the summer home of Benton and Rita for the next fifty-four years (Polly Burroughs, Thomas Hart Benton: A Portrait, p. 6).

The impact of Chilmark on Benton’s work was immediate.  Throughout the 1920s, its environs and inhabitants became his chief source of material.  For the remainder of his career, Chilmark was featured as the beloved backdrop of a number of works now considered among his masterpieces, including The Lord is My Shepherd (1926, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York) and July Hay (1942, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).  Chilmark figured prominently into his work after World War II, and Keith Farm, Chilmark is a testament to the renewed vigor with which Benton approached the landscape subjects dearest to him.  Matthew Baigell writes, “In his easel paintings completed since the war, Benton has explored older themes and styles, but even the casual observer will notice changes.  The energies that he formerly channeled into defining an American style and spirit have been directed toward a profound appreciation of his subject matter.  Some of his best portraits have been painted in these last years….In many ways, though, his more remarkable achievements are the landscapes of this period.  In these it would appear that Benton’s overwhelming love for America found its true outlet – in the streams, hills and mountains of the country, populated by people unsuspectingly living out their time, quietly enjoying themselves, living easily on the land, celebrating nothing more than their existence” (Thomas Hart Benton, p. 183). 

Keith Farm, Chilmark was painted for a local couple in Chilmark after Rita sold a still life that was promised to them.  The vibrant palette, lush rolling hills, and overall rhythmic quality capture the artist’s affection for the place that had become both a haven and a driving source of inspiration.  Polly Burroughs, a neighbor and friend of Benton’s on Martha’s Vineyard, wrote of the view featured in Keith Farm, “One of the Island’s spectacular views is on the Middle Road in Chilmark, just up the hill above Beetlebung Corner at the Keith’s beef cattle farm.  With the open rolling pastures, the Atlantic Ocean beyond, and those familiar, linear cloud formations, it evokes the tranquility the artist himself felt on the Vineyard"  (Thomas Hart Benton: A Portrait, p. 179).

The present work has been deaccessioned and is being sold at public auction by Fuller Craft Museum, Brockton, Massachusetts, formerly the Fuller Museum of Art.   

In 2002, the Museum announced a shift in its mission from collecting and exhibiting fine arts to collecting and exhibiting contemporary craft.  This resulted in the identification of works of art that are inconsistent with the development of a craft-focused collection. In keeping with its desire to share works of art within the broadest possible public while at the same time remaining fiscally responsible and faithful to its new craft mission, the Board of Directors and membership voted to deaccession works of art no longer fitting its craft focus and offer them at public auction.  Consistent with the guidelines of the American Association of Museums, proceeds from the auction will be used only for the acquisition or direct care of art works consistent with its contemporary craft-focused mission.