People of Chilmark Canvas Print

People of Chilmark by Thomas Hart Benton

People of Chilmark (1920) oil on canvas, 65 5/8 x 77 5/8 in. (166.5 x 197.3 cm) in Hirshorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1972) was born in Neosho, Missouri. In 1907, Benton enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago. Two years later, he moved to Paris in 1909 to continue his art education at the Académie Julian. In Paris, Benton met other North American artists, such as the Mexican Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright. After his service during World War I, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism" and began the naturalistic and representational work today known as Regionalism.

The work depicts a beach scene. While the subject matter is simple, one can clearly see Benton’s style, lifting a fairly banal and normal summer recreation to America’s heroic grandeur. Painted after World War I and before the 1929 stock market crash, Benton depicts a newfound spirit of li...