Our Good Earth: Rural Life and American Art

Thomas Hart Benton
American, 1889–1975
Threshing, 1941
Lithograph on paper
Gift in memory of Alan R. Liederman from his children, 1991.84Thomas Hart Benton’s wide popularity stemmed from his choice of enduring subject—the charms and challenges of American rural life—and the accessible realist style that he used to convey it. These prints are each based on paintings that were made available as lithographs at broadly affordable prices through the Associated American Artists organization. Though often celebratory of country life, Benton’s imagery alluded to harder times, as well, in works such as The Fence Mender and Prodigal Son, which transforms the biblical story of loss into a Depression-era drama.

Marion Greenwood
American, 1909–1970
Mississippi Girl, 1945
Lithograph on paper
Purchase with funds from the Lawrence and Alfred Fox Foundation for the Ralph K. Uhry Collection, 1991.152

Dox Thrash
American, 1893–1965
Georgia Cotton Crop, 1944–1945
Carborundum mezzotint and etching on paper
Purchase with David C. Driskell African American Art Acquisition Fund, 2011.107Dox Thrash was one of the few African American artists appointed to oversee a regional division for the Federal Art Project in the 1930s. He was instrumental in the development of a new printmaking process. More efficient and economical than traditional methods, his carborundum method produced a broader range of tonal qualities, allowing for the deep, rich blacks that lent his work an ethereal effect. In this picture of a rural farm scene, he intentionally obscures fine detail. The subject is, in fact, a memory of his youth and his family’s sharecropper farm near Griffin, Georgia.

Andrew Wyeth
American, 1917–2009
Study for The Quaker, 1975
Watercolor on paper
Gift of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, 2006.60Andrew Wyeth filled his compositions with symbols that explore common themes of memory, nostalgia, and loss. Here, in seemingly silent conversation, two Revolutionary war–era suitcoats hang in the artist’s rural Pennsylvania studio. The eerie scene evokes the past in layers upon the present: the eighteenth-century coats hang on the mantel in a nineteenth-century schoolhouse, which Wyeth, in the twentieth century, converted into his workspace retreat. Through the window, a view into the wooded landscape offers only an insider’s clue to this otherwise disorienting, timeless picture.

Dale Nichols
American, 1904–1995
Company for Supper, undated
Lithograph
Purchase with funds from the Lawrence and Alfred Fox Foundation for the Ralph K. Uhry Collection, 1991.204The idyllic, snowy world of Regionalist painter Dale Nichols charmed his mid-twentieth-century audiences. Nichols’s Midwestern farm scenes like Company for Supper have nostalgic appeal. Here, a sleigh pulls guests across the picturesque landscape while a cozy farmhouse and trim-looking barn in the distance offer a sense of warm serenity. With the snow settled into a blanket of white on the fields, the promise of a jovial gathering lies ahead.

Jamie Wyeth
American, born 1946
Runaway Pig from The Farm Suite, ca. 1980
Etching and drypoint on wove paper
Gift of LaTrelle Brewster, 2009.5.3Jamie Wyeth (son of painter Andrew Wyeth) deftly employs etching and drypoint techniques to capture the varying textures and tones of animal fur, a bee’s hive, and a straw nest. Wyeth’s jarring close-up perspectives, dramatic shadowing, rich tonal qualities, and precise details elevate these humble subjects to near Old Master status. Featuring animals from around his homes in the rural Brandywine River Valley in eastern Pennsylvania and coastal Maine.

John Steuart Curry
American, 1897–1946
Our Good Earth . . . Keep It Ours, 1942
100-line offset lithograph on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of Roger Genser–The Prints and the Pauper, 2001.83.