Thomas Hart Benton: WWI

“Embarkation – Prelude to Death” by Thomas Hart Benton

"America was by this time deep in the First World War, and ascertaining that I was eligible for the draft and might end up in the European trenches, I signed up for the Navy. After various experiences I was put to work making freehand studies of installations and activities about the Norfolk Naval Base. This was my first reportorial work and was fascinating. Some of the new attitudes it generated were to have lasting effects.

Airplanes, blimps, particular kinds of ships, coal loaders, dredges could not be merely 'expressed,' they had to be accurately defined, their characteristics distinctly shown. Along with my drawings, and often from them, I made a series of watercolors which, though less detailed and much freer in execution, were primarily descriptive. A selection of these was exhibited at the Daniel Galleries in New York during January, 1919. A number were sold and no doubt survive in different collections.

During the latter part of my sojourn in the Navy I had been permitted to live 'off base' in a Norfolk lodging house. In the parlor there I had found an old-fashioned four-volume history of the United States, plentifully illustrated with engravings in the various styles of the period. I began to ask myself questions. Why could not such subject pictures dealing with the meanings of American history possess aesthetically interesting properties, deliverable along with their meanings? History painting had occupied a large place in the annals of art. Why not look into it again, I asked, and try to fill the contextual void of my own painting, give it some kind of meaning. Though unaware of it, I began here that fundamental change of mind which was soon to separate me wholly from my Parisian background and give a new, and, this time, permanent direction to my painting."

To be continued

(Excerpts from "An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography" by Thomas Hart Benton.)