Thomas Hart Benton: His Final Piece

"The Sources of Country Music" by Thomas Hart Benton

"To open with a cliché, a picture paints a thousand words. In Thomas Hart Benton’s case, his final painting, 'The Sources of Country Music,' not only spoke a thousand words, but also captured country music’s spirit and its history. 

It began in 1941, when Benton recorded a three-record album through Decca Records titled 'Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s.' Of course, Benton was a painter first and foremost, but it was his love for music that caught the eye of the Country Music Foundation.

In 1973, cowboy singer Tex Ritter and director of the Tennessee Arts Commission Norman Worrell visited Benton in Kansas City. Benton at the time was eighty-four and retired. It was Ritter’s suggestion to Benton that he should create a painting summarizing the roots of country music that planted the seeds for what would be Benton’s final painting. How could Benton resist? It was one more chance at celebrating American traditions, and of all genres of music, country music made the most sense for this kind of painting.

Dubbed 'The Sources of Country Music,' despite this painting depicting people doing things all at the same time, there’s still a series of overlapping vignettes depicting their cultural contexts. The woman on the left is playing a mountain dulcimer while barefoot in the grass (it’s hard to tell on first glance). Behind her we have a conductor leading a group singing a cappella from a hymnal. This is assumed to be a tent revival.

There’s two men playing fiddles for the dancing couples near them. Of course, they also have moonshine near them. An African-American man is playing the banjo claw hammer-style in denim overalls. The cowboy just may be the most interesting character of all too, with his belt, boots, spurs, gun and one foot in what’s assumed to be the Southwestern desert with the other foot on his saddle. You can also picture someone like Jimmie Rodgers riding that train back there.

And of course, that’s the earliest stages of country music (which, if we’re going by the “latest” musical addition of this picture of the cowboy means that “country” had ceased to exist as a term for what we call the music today). There’s no steel guitar, no mandolin, no electric guitar, no piano and no orchestral strings.

By January 1974, Benton submitted his first sketch to the Board of the Foundation. The mural was ultimately dedicated to Ritter as he died a short while before it was completed. It was him after all who inspired Benton to craft one final piece. I’m pretty sure there’s a reason the cowboy is overemphasized in this painting (the train and the cowboy weren’t even in his initial sketch he presented to the board).

He finished the six-by-ten foot canvas on January 18, a little ahead of schedule. That night after dinner, Benton told his wife that he wanted to look over the mural one last time. If he decided it was complete, he was going to sign it. He was ultimately still trying to perfect the train after so many attempts, and how he wanted to look is something we’ll never know.

Around 8:30 p.m., Rita went out to fetch him seeing as how he had been out there so late. She found him lying on the floor with his spectacles on, directly in front of the Nashville mural. He had suffered a heart attack and had fallen on his wristwatch, which stopped at the exact moment of his death: five minutes past seven o’clock. The painting remains unsigned. Now worth $1 million dollars, the painting sits proudly in the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum." 

(Excerpt from "Country Music in One Painting, and Thomas Hart Benton's Final Piece" by Zackary Kephart. Read it here.)