Art © T.H. and R.P. Benton Testamentary Trusts/Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
Interpretation
Around 1920, Benton renounced abstraction in favor of a type of social realism eventually known as Regionalism, the self-conscious accessibility and democratic aims of which focused on rural life and traditions, particularly of the American South and Midwest. As a means of honing his painterly skills, Benton began producing still lifes that incorporate objects of diverse textures, such as Pussycat and Roses. The composition of this work may also have served as a study for a similar passage in Persephone, his notorious picture of the same year. In Pussycat and Roses, Benton included a stray Maltese kitten adopted by his students at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he taught until the clamor over his lascivious Persephone caused his dismissal.
Around 1920, Thomas Hart Benton renounced abstraction for a type of social realism eventually known as Regionalism, whose self-conscious accessibility focused on American life and traditions. As a means of honing his painterly skills, Benton produced still lifes incorporating objects of diverse textures, such as Pussycat and Roses. The composition of this work may also have served as a study for a similar passage in Persephone, his notorious picture of the same year. In the Princeton painting, Benton depicted a Maltese kitten adopted by his students at the Kansas City Art Institute, where he taught until the clamor over the lascivious Persephone caused his dismissal.
Information
- Title
- Pussycat and Roses
- Object Number
- y1982-103
- Maker
- Thomas Hart Benton
- Medium
- Oil over egg tempera on canvas
- Dates
- 1939
- Dimensions
- 61 × 50 cm (24 × 19 11/16 in.) frame: 75.9 × 65.7 × 10.2 cm (29 7/8 × 25 7/8 × 4 in.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Morton L. Janklow in honor of their daughter, Angela LeRoy Janklow, Class of 1985
- Culture
- American
- Materials
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1982", Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 42, no. 1 (1983): p. 50-70., p. 50, p. 54 (illus.)
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1983," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 43, no. 1 (1984): p. 18-42., p. 42 (illus.)
- Allen Rosenbaum and Francis F. Jones, Selections from The Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: The Art Museum, Princeton University, 1986), p. 289
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 245 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 260
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