Thomas Hart Benton: Benton and the Oregon Trail A MONA Moment By Ron Roth Director Museum of Nebraska Art

Missourian Thomas Hart Benton popularized an American art which celebrated themes drawn from the history and lives of the common man and woman. In a series of 28 watercolors in the collection of the Museum of Nebraska Art he completed in 1945, he combines color, wit and cinematic point of view in ways uncharacteristic to his work in other media.

Fifteen of these watercolors were used to illustrate an edition of historian Francis Parkman's The Oregon Trail first published in 1847, the book was a best-selling narrative of Parkman's travels along Oregon Trail, much of which was via the Platte River in Nebraska. These images show trappers, Plains Indians, mountain men, soldiers and rattlesnakes in the strikingly fresh hues of watercolor.

The point of view of many of these images is dramatic and interesting. There is a cinematic look to their compositions. I have the felling Benton took in some movies of the film director John Ford prior to completing this work. In the illustration Sunflower and Buffalo, for instance, an American Bison is perched majestically on top of a golden rill of prairie grass, in the middle ground of the picture. Quite dramatically, in the foreground, as if we are looking at this scene through a wide angle lens, a single sunflower springs into view, waving its leathery leaves over the hump of the buffalo,, its cone and flower like a sunburst in the sky.

There is more than a touch of Citizen Kane in the illustration, The Chief and His Pipe. The camera angle, so to speak, is pointed upward, toward the Chief s upper torso, and gives the chief Kane-like, larger than life dimensions.

The cinematic quality continues throughout the watercolor, Bolt of Lightning. Here the composition crackles with energy as a bolt of lightning, carried in the beak of a black raven, rends a black tornado in two and strikes a teepee below in white, exploding burst. The famed rhythm of Benton's line in full flower here, but so is his ever-present interest in people, for just to the left of the exploding burst of lightning, an Indian woman has rushed out of her teepee, desperately trying to hold it together as one the support poles snap and rip the seam of the buffalo hide seams.

Watercolor is a medium, which by necessity the artist works fast, with varying impacts on style and composition. In the case of Benton, it seems to have lightened him up a bit, he not taking himself or his subject matter quite so seriously, adding a dimension of wit, immediacy, and lightness of touch to his work which is highly appealing.