Conversation

Provenance

Associated American Artists, New York, New York
Samuel Sosland, Kansas City, Missouri, 1973
Estate of the above
Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, New York, December 6, 1984, lot 222, from above
Jake Milgram Wien, New York, New York, acquired from above
Private collection, Missouri, 1991, acquired from above
Martha Parrish & James Reinish, Inc., New York, New York, acquired from above
Private collection, 2001, acquired from above
Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, April 17, 2025, lot 13, from above

Exhibited

Delphic Studios, New York, New York, Recent Paintings by Thomas Hart Benton, March 3–25, 1930, no. 13

New York World’s Fair, New York, New York, American Art Today, 1939, no. 29

University of Kansas Museum of Art, Lawrence, Kansas, Thomas Hart Benton: A Retrospective Exhibition, April 12–May 18, 1958, no. 12

The Katonah Gallery, New York, New York, New England–New Mexico: Artistic Encounters, 1910–1940, March 25–May 7, 1989

Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., Benton’s America: Works on Paper and Selected Paintings, January 19–March 2, 1991, no. 84

Surovek Gallery, Palm Beach, Florida, Thomas Hart Benton, March–April 2017

Literature

Matthew Baigell, Thomas Hart Benton (New York: Abrams, 1973), 91, pl. 52.

Valerie Ann Leeds, An American palette: Works from the collection of John and Dolores Beck (Florida: Museum of Fine Arts, 2000), 30.

Leo G. Mazow, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound (Pennsylvania: Penn State University Press, 2012), 14–15, 32, fig. 5.

Related Works

Autumn, oil and tempera on linen mounted on composition board, 22 ½ x 28 5.8 inches, signed lower right: Benton; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Martha’s Vineyard, c. 1925, oil on canvas, 22 ⅛ x 24 1/16 inches, signed lower right: Benton; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Note

Both a skilled musician and one of the most influential American artists, Benton not only visualized sound in his paintings, but also embedded it with profound conceptual meaning. His works thus evolved into dynamic, multi-sensory narratives. Conversation exemplifies his ability to weave sonic harmonies into the visual rhythms’ characteristic of his Modern Regionalist landscapes, demonstrating how auditory resonance can be embedded in visual form. Art historian and curator Leo G. Mazow writes:

“In Benton’s pictorial universe, it is through sound–and its visualization–that stories are told, opinions are voiced, experiences are preserved, and history is recorded. All that is consequential, or so the artist would have us believe, has both voiced and heard components.”[1]

Benton’s lifelong belief in the power of sound permeates his entire artistic practice. However, as Conversation illustrates, his engagement with sound was by no means limited to works that depict music directly. Art critic Lewis Mumford observed:

“There is more of a living, breathing humanity in Benton’s landscape of three horses on a wide prairie…than in the most crowded external representation of a city crowd.”[2]

The expansive landscape portrayed in the painting evokes an almost silent atmosphere—one in which only the three horses appear to sense and respond to one another’s unspoken sounds. Mazow further explains:

“Benton’s painting Conversation (1928)…demonstrates the pictorial workings of sound in both its surface and more profound meanings. The three horses share a space intersected by their respective gazes. The painting’s title as well as the subjects’ compositional placement and gestures all suggest a discourse escaping a bystander’s ability to hear or comprehend…The horses’ ‘conversation’ is…meaning-forming, but it is also theoretical and subjectively realized…Our inability to enter the horses’ sonic zone does not diminish the expressive richness or even the sacredness of the conversation.”

The spatial distance between viewer and subject further emphasizes the intimacy of this “sacred conversation”, transforming Conversation into a poignant metaphor for the human need for connection. Benton’s signature fluid brushwork, meanwhile, captures the rhythmic essence of the American Southwest, imbuing the canvas with poetic vitality.

[1] Mazow, Thomas Hart Benton and the American Sound, 2.

[2] Mazow, 15.