Tennessee Belle c. 1939

Thomas Hart Benton made this drawing of the Tennessee Belle with ink and wash on paper. Look at how he’s built up the volume of the steamboat, not through careful shading, but with this shorthand of bold, almost comic-book outlines. I wonder what he was thinking about as he laid down these lines, building up the details of the boat. It feels like the ink is mapping a very particular kind of American nostalgia. I can imagine Benton sketching this, maybe on site, trying to catch the light glinting off the water, the texture of the boat’s hull. The thin wash creates a hazy atmosphere, like the scene is fading back in time as he records it. This piece really speaks to the artist’s wider engagement with American history, and reminds me of work by other artists like Marsden Hartley, who were similarly mythologizing a kind of national identity. They are all in conversation across time and space, inspiring each other’s creativity.