The sources of country music

Benton, Thomas Hart (1889-1975)


Item type:
mural
Date of creation:
1975
Height:
182.9 cm  (72 in.)
Width:
304.8 cm  (120 in.)
Technique / Medium:
acrylic on canvas
Place of creation:
Kansas City (Missouri, United States)

Description

Portrays seventeen nearly life-sized figures and illustrates the various cultural influences on country music, including a train, a steamboat, a black banjo player, country fiddlers and dulcimer players, hymn singers and square dancers. The painting memorializes entertainer Tex Ritter as the singing cowboy on the right. (National Endowment for the Arts description)

People as subjects

Ritter, Tex (1905-1974) (Musician portrait)

Iconclass

48C736
instruments ~ popular music
48C7562
vocal popular music
48C7561
instrumental popular music
11Q75711
choir (in church)
43C92
one pair dancing; man and woman dancing as a couple

Instruments [MIMO Code] (notes)

Guitar [3237]
Appalachian dulcimer [3613]
Banjo [3226]
Violin [3573]

Image URLs

image link 1
Picturing America teaching resource (National Endowment for the Humanities)
image link 2
National Endowment for the Arts 40th anniversary highlight

Bibliographic references

Fryd, Vivien Green. "The sad twang of mountain voices": Thomas Hart Benton's Sources of country music", Reading country music: Steel guitars, Opry stars, and honky-tonk bars, ed. by Cecelia Tichi (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998) 256-285. ISBN 0822321564, 0822321688. RILM 1999-20857.

RIdIM record id

5838