Please join us as we post information about pieces in the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection from …to build up a rich collection… Selected works from The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art.
All pieces in this series are on display now at the museum. We hope you will join in the discussion and enjoy learning in-depth about the heart of the museum, our permanent collection. There are approximately 40 pieces by Thomas Hart Benton in the Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection, but the one that seems to catch everyone’s attention is Jesse and Jake.
So, what does this piece make you wonder?
According to Benton, he made Jesse and Jake when daughter Jessie was three years old. Our shepherd dog Jake impersonated the wolf in this Red Riding Hood theme. The area depicted is in our wood lot on Martha’s Vineyard and shows a path leading to my mother’s place there. Trees, white oak, grow thick at the trunk but do not get very high on our part of the Island because of the winds.
When Jake dies in 1946, Benton wrote a biographical obituary of the family dog, which appeared in the Vineyard Gazette. As Benton fondly recalled:
“Jake had a laughing face. His mouth was so set that, active or in repose, he had a smile. . . He was named Jake because he was a country dog, a country jake, who hadn’t learned city ways.”
In 1942 Benton made a lithograph based on Jesse and Jake. The image in the print is nearly identical to that in the painting except that the composition has been revered. An image drawn on a lithographic stone prints as a mirror image, a fact that Benton rarely considered when making lithographs.
Jessie and Jake was a gift of Jessie Benton Lyman, the artist’s daughter and the subject of the painting.
Find information and images of other Benton Pieces in the Beach Museum of Art’s permanent collection by using the museum’s searchable database. Simple choose “Benton, Thomas Hart” from the “Artist/Maker” drop down menu.