Analysis of the Cotton Pickers
Thomas Hart Benton, a famous Regionalist artist who was known as one of the members of the “Regionalist Triumvirate”, created an oil painting called Cotton Pickers, in 1945. This is a typical work to show an African American labor’s life and the sharecropping system of agriculture during the first decades of the 20th century. According the notes of his trip in Georgia in the late 1920s, Benton depicted a scene of cotton pickers working with dry soil under summer heat through curve line, and realistic shapes. Following the regionalist tradition Benton avoids subjects like the city life and technological advances and prefers to create scenes that immortalize the rural life.
Depicted on a sloppy landscape, six workers engage in a tiresome job on a sunny and probably hot day. In the center of painting, a man is represented on his knees taking a break from his work, while a woman offers him some water. Behind them, four more workers can be seen picking cotton with their hands. In the right bottom corner of the painting, a naked baby is sleeping on a red rag under a rough trellis. A typical rural background with a small cottage, fields, trees and a horse carriage completes the picture.
Benton has used shapes and lines in order to create a realistic effect of a typical agricultural scene. His lines are smooth and clearly outline the figures, showing not only their human form, but also the circumstances of their lives. In certain cases the details the artist chose to depict are striking. For example, Benton clearly delineated the bones and muscles of the neck and arm of the woman in the center of the picture. Equally the lines on the rest of the figures make the viewer able to experience their emaciated body and at the same time understand the difficulty of their lives. Equally emaciated is the body of the sleeping child. The structure of his/her body is depicted very clearly and carefully.
There seems to be a repeating pattern of a curving motif in the painting. The curving of the land seems to follow the curved figures of the working laborers and the sleeping baby. At the same time, the kneeling male figure’s bag is depicted by curving and soft line that makes it look like the clouds in the sky. The earth before him is drawn as lumpy. This kind of use of lines makes the objects and the earth looking like melting by high temperature, reflecting thus the hot weather.
The artist has used primarily warm colors for the earth and those working with it, another indication that this is a hot summer day. The cool colors are reserved for the clouds and the sky. Interestingly, Benton uses red only in two occasions: for the woman’s skirt and for the rug the child sleeps on. This forms a pattern that connects these two figures. Could they be a mother and a child?
The way Benton chose to arrange his figures is also very interesting. In the center of the painting, the man’s bag makes clear what his occupation is. It is also interesting to note that the man is kneeling while the woman who is giving him water is standing, something that might point to his respect towards women. Behind these two figures, there are four figures working. Furthermore, the child is sleeping under a shed, which although rough, shows that these people care for their children and try to protect them in any way they can.
These African American workers are depicted engaging in a burdensome activity but at the same time are also represented as dignified. They did not stop working even though the job is burdensome on a hot, sunny day. The men also respect women, their wives, love their children and try their best to protect them. The picture the viewer gets of them is that they never lose their dignity even when facing arduous life.
Cotton cultivation became one of Benton’s most important subjects. Cotton sharecropping that is depicted in this work, changed the relationship between farmer and labor, but did not change the hard life of African American workers. However, this painting immortalizes these laborers by depicting their dignity as they continue their hard work despite facing adverse weather and difficult circumstances.
