The Boy

Along with Grant Wood, Benton was a major American Regionalist artist. Benton extolled the virtues of rural America through images of daily life in the Midwest, often in conscious opposition to the modern developments occurring in major urban centers. This print functioned as a study for a painting of the same subject (now in a private collection), and the artist noted that it represents an “Ozark boy setting out from home, to go to school or to find work. The folks and his horse say goodbye.” Increasing mechanization of American industry during the postwar years demanded large work forces, and many rural communities witnessed their young men leaving the family farms to seek their fortune in the cities.