Nude Study

Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, Benton was one of the best known American Regionalist painters, a group of artists that embraced representational art that took as its subject everyday life in the rural heartland of the nation. This refined drawing of a nude figure and still life with fruit and flowers dates from the period when Benton lived and worked in New York. The figure is monumental in scale, sculptural in form, her almond eyes, masklike face, and stylized hair reflecting some of the currents of European modernism.