Thomas Hart Benton at Auction V

This June marks the return of live auctions to Sotheby’s New York, following the state’s Stay-at-Home order due to the spread of COVID-19. Remote bidding will be available in advance and during the auction via sothebys.com and on Sotheby’s app, as well as by phone with Sotheby’s specialists in the salesroom. All works are now on exhibition in our New York galleries, which are open by appointment only.

The sale features two works from the Collection of Marylou Whitney, a generous philanthropist, arts patron and thoroughbred breeder. Through her marriage to Cornelius Vanderbilt “Sonny” Whitney, Mrs. Whitney developed a lifelong passion for thoroughbred horse racing, and the couple produced over 175 stakes winners on the C.V. Whitney farm in Lexington, Kentucky (now Gainesway Farm). After Sonny’s death in 1992, Marylou established her own eponymous stables, and enjoyed enormous success with Bird Town, who won the Kentucky Oaks in 2003 and Birdstone, who won the Belmont Stakes and the Travers Stakes in 2004.

The couple’s passion for horses is highlighted throughout their collection, including Thomas Hart Benton’s Noon – a dynamic painting executed in 1939, which was featured in Benton’s first major retrospective in New York later that year (estimate $700,000/1 million). Praised as a resounding success, the exhibition garnered significant attention from a variety of New York collectors, including Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney. Whitney purchased Noon from the retrospective, and it has remained in the family’s collection ever since. Enchanted by America and its offerings, Benton began traveling through the South and the Midwest in the late 1920s and immersing himself in the culture of rural America. In celebrating the American way of life, Benton was sympathetic in his portrayal of farmers and field workers, favoring the themes of dedication and hard work. Noonexemplifies Benton’s ability to capture what he saw as the simplicity and dignity of everyday life.