Departure of the Joads, from The Grapes of Wrath

Thomas Hart Bentons Departure of the Joads from The Grapes of Wrath from 1939 is a lithograph on ivory wove paper that depicts the departure of the Joad family from their Oklahoma farm in John Steinbecks novel, a subject that connects Bentons Regionalist art to the social reality of the Dust Bowl migration that was one of the defining events of the Great Depression. Benton, who was commissioned by 20th Century Fox to produce promotional lithographs for the film adaptation of Steinbecks novel, approached the subject of the Joads departure with the same rhythmic energy and compositional ambition that characterize his best work, transforming a scene of rural poverty and forced migration into an image of monumental dignity and formal power. The Joads, loading their possessions onto a dilapidated truck that will carry them from Oklahoma to California, are depicted with the exaggerated muscles and sweeping contours that are the hallmark of Bentons style, and the composition organizes the figures and the vehicle into a dynamic arrangement that suggests both the desperation of their situation and the determination that will carry them through it. The year 1939, the same year that Steinbecks novel was published and the film was released, places this lithograph at the intersection of literature, cinema, and visual art that characterized the cultural response to the Great Depression. The lithograph medium, with its capacity for wide distribution and popular accessibility, allowed Benton to reach an audience far larger than the museum-going public that normally saw his paintings and murals.

Bentons Grapes of Wrath lithograph is a significant contribution to the tradition of American Social Realism, and its influence on the representation of the Dust Bowl migration extends from the 1930s to the present. Departure of the Joads demonstrates the combination of Regionalist style and social consciousness that makes his work significant.

A 1939 lithograph by Benton on ivory wove paper depicting the Joad familys departure from Oklahoma in Steinbecks The Grapes of Wrath, transforming Dust Bowl forced migration into an image of monumental dignity with Regionalist rhythmic energy at the intersection of literature, cinema, and visual art.