Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art

About this Work

Thomas Hart Benton had a deep interest in American vernacular music. He not only used folksongs such as “Coming 'Round the Mountain” as source material, but he was a talented musician and developed a musical notation for the harmonica as well. In 1914 he produced an album called Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s featuring three traditional folk songs, a dance, and a tune called “Chilmark Suite.”

This lithograph was made as a study for a large, nearly life-size painting. Both works depict Gale Huntington, a folksinger, and his daughter Emily, who Benton met during one of his annual summer vacations to Chilmark on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Huntington was also a musicologist known for preserving the regional songs of the whalers and old-time fishermen. Here he is shown passing those traditions on to the next generation.