Upper Manhattan - Thomas Hart Benton

An early modernist work by Thomas Hart Benton, featuring a rhythmic arrangement of houses and trees rendered in bold, structural colour.

Upper Manhattan, painted by Thomas Hart Benton around 1915, captures a transitional moment in the artist's career. Before he became known for his signature Regionalist style, Benton experimented with the colour-based theories of Synchromism. This work displays the influence of European modernism, particularly the way artists like Cézanne used colour to define form and spatial depth.

The composition features a cluster of houses nestled within a dense, hilly environment. A large tree trunk dominates the left foreground, acting as a vertical anchor that draws the eye into the scene. The buildings are rendered with simplified, geometric shapes, while the surrounding foliage is composed of bold, rhythmic patches of colour. Benton employs a palette of deep reds, ochres, and forest greens, which creates a sense of volume and weight. The light appears to emanate from within the forms themselves, rather than from a single external source, a hallmark of the Synchromist approach.

Unlike his later, more narrative works that focus on American life and labour, this painting prioritises the formal arrangement of colour and shape. The perspective is slightly flattened, pushing the houses and trees into a unified plane. This approach reflects the early twentieth-century interest in abstraction and the structural potential of paint. The work provides a view into the formative years of an artist who would eventually turn his attention to the social realities of the American Midwest. It remains a clear example of how Benton engaged with the avant-garde movements of his time before developing his own distinct visual language.