Existing comment:
Carl Sandburg, 1878-1967
As a poet and author who championed the everyman, Carl Sandburg earned great acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize for Cornhuskers, Complete Poems, and Abraham Lincoln: The War Years. Sandburg's own life, an odyssey of the American experience, included time as a hobo, door-to-door salesman, and other odd jobs. At the time this portrait was made, Sandburg defined personal happiness as "To be out of jail. To eat and sleep regular. To get what I write printed in a free country for free people. To have a little love in the home and a little affection and esteem outside the home."
Thomas Hart Benton's drawing of his friend, although dated 1957, appears to be a study for his 1956 oil painting. Benton's characteristic style infuses energy into Sandburg's likeness, bringing together two twentieth-century artists who celebrated the ordinary American.
Thomas Hart Benton, c. 1956 |