Workers Tapping the Blast Furnace
Thomas Hart Benton American
Not on view
This sketch is one of dozens of drawings that Benton used to compose his mural America Today, also in the Museum’s collection (2012.478a–j). Among a group of drawings of the interior of a steel factory, it suggests Benton’s fascination with technology and industry. He recalled, "I got into the great steel mills, shipbuilding plants, and other industrial concerns of the country. I made hundreds of drawings—of furnaces, converters, cranes, drills, dredges and compressors, rigs and pumps, rakes, tractors, combines, and oldfashioned [sic] threshing machines." In these studies, Benton focused on the sinuous curves of the massive pipes and the dramatic atmosphere created by the molten steel.
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