Departure of the Joads, from The Grapes of Wrath
1939
Thomas Hart Benton American, 1889-1975
United States
In 1939, Twentieth-Century Fox commissioned Benton to create six lithographs-with reproduction rights to a billboard-size reproduction-as a promotional ploy for its filming of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath. One of these was the melancholy synopsis of destitute, migrant "Okies" from drought-stricken Oklahoma in The Departure of the Joads.
Lithograph on ivory wove paper