Jesse James

Inscriptions

Signed, in graphite, lower right margin: Benton; signed, in stone, lower left: Benton

Label

The outlaw Jesse James holds two men at gunpoint as a train barrels through a small town in Thomas Hart Benton’s reimagining of the crimes of the infamous gang of robbers. While the historical Jesse James stole only for personal benefit, the popular 1882 “Ballad of Jesse James” recast him as a type of Robin Hood, proclaiming: “Jesse was a man, a friend to the poor, he’d never rob a mother or a child, there never was a man with the law in his hand, that could take Jesse James alive.” The bright whites and inky blacks of Benton’s print give Jesse James’s exploits a cinematic quality. What can folktales and myths like this tell us about the ideals of a nation?

From the 2026 exhibition Nurturing Nationhood: Artistic Constructions of America, 1790-1940, curated by Haely Chang (Jane and Raphael Bernstein Associate Curator of East Asian Art), Evonne Fuselier (Hood Museum Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellow), Michael Hartman (former Jonathan Little Cohen Curator of American Art), Elizabeth Rice Mattison (Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programming and Curator of European Art), and Ashley B. Offill (Curator of Collection

Course History

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Marlene Heck, Winter 2012

ANTH 12.3, WGST 42.5, The Ethnography of Violence, Chelsey Kivland, Fall 2013

ARTH 2, Introduction to the History of Art II, Joy Kenseth, Mary Coffey, Winter 2014

ARTH 17, The Power of Place: Urban and Rural Images in American Art, 1900-1945, Sarah Powers, Winter 2014

ARTH 17, The Power of Place: Urban and Rural Images in American Art, 1900-1945, Sarah Powers, Winter 2014

COLT 73.4, Violence, Ayo Coly, Winter 2015

HIST 2, #EverythingHasAHistory, Matthew Delmont and Max Fraser, Fall 2019

Exhibition History

American Works on Paper to 1950: Highlights from the Hood Museum of Art, Friends and Owen Robertson Cheatham Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 22-December 9, 2007.

Images of the West: Selections from the Permanent Collection, MALS 190, Harrington Gallery Teaching Exhibition, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, July 15-August 28, 1994.

Looking for America: Prints of Rural Life from the 1930's and 1940's, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 3, 1994-March 5, 1995.

Nurturing Nationhood: Artistic Constructions of America, 1790-1940, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire; February 7-August 29, 2026.

Recent Acquistions, Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center Art Galleries, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, January 17-27, 1974.

Thomas Hart Benton: Works on Paper, Israel Sack Gallery [American Works on Paper wall], Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April-June 2012.

Publication History

Barbara J. MacAdam, Looking for America: Prints of Rural Life from the 1930s and 1940s, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1994, no. 7, fig. 5.

Barbara J. MacAdam, American Art at Dartmouth: Highlights from the Hood Muesum of Art, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2007, p. 164, no. 134.

Catalogue Raisonne

C. Fath, The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton, Austin, 1979, no. 13.

This record is part of an active database that includes information from historic documentation that may not have been recently reviewed. Information may be inaccurate or incomplete. We also acknowledge some language and imagery may be offensive, violent, or discriminatory. These records reflect the institution’s history or the views of artists or scholars, past and present. Our collections research is ongoing.

We welcome questions, feedback, and suggestions for improvement. Please contact us at: Hood.Collections@dartmouth.edu

Subjects