Steamboat Paintings by Thomas Hart Benton This is a picture I took from one of the other murals in the same room depicting a steamboat landing. The couple on the right is rather spooky . . . the gentleman looks like he might be wearing a mask and if the couple is not beginning to embrace they may be contemplating strangling each other. The lady's bonnet disguises her even more effectively than the nylon hose mask her beloved or her beloathed is wearing. It's also an open question as to whether the gent is arriving or leaving. To see other details from this mural, go to the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn page - click here. Attached in from eBay, a Thomas Hart Benton painting/illustration on page 75 of FORTUNE magazine June 1930. Individual issues of the magazine are expensive so it was fortunate that this page was offered at a reasonable price. 1946 painting by Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton entitled MISSISSIPPI TOWBOAT of the D.R. WELLER. This was featured on the cover of a corporate magazine called THE LAMP Feb 1946 published by Standard Oil Co. Colors a pretty intense, more in the "fine art"painter's palette than the illustrator's. D.R. WELLER Sternwheel Towboat 1926-1950 Hull built at Ambridge, Pennsylvania in 1925 by American Bridge Company; completed at Coal Valley Marine Ways, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1926; came out as the City of Pittsburgh Owned by Standard Oil Company; Marine Salvage and Equipment Company; George W. Whiteman Fred Way and Woody Rutter's Steam Towboat Directorys - T0547; Originally the City of Pittsburgh, she was sold to Standard Oil Company of Louisiana when practically new and renamed D. R. Weller. Captain Elmer C. Good probably was her first master, while J. F. Clark and Vincent Dugas were pilots and Hugh L. Edwards chief engineer. Captain Sewell Smith was master in June, 1926 when she hit a bank stern-first in a fog and disabled her rudders. She drifted from Brown's Field to Kemp's Bend with a loaded tow before the Federal Barge Line towboat Vicksburg came to her rescue. Captain George S. Knabb, originally from Cincinnati, became master later and in 1939 got a 20-year service pin from Standard Oil. In later years Captain Joseph DeCareaux was master, with Felix Guichet, chief engineer and Lawrence Babin, second engineer. The boat was sold in 1949 to Marine Salvage and Equipment Company and then to George W. Whiteman of Gretna, Louisiana and dismantled in 1950. With the exception of images credited to public institutions, everything on this page is from a private collection. Please contact Steamboats.com for permission for commercial use.* All captions provided by Dave Thomson, Steamboats.com primary contributor and historian. |