Audio Description: Flower Box City by Anthony Benton Gude
Press play and discover Anthony Benton Gude's painting Flower Box City. Hear a detailed description of the artwork, descriptions of the colors and forms in the painting, and how the artist made the work. (Closed captions available on video.)
Flower Box City, Anthony Benton Gude, 2008, Oil on Canvas
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The Flower Box City mural is a 22 foot long x 8 foot tall oil painting on stretched canvas. It was commissioned by the Newton County Tourism Council in 2008 and painted by Anthony Benton Gude. The mural is located inside Neosho City Hall. Several pencil study sketches for the mural are also on display. Gude, the grandson of Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton, attended the School of the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, Massachusetts from 1986 to 1987 where he studied oil painting.
Bright, rich, and vibrant colors are used to depict the scene. The clear blue sky gives way to rolling green hills on the left. Nestled in the background among the hills sits a white Queen Anne style building with two asymmetrical square towers on either side of the building. This is the original home of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery which was established in 1888. A fresh water stream flows down to the left foreground, along its right banks in shadow sits a man fishing along with an older gentleman showing a young boy how to reel in his catch. In the water is rainbow trout. They are being given fish feed by a Neosho National Fish Hatchery employee, a tall, black man in a brown uniform shirt. He faces front, his gaze on the water, he holds a red feed bucket in his right hand. A flower planter of red petunia flowers sits in the lower left corner of the painting.
In the background to the right sits a gray factory building with a sign reading “Pet Milk Co.” The company produced canned evaporated milk which is mainly used today in baking and cooking ingredients. It has a tall smoke stack billowing dark grey smoke into the air and a water tower on its right. In front of the building stands a white male wearing white trousers, a white button up shirt, and a white Garrison Cap (or Soda Jerk Cap). He holds a metal milk can in his arms. To his left is a second man in the same uniform wearing black rubber boots. He sits on a wood stool and is attaching a milking cluster to the udder of a light brown Guernsey cow poised to drink from the stream in front of it. While the company never milked cows at its Neosho’s facility, this represents the many area farmers who milked their cows daily and sold the cans to the company.
To the right men and women in red, blue, yellow, and green clothing are all working to fabricate a booster engine as employees of Rocketdyne. Behind them is the thick exhaust billowing out from a rocket launching towards space. A full moon is visible in the center of the painting, high in the sky. To the rocket's right sits the grey, five-story structure of a Vertical Test Stand used to test the massive booster engines. Rocketdyne manufactured and tested rocket engines at the site, including rockets used in the Mercury and Gemini Space Programs. Most famously, these workers built and tested the liquid-propellant rockets for Thor and Jupiter, the booster for Atlas rockets, and components of the Saturn V (five) engine which brought Apollo 11 to the moon.
To the right the arrival of Neosho’s native son, Thomas Hart Benton, on May 12, 1962 is depicted. A yellow Kansas City Southern train engine is pulled into the red brick Neosho Depot. On the platform to the right stands Benton in a dark suit with a walking stick. His wife Rita stands to his left in a rose dress and matching hat. Members of the community stand to greet the couple, one holding a sign reading “Welcome Home Tom!” To the left of the train engine a mustached man sits atop a brown horse. He’s wearing a maroon shirt, jeans, a tan cowboy hat and is holding an American flag on a staff in his right hand. In front of him two Native Americans dance. They wear traditional dress and headdresses with two feathers each. This all represents the various activities that occurred on “Thomas Hart Benton Day” in Neosho in 1962.
In the foreground on the right stand two white men, one in a charcoal suit, the other a tan suit, both have matching hats. They are holding up a dark blue banner with white text reading “Neosho All-American City.” In front of them stands a woman in a sleeveless blue dress that falls to her knees with a white collar. She’s tending to a wood barrel serving as a flower planter holding red roses. Around the rim of the barrel reads “Flower Box City.”
Since the 1950s, Neosho has been locally well-known as The Flower Box City, the name dubbed after the city earned the All-America City Award in the 1950s. In 1955, the town applied for and received a $5,000 grant from the New York Community Trust for a civic beautification project. Local companies provided lumber at cost, the Jaycees formed an assembly line to build more than 200 wooden flower boxes, Pet Milk Company donated 400 used, wooden barrels for container gardens, and town nurseries supplied plants at reduced rates. The city even dressed up trash cans and parking meters around the courthouse square with flower baskets. The effort earned Neosho a coveted All-America City Award from Look magazine and the National Municipal League in 1957.
Bright, rich, and vibrant colors are used to depict the scene. The clear blue sky gives way to rolling green hills on the left. Nestled in the background among the hills sits a white Queen Anne style building with two asymmetrical square towers on either side of the building. This is the original home of the Neosho National Fish Hatchery which was established in 1888. A fresh water stream flows down to the left foreground, along its right banks in shadow sits a man fishing along with an older gentleman showing a young boy how to reel in his catch. In the water is rainbow trout. They are being given fish feed by a Neosho National Fish Hatchery employee, a tall, black man in a brown uniform shirt. He faces front, his gaze on the water, he holds a red feed bucket in his right hand. A flower planter of red petunia flowers sits in the lower left corner of the painting.
In the background to the right sits a gray factory building with a sign reading “Pet Milk Co.” The company produced canned evaporated milk which is mainly used today in baking and cooking ingredients. It has a tall smoke stack billowing dark grey smoke into the air and a water tower on its right. In front of the building stands a white male wearing white trousers, a white button up shirt, and a white Garrison Cap (or Soda Jerk Cap). He holds a metal milk can in his arms. To his left is a second man in the same uniform wearing black rubber boots. He sits on a wood stool and is attaching a milking cluster to the udder of a light brown Guernsey cow poised to drink from the stream in front of it. While the company never milked cows at its Neosho’s facility, this represents the many area farmers who milked their cows daily and sold the cans to the company.
To the right men and women in red, blue, yellow, and green clothing are all working to fabricate a booster engine as employees of Rocketdyne. Behind them is the thick exhaust billowing out from a rocket launching towards space. A full moon is visible in the center of the painting, high in the sky. To the rocket's right sits the grey, five-story structure of a Vertical Test Stand used to test the massive booster engines. Rocketdyne manufactured and tested rocket engines at the site, including rockets used in the Mercury and Gemini Space Programs. Most famously, these workers built and tested the liquid-propellant rockets for Thor and Jupiter, the booster for Atlas rockets, and components of the Saturn V (five) engine which brought Apollo 11 to the moon.
To the right the arrival of Neosho’s native son, Thomas Hart Benton, on May 12, 1962 is depicted. A yellow Kansas City Southern train engine is pulled into the red brick Neosho Depot. On the platform to the right stands Benton in a dark suit with a walking stick. His wife Rita stands to his left in a rose dress and matching hat. Members of the community stand to greet the couple, one holding a sign reading “Welcome Home Tom!” To the left of the train engine a mustached man sits atop a brown horse. He’s wearing a maroon shirt, jeans, a tan cowboy hat and is holding an American flag on a staff in his right hand. In front of him two Native Americans dance. They wear traditional dress and headdresses with two feathers each. This all represents the various activities that occurred on “Thomas Hart Benton Day” in Neosho in 1962.
In the foreground on the right stand two white men, one in a charcoal suit, the other a tan suit, both have matching hats. They are holding up a dark blue banner with white text reading “Neosho All-American City.” In front of them stands a woman in a sleeveless blue dress that falls to her knees with a white collar. She’s tending to a wood barrel serving as a flower planter holding red roses. Around the rim of the barrel reads “Flower Box City.”
Since the 1950s, Neosho has been locally well-known as The Flower Box City, the name dubbed after the city earned the All-America City Award in the 1950s. In 1955, the town applied for and received a $5,000 grant from the New York Community Trust for a civic beautification project. Local companies provided lumber at cost, the Jaycees formed an assembly line to build more than 200 wooden flower boxes, Pet Milk Company donated 400 used, wooden barrels for container gardens, and town nurseries supplied plants at reduced rates. The city even dressed up trash cans and parking meters around the courthouse square with flower baskets. The effort earned Neosho a coveted All-America City Award from Look magazine and the National Municipal League in 1957.
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Anthony Benton Gude donated several of his preliminary drawings from the creation of the Flower Box City mural.
They are also on display inside Neosho's City Hall.
They are also on display inside Neosho's City Hall.