Advertisement for Lucky Strike cigarettes in the July 20, 1942, issue of Life magazine featuring Thomas Hart Benton's Outside the Curing Barn

Outside the Curing Barn, one of the paintings Thomas Hart Benton created for Lucky Strike cigarette advertisements, was the result of several artistic compromises. The American Tobacco Company rejected Benton’s initial conception for the ad, a scene of African Americans harvesting and processing tobacco leaves in southern Georgia. The company president felt it illustrated “old time slave work,” his response to criticism from black organizations that tobacco companies portrayed African Americans in subjugated roles.

Benton’s subsequent idea for the commission showed an older man and a young blonde girl sorting tobacco leaves. The sponsor again dismissed the artist’s work, arguing that the child’s thin build hinted at frailness caused by a tobacco-related disease. The company deemed the scene eventually used in this advertisement, one of two incorporating Benton’s work, suitably non-controversial.