The Kentuckian is a 1954 painting by American artist Thomas Hart Benton.

It is based on a scene from the film The Kentuckian, where the backwoodsman Big Eli Wakefield (played by Burt Lancaster) and his son Little Eli (played by Donald MacDonald) encounter a frontier village.

Both Lancaster and the producer Harold Hecht were admirers of Benton and took the initiative for the commission.

[1] Among Benton's sketches for the painting is one version where the characters are drawn as cube-figures.

The painting belonged to Lancaster and was not exhibited in public again until he gave it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1978.