April 15, 1889 . . . Thomas Hart Benton Born
Thomas Hart Benton, often a storm-center in the artistic world, aroused high praise and severe criticism with his graphic portrayals of American people, their life, customs and folklore.
A native Missourian, Benton was born at Neosho, April 15, 1889. His art career started, to the consternation of his parents, at the age of 6 when he sketched a long freight train in charcoal on the new cream-colored wall paper. His father, Colonel Maecenus E. Benton, lawyer and politician, took the youth with him on political tours and, when he was elected to Congress, to Washington. But young Benton rejected the family characteristic of studying law and with his mother's encouragement continued to draw. At 17 he got a job drawing cartoons for the Joplin American at $14 a week.
In 1906 Benton attended the Western military academy at Alton, Illinois, and during 1906-1907 the Art Institute in Chicago. Dissatisfied, he studied in Paris at the Academie Julien from 1908 to 1911. The conventional art studies there also repelled him and for the most part he drew as he wished. Returning to New York, the young artist began his professional career in 1912 by painting portraits of movie queens and doing work in cubism and symbolism. Then working in "synchronism," he showed a few pictures at the Forum exhibit in 1916.
Benton's experience as a private in World War I opened a new world to him artistically. He became interested in people and things basically American and, introduced to some of New York's underworld, he began painting the types he met. His return to Missouri in 1924 stimulated his interest in the common people, and he began traveling backroads all over the country to sketch American life first-hand. He wrote of these journeys in his autobiography, An Artist in America (1937).
In 1933 Benton was commissioned to paint the Indiana mural for the World's Fair and two years later to do murals for Missouri's state capitol. His realistic drawings of famous and infamous figures in Missouri history brought forth loud acclaim and equally loud protest, but Benton went his own artistic way undisturbed.
Benton also painted murals for the Whitney Museum and the New School for Social Research in New York. He was director of the department of painting at the Kansas City, Missouri, Art Institute from 1935 to 1941. The venerable artist remained in Kansas City and continued working almost up until the time of his death January 19, 1975.
"Thomas Hart Benton Appreciation Night" program, 2 March 1973, from the Dutton Brookfield Papers For primary source material on Thomas Hart Benton see: