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Thomas Hart Benton (painter)

February 15, 2024

For other uses, see Thomas Hart Benton.

Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 – January 19, 1975) was an American painter, muralist, and printmaker. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. The fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States.

Thomas Hart Benton
Benton in 1935
Born(1889-04-15)April 15, 1889
Neosho, Missouri, U.S.
DiedJanuary 19, 1975(1975-01-19) (aged 85)
Kansas City, Missouri, U.S.[1][2]
Alma materThe School of The Art Institute of Chicago
Académie Julian
Known forPainting
Notable workAmerica Today (1930-31)
Indiana Murals (1933)
Social History of Missouri (1936)
Persephone (1938-39)[3]
Movement

His work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States, the region in which he was born and which he called home for most of his life. He also studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there, summered for 50 years on Martha's Vineyard off the New England coast, and also painted scenes of the American South and West.

Early life and education edit

Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, into an influential family of politicians. He had two younger sisters, Mary and Mildred, and a younger brother, Nathaniel.[4] His mother was Elizabeth Wise Benton and his father, Colonel Maecenas Benton, was a lawyer and four times elected as U.S. congressman. Known as the "little giant of the Ozarks", Maecenas named his son after his own great-uncle,[5] Thomas Hart Benton, one of the first two United States Senators elected from Missouri.[4]

Given his father's political career, Benton spent his childhood shuttling between Washington, D.C., and Missouri. His father sent him to Western Military Academy in 1905–06, hoping to shape him for a political career. Growing up in two different cultures, Benton rebelled against his father's plans. He wanted to develop his interest in art, which his mother supported. As a teenager, he worked as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper, in Joplin, Missouri.[6]

With his mother's encouragement, in 1907 Benton enrolled at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Two years later, he moved to Paris in 1909 to continue his art education at the Académie Julian.[7] His mother supported him financially and emotionally to work at art until he married in his early 30s. His sister Mildred said, "My mother was a great power in his growing up."[4]

In Paris, Benton met other North American artists, such as the Mexican Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald-Wright, an advocate of Synchromism. Influenced by the latter, Benton subsequently adopted a Synchromist style.[8]

Early career and World War I edit

 
Camouflage pattern of the British ship S.S. Alban as documented by Thomas Hart Benton

After studying in Europe, Benton moved to New York City in 1912 and resumed painting. During World War I, he served in the U.S. Navy and was stationed at Norfolk, Virginia. His war-related work had an enduring effect on his style. He was directed to make drawings and illustrations of shipyard work and life, and this requirement for realistic documentation strongly affected his later style. Later in the war, classified as a "camoufleur", Benton drew the camouflaged ships that entered Norfolk harbor.[9]

His work was required for several reasons: to ensure that U.S. ship painters were correctly applying the camouflage schemes, to aid in identifying U.S. ships that might later be lost, and to have records of the ship camouflage of other Allied navies. Benton later said that his work for the Navy "was the most important thing, so far, I had ever done for myself as an artist."[10]

 
People of Chilmark (Figure Composition), 1920, in the Hirshhorn Museum collection in Washington, D.C.

Marriage and family edit

At the age of 33, Benton married Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant, in 1922.[11] They met while Benton was teaching art classes for a neighborhood organization in New York City, where she was one of his students. They were married for almost 53 years until Benton's death in 1975; Rita died eleven weeks after her husband. The couple had a son, Thomas Piacenza Benton (1926-2010),[12] and a daughter, Jessie Benton, (1939-2023),[13] who became a major figure in the Fort Hill Community founded by Mel Lyman; Benton himself was identified as a "benefactor" to the community, giving them "dozens of paintings".[14][15]

Later career edit

Dedication to Regionalism edit

 
In 1924, Benton depicted three landmarks in New York City's Madison Square within his painting New York, Early Twenties.
 
General Store (1922) drawing by Thomas Hart Benton, created during his 1920s tour of America
 
American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans (1922), Salem, Peabody Essex Museum.[16]

On his return to New York in the early 1920s, Benton declared himself an "enemy of modernism"; he began the naturalistic and representational work known as Regionalism. He toured America, making sketches and ink wash drawings of the things he saw. He would go back to these sketches again and again as reference for future paintings. He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works, culminating in his America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930–31. In 1984, the murals were purchased and restored by AXA Equitable to hang in the lobby of the AXA Equitable Tower at 1290 Sixth Avenue in New York City.[17] In December 2012, AXA donated the murals to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[18] The Met's exhibition "Thomas Hart Benton's 'America Today' Mural Rediscovered"[19] ran until April 19, 2015. The murals were described as showing how Benton absorbed and used the influence of the Greek artist El Greco.[20]

Benton broke through to the mainstream in 1932. A relative unknown, he won a commission to paint the murals of Indiana life planned by the state in the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago. The Indiana Murals stirred controversy; Benton painted everyday people, and included a portrayal of events in the state's history which some people did not want publicized. Some critics attacked his work for showing Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members in full regalia.[21] The KKK reached its peak membership in 1925. In Indiana, 30% of adult males were estimated to be members of the Klan, and in 1924 KKK members were elected as governor, and to other political offices.[22]

These mural panels are now displayed at Indiana University in Bloomington, with the majority hung in the "Hall of Murals" at the Auditorium. Four additional panels are displayed in the former University Theatre (now the Indiana Cinema) connected to the Auditorium. Two panels, including the one with images of the KKK, are located in a lecture classroom at Woodburn Hall.[21]

In 1932, Benton also painted The Arts of Life in America, a set of large murals for an early site of the Whitney Museum of American Art.[23] Major panels include Arts of the City, Arts of the West, Arts of the South and Indian Arts.[24] In 1953 five of the panels were purchased by the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut, and have since been displayed there.

On December 24, 1934, Benton was featured on one of the earliest color covers of Time magazine.[25] Benton's work was featured along with that of fellow Midwesterners Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in an article entitled "The U.S. Scene". The trio were featured as the new heroes of American art, and Regionalism was described as a significant art movement.[26]

In 1935, after he had "alienated both the left-leaning community of artists with his disregard for politics and the larger New York-Paris art world with what was considered his folksy style",[4] Benton left the artistic debates of New York for his native Missouri. He was commissioned to create a mural for the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. A Social History of Missouri is perhaps Benton's greatest work. In an interview in 1973, he said, "If I have any right to make judgments, I would say that the Missouri mural was my best work".[27] As with his earlier work, controversy arose over his portrayal of the state's history, as he included the subjects of slavery in the history of Missouri, the Missouri outlaw Jesse James, and the political boss Tom Pendergast. With his return to Missouri, Benton embraced the Regionalist art movement.[citation needed]

He settled in Kansas City and accepted a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute. This base afforded Benton greater access to rural America, which was changing rapidly. Due to his Populist political upbringing, Benton's sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer, unable to gain material advantage despite the Industrial Revolution.[citation needed]

During the late 1930s he created some of his best-known work, including the allegorical nude Persephone. It was considered scandalous by the Kansas City Art Institute, and was borrowed by the showman Billy Rose, who hung it in his New York nightclub, the Diamond Horseshoe. It is now held by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Karal Ann Marling, an art historian, says it is "one of the great works of American pornography."[4]

In 1937, Benton published his autobiography An Artist in America, which was critically acclaimed. The writer Sinclair Lewis said of it: "Here's a rare thing, a painter who can write."[28] During this period Benton also began to produce signed, limited-edition lithographs, which were sold at $5.00 each through the Associated American Artists Galleries based in New York.[29]

 
Achelous and Hercules, a 1947 mural made for a Kansas City department store, now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum

Teaching career edit

Benton's autobiography indicates that his son was enrolled from age 3 to 9 at the City and Country School in New York in exchange for his teaching art there.[30] He included the school's founder, Caroline Pratt, in "City Activities with Dance Hall", one of the ten panels in America Today.[31]

Benton taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935 and at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 to 1941. His most famous student, Jackson Pollock, whom he mentored in the Art Students League, founded the Abstract Expressionist movement. Pollock often said that Benton's traditional teachings gave him something to rebel against.[32] With another of his students, Glen Rounds, who went on to become a prolific author and illustrator of children's books, Benton spent a summer touring the Western United States in the early 1930s.[33][34] In the 1930s Benton taught at the Ste. Genevieve Art Colony in Ste. Genevieve, Missouri.[35]

Benton's students in New York and Kansas City included many painters who contributed significantly to American art. They included Pollock's brother Charles Pollock, Eric Bransby, Charles Banks Wilson, Frederic James, Lamar Dodd, Reginald Marsh, Charles Green Shaw, Margot Peet, Jackson Lee Nesbitt, Roger Medearis, James Duard Marshall, Glenn Gant, Fuller Potter, William Fredrick Kautzman,[36] and Delmer J. Yoakum.[37] Benton also briefly taught Dennis Hopper at the Kansas City Art Institute; Hopper later became well known as an independent actor, filmmaker, and photographer.[38]

Later life edit

During World War II, Benton created a series titled The Year of Peril, which portrayed the threat to American ideals by fascism and Nazism. The prints were widely distributed. Following the war, Regionalism fell from favor, eclipsed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism.[39] Benton remained active for another 30 years, but his work included less contemporary social commentary and portrayed pre-industrial farmlands.

 
Again by Thomas Benton (ca. 1941), Washington, D.C., National Archives and Records Administration.

Benton was hired in 1940, along with eight other prominent American artists, to document dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the film The Long Voyage Home, a cinematic adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's plays.[40] Benton was also an accomplished harmonica musician, recording an album for Decca Records in 1942 titled Saturday Night at Tom Benton's.

He continued to paint murals, including Lincoln (1953), for Lincoln University in Jefferson City, Missouri; Trading At Westport Landing (1956), for The River Club in Kansas City; Father Hennepin at Niagara Falls (1961) for the Power Authority of the State of New York; Joplin at the Turn of the Century (1972) in Joplin; and Independence and the Opening of the West, for the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence. His commission for the Truman Library mural led to his developing a friendship with Harry S. Truman that lasted until the former U.S. President's death.

Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio, as he completed his final mural, The Sources of Country Music, for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville, Tennessee.[39]

Legacy and honors edit

Benton was elected into the National Academy of Design in 1954 as an Associate member and became a full member in 1956. In 1961, Benton was chosen as one of 50 outstanding Americans of meritorious performance in the fields of endeavor, to be honored as a Guest of Honor to the first annual Banquet of the Golden Plate in Monterey, California. Honor was awarded by vote of the National Panel of Distinguished Americans of the Academy of Achievement.[41]

 
Exterior of the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site

In 1977, Benton's 21⁄2 story late-Victorian residence and carriage house studio in Kansas City was designated by Missouri as the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site.[42] The historic site has been preserved nearly unchanged from the time of his death; clothing, furniture, and paint brushes are still in place. Displaying 13 original works of his art, the house museum is open for guided tours. Benton was the subject of the eponymous 1988 documentary, Thomas Hart Benton, directed by Ken Burns and produced by WGBH-TV.

In December 2019, a lawsuit was filed by Benton's daughter, Jessie, her son, and her two daughters against the UMB Bank, a trustee of the Benton Trusts and manager of Benton's estate since 1979: "More than a hundred paintings gone, priceless works of art stored in subpar conditions, paintings sold for fire sale prices - those are the allegations put forward by a new lawsuit filed by the heirs of famous American artist Thomas Hart Benton."[43] The bank did not directly respond to the specific allegations in the lawsuit but characterized them as misguided. The bank's president, Jim Rine, said that it regrets that the Bentons chose to resolve the issue through litigation and that the bank takes its role as trustee of Benton's art very seriously.[44]

Writings edit

  • Benton, Thomas Hart (1951), An Artist in America, University of Kansas City Press.
  • Benton, Thomas Hart (1969), An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography, University Press of Kansas.
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Europe After 8:15 – H.L. Mencken—1914
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Schoolhouse in the Foothills – Ella Enslow—1937
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Tom Sawyer – Mark Twain—1939
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck—1940
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain—1941
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Taps for Private Tussie – Jesse Stuart—1943
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography & Other Tales —1944
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Life on the Mississippi – Mark Twain—1944
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) The Oregon Trail – Francis Parkman—1945
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Ozark Folksongs (4 Vols.) – Vance Randolph (endpapers only) – 1946-50
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) We the People – Leo Huberman—1947
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Green Grow the Lilacs – Lynn Riggs—1954
  • (Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton) Three Rivers South (Young Abe Lincoln) – Virginia Eifert – 1955

References edit

Notes edit

  1. ^ "ULAN Full Record Display: Thomas Hart Benton". Getty Research. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
  2. ^ "Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site". Missouri State Parks. December 10, 2010. Retrieved December 2, 2012.
  3. ^ WETA (2002). "Thomas Hart Benton: Timeline". PBS. Retrieved September 15, 2011.
  4. ^ a b c d e WETA (2010), Thomas Hart Benton: Benton Profile, PBS, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  5. ^ "Benton Genealogy - Missouri State Parks". mostateparks.com. February 9, 2011. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
  6. ^ Dictionary of Missouri Biography, Lawrence O. Christensen, University of Missouri Press, 1999, pg. 62
  7. ^ . benton.truman.edu. Archived from the original on February 21, 2015. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
  8. ^ Craven, Wayne (2003), American Art: History and Culture, McGraw-Hill, p. 439, ISBN 978-0-697-16763-7.
  9. ^ "Exhibit on artist Thomas Hart Benton highlights influence from Navy stint". Retrieved March 1, 2018.
  10. ^ An Artist in America, Thomas Hart Benton, University of Missouri Press, p. 44
  11. ^ Hufstader, Louisa (September 19, 2019). "Benton's Vineyard Legacy Lives On in His Work and Family". The Vineyard Gazette.
  12. ^ "Thomas Hart Benton's Heirs Accuse UMB Bank of Mismanaging the Renowned Kansas City Artist's Works". December 19, 2019.
  13. ^ "Jessie Benton, 83". Vineyard Gazette. February 22, 2023. Republished as: Jessie Benton Carried on Her Parents' Legacy
  14. ^ "Once-Notorious '60s Commune Evolves into Respectability : After 19 Years the Lyman Family Prospers as Craftsmen and Farmers". Los Angeles Times. August 4, 1985.
  15. ^ Van Zuylen-Wood, Simon (February 19, 2017). "The Life and Death and Rebirth of Boston's Counterculture". Boston Magazine.
  16. ^ Cardin, Dinah (August 14, 2015). "Benton painting Native Americans". www.pem.org. Salem, Massachusetts: Peabody Essex Museum. from the original on September 30, 2020. Retrieved February 21, 2022.
  17. ^ "The Collection" 2012-08-25 at the Wayback Machine, AXA Gallery; accessed August 2, 2012.
  18. ^ http://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/press-room/news/2012/benton "AXA Equitable Donates America Today, Thomas Hart Benton's Epic Mural Cycle Celebrating Life in 1920s America, to Metropolitan Museum".
  19. ^ "Thomas Hart Benton'sAmerica Today Mural Rediscovered". The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
  20. ^ Craven 2003, p. 440
  21. ^ a b Indiana University (July 27, 2009), IU Art Museum opens doors to conservation of famed Thomas Benton murals, IU News Room, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  22. ^ "Ku Klux Klan in Indiana". Indiana State Library. November 2000. Retrieved September 27, 2009.
  23. ^ The Murals of Thomas Hart Benton, New Britain Museum of American Art, 2010, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  24. ^ A Glimpse of the Five Major Panels, New Britain Museum of American Art, 2010, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  25. ^ For an online reproduction of the cover, see , Time Archive: 1913 to the present, archived from the original on December 2, 2008, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  26. ^ , Time, December 24, 1934, archived from the original on February 3, 2009, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  27. ^ American Heritage magazine, June 1973, pg. 87.
  28. ^ "Slim, Jim, and Lem", Newsweek, November 1, 1937, p. 25
  29. ^ The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton. Compiled and edited by Creekmore Fath. University of Texas Press, 1969, p. 3.
  30. ^ Hauser, Mary E. (2006). Learning from Children: The Life and Legacy of Caroline Pratt. Peter Lang. p. 131. ISBN 978-0-8204-6751-1.
  31. ^ "Caroline Pratt and Thomas Hart Benton Go to the MET", cityandcountry.org. Accessed February 6, 2024.
  32. ^ Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, p. 137, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990
  33. ^ "Glen Rounds". North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  34. ^ "Malcolm Blue Society Celebrates 40 Years". ThePilot.com. July 8, 2013. Retrieved September 15, 2014.
  35. ^ Dick, R. H.; Kerr, Scott (2004). An American art colony : the art and artists of Ste. Genevieve, Missouri, 1930-1940. St. Louis, Mo.: McCaughen & Burr Press. pp. 163–164. ISBN 978-0976242406.
  36. ^ Art of Estates Artist Biographical Rsearch
  37. ^ Marianne Berardi, Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton, Kansas City: The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, 1993
  38. ^ Gross, Terry (June 1, 2010), "Anarchic Actor, Artist Dennis Hopper, 1936-2010", Fresh Air, National Public Radio, retrieved September 15, 2011.
  39. ^ a b . New Britain Museum of American Art. 2010. Archived from the original on July 26, 2011. Retrieved September 15, 2011.
  40. ^ . thenedscottarchive.com. Archived from the original on May 24, 2019. Retrieved March 1, 2018.
  41. ^ "Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement". www.achievement.org. American Academy of Achievement.
  42. ^ "Kansas City Attractions: Thomas Hart Benton Home". Frommer's USA, 10th edition. The New York Times. 2007. ISBN 978-0-470-04726-2.[dead link]
  43. ^ "Lawsuit Alleges Missouri Bank Mismanaged Painter Thomas Hart Benton's Estate : NPR". NPR.org. December 27, 2019. from the original on December 27, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2019. More than a hundred paintings gone, priceless works of art stored in subpar conditions, paintings sold for fire sale prices - those are the allegations put forward by a new lawsuit filed by the heirs of famous American artist Thomas Hart Benton.
  44. ^ "Lawsuit Alleges Missouri Bank Mismanaged Painter Thomas Hart Benton's Estate". NPR.org. from the original on December 27, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2019. Well, the bank hasn't responded to the specific allegations in the lawsuit, although it called them misguided. The bank's president said it regretted that the Bentons are choosing to resolve the issues here through litigation, and he said the bank takes its role as trustee of Benton's art very seriously.

Catalogs and monographs edit

  • Benton, Thomas Hart; Craven, Thomas (1939), Thomas Hart Benton: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Thomas Hart Benton, Spotlighting the Important Periods during the Artist's Thirty-two Years of Painting, with an Examination of the Artist and His Work, Associated American Artists
  • University of Kansas Museum of Art (1958), Thomas Hart Benton: A Retrospective Exhibition of the Works of the Noted Missouri Artist Presented under the Patronage of Harry S. Truman and Mrs. Truman of Independence, Missouri, April 12 to May 18, 1958

Major museum exhibitions edit

Further reading edit

  • Adams, Henry, "Thomas Hart Benton's Fall from Grace", Missouri Historical Review, 109 (April 2015), 145–57. Heavily illustrated.
  • Adams, Henry (1989), Thomas Hart Benton: An American original, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0-394-57153-3
  • Adams, Henry; Henry Art Gallery (1990), Thomas Hart Benton: Drawing from Life, Abbeville Press, ISBN 978-1-55859-011-3
  • Adams, Henry (2009), Tom and Jack: The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock, Bloomsbury Publishing USA, ISBN 978-1-59691-420-9
  • Baigell, Thomas (1975), Thomas Hart Benton, H. N. Abrams, ISBN 978-0-8109-2055-2
  • Berardi, Marianne; Adams, Henry (1993), Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton, Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art, ISBN 978-0-9615372-2-7
  • Foster, Kathy A.; Brewer, Nanette Esseck; Contompasis, Margaret (2001), Thomas Hart Benton and the Indiana Murals, Indiana University Press, ISBN 978-0-253-33760-3
  • Low, Sam (July 2004). "It freed his heart". Martha's Vineyard Magazine. pp. 45–51, 92. It wasn't until Thomas Hart Benton came to the island in 1920 that he found himself, and the painting style for which he would become famous.
  • Wien, Jake Milgram, "The Gold Dust Twins: Thomas Hart Benton, Walt Disney, and the Mining of Frontier Mythology". The Magazine Antiques, May/June 2015
  • Wolff, Justin (2012), Thomas Hart Benton: A Life, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, ISBN 978-0-374-19987-6

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thomas Hart Benton.

February 15, 2024
thomas, hart, benton, painter, other, uses, thomas, hart, benton, thomas, hart, benton, april, 1889, january, 1975, american, painter, muralist, printmaker, along, with, grant, wood, john, steuart, curry, forefront, regionalist, movement, fluid, sculpted, figu. For other uses see Thomas Hart Benton Thomas Hart Benton April 15 1889 January 19 1975 was an American painter muralist and printmaker Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement The fluid sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States Thomas Hart BentonBenton in 1935Born 1889 04 15 April 15 1889Neosho Missouri U S DiedJanuary 19 1975 1975 01 19 aged 85 Kansas City Missouri U S 1 2 Alma materThe School of The Art Institute of ChicagoAcademie JulianKnown forPaintingNotable workAmerica Today 1930 31 Indiana Murals 1933 Social History of Missouri 1936 Persephone 1938 39 3 MovementRegionalismSocial RealismAmerican modernismAmerican realismSynchromismHis work is strongly associated with the Midwestern United States the region in which he was born and which he called home for most of his life He also studied in Paris lived in New York City for more than 20 years and painted scores of works there summered for 50 years on Martha s Vineyard off the New England coast and also painted scenes of the American South and West Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Early career and World War I 3 Marriage and family 4 Later career 4 1 Dedication to Regionalism 4 2 Teaching career 5 Later life 6 Legacy and honors 7 Writings 8 References 8 1 Notes 8 2 Catalogs and monographs 8 3 Major museum exhibitions 8 4 Further reading 9 External linksEarly life and education editBenton was born in Neosho Missouri into an influential family of politicians He had two younger sisters Mary and Mildred and a younger brother Nathaniel 4 His mother was Elizabeth Wise Benton and his father Colonel Maecenas Benton was a lawyer and four times elected as U S congressman Known as the little giant of the Ozarks Maecenas named his son after his own great uncle 5 Thomas Hart Benton one of the first two United States Senators elected from Missouri 4 Given his father s political career Benton spent his childhood shuttling between Washington D C and Missouri His father sent him to Western Military Academy in 1905 06 hoping to shape him for a political career Growing up in two different cultures Benton rebelled against his father s plans He wanted to develop his interest in art which his mother supported As a teenager he worked as a cartoonist for the Joplin American newspaper in Joplin Missouri 6 With his mother s encouragement in 1907 Benton enrolled at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago Two years later he moved to Paris in 1909 to continue his art education at the Academie Julian 7 His mother supported him financially and emotionally to work at art until he married in his early 30s His sister Mildred said My mother was a great power in his growing up 4 In Paris Benton met other North American artists such as the Mexican Diego Rivera and Stanton Macdonald Wright an advocate of Synchromism Influenced by the latter Benton subsequently adopted a Synchromist style 8 Early career and World War I edit nbsp Camouflage pattern of the British ship S S Alban as documented by Thomas Hart BentonAfter studying in Europe Benton moved to New York City in 1912 and resumed painting During World War I he served in the U S Navy and was stationed at Norfolk Virginia His war related work had an enduring effect on his style He was directed to make drawings and illustrations of shipyard work and life and this requirement for realistic documentation strongly affected his later style Later in the war classified as a camoufleur Benton drew the camouflaged ships that entered Norfolk harbor 9 His work was required for several reasons to ensure that U S ship painters were correctly applying the camouflage schemes to aid in identifying U S ships that might later be lost and to have records of the ship camouflage of other Allied navies Benton later said that his work for the Navy was the most important thing so far I had ever done for myself as an artist 10 nbsp People of Chilmark Figure Composition 1920 in the Hirshhorn Museum collection in Washington D C Marriage and family editAt the age of 33 Benton married Rita Piacenza an Italian immigrant in 1922 11 They met while Benton was teaching art classes for a neighborhood organization in New York City where she was one of his students They were married for almost 53 years until Benton s death in 1975 Rita died eleven weeks after her husband The couple had a son Thomas Piacenza Benton 1926 2010 12 and a daughter Jessie Benton 1939 2023 13 who became a major figure in the Fort Hill Community founded by Mel Lyman Benton himself was identified as a benefactor to the community giving them dozens of paintings 14 15 Later career editDedication to Regionalism edit nbsp In 1924 Benton depicted three landmarks in New York City s Madison Square within his painting New York Early Twenties nbsp General Store 1922 drawing by Thomas Hart Benton created during his 1920s tour of America nbsp American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans 1922 Salem Peabody Essex Museum 16 On his return to New York in the early 1920s Benton declared himself an enemy of modernism he began the naturalistic and representational work known as Regionalism He toured America making sketches and ink wash drawings of the things he saw He would go back to these sketches again and again as reference for future paintings He expanded the scale of his Regionalist works culminating in his America Today murals at the New School for Social Research in 1930 31 In 1984 the murals were purchased and restored by AXA Equitable to hang in the lobby of the AXA Equitable Tower at 1290 Sixth Avenue in New York City 17 In December 2012 AXA donated the murals to the Metropolitan Museum of Art 18 The Met s exhibition Thomas Hart Benton s America Today Mural Rediscovered 19 ran until April 19 2015 The murals were described as showing how Benton absorbed and used the influence of the Greek artist El Greco 20 Benton broke through to the mainstream in 1932 A relative unknown he won a commission to paint the murals of Indiana life planned by the state in the 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition in Chicago The Indiana Murals stirred controversy Benton painted everyday people and included a portrayal of events in the state s history which some people did not want publicized Some critics attacked his work for showing Ku Klux Klan KKK members in full regalia 21 The KKK reached its peak membership in 1925 In Indiana 30 of adult males were estimated to be members of the Klan and in 1924 KKK members were elected as governor and to other political offices 22 These mural panels are now displayed at Indiana University in Bloomington with the majority hung in the Hall of Murals at the Auditorium Four additional panels are displayed in the former University Theatre now the Indiana Cinema connected to the Auditorium Two panels including the one with images of the KKK are located in a lecture classroom at Woodburn Hall 21 In 1932 Benton also painted The Arts of Life in America a set of large murals for an early site of the Whitney Museum of American Art 23 Major panels include Arts of the City Arts of the West Arts of the South and Indian Arts 24 In 1953 five of the panels were purchased by the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut and have since been displayed there On December 24 1934 Benton was featured on one of the earliest color covers of Time magazine 25 Benton s work was featured along with that of fellow Midwesterners Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry in an article entitled The U S Scene The trio were featured as the new heroes of American art and Regionalism was described as a significant art movement 26 In 1935 after he had alienated both the left leaning community of artists with his disregard for politics and the larger New York Paris art world with what was considered his folksy style 4 Benton left the artistic debates of New York for his native Missouri He was commissioned to create a mural for the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City A Social History of Missouri is perhaps Benton s greatest work In an interview in 1973 he said If I have any right to make judgments I would say that the Missouri mural was my best work 27 As with his earlier work controversy arose over his portrayal of the state s history as he included the subjects of slavery in the history of Missouri the Missouri outlaw Jesse James and the political boss Tom Pendergast With his return to Missouri Benton embraced the Regionalist art movement citation needed He settled in Kansas City and accepted a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute This base afforded Benton greater access to rural America which was changing rapidly Due to his Populist political upbringing Benton s sympathy was with the working class and the small farmer unable to gain material advantage despite the Industrial Revolution citation needed During the late 1930s he created some of his best known work including the allegorical nude Persephone It was considered scandalous by the Kansas City Art Institute and was borrowed by the showman Billy Rose who hung it in his New York nightclub the Diamond Horseshoe It is now held by the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City Karal Ann Marling an art historian says it is one of the great works of American pornography 4 In 1937 Benton published his autobiography An Artist in America which was critically acclaimed The writer Sinclair Lewis said of it Here s a rare thing a painter who can write 28 During this period Benton also began to produce signed limited edition lithographs which were sold at 5 00 each through the Associated American Artists Galleries based in New York 29 nbsp Achelous and Hercules a 1947 mural made for a Kansas City department store now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum Teaching career edit Benton s autobiography indicates that his son was enrolled from age 3 to 9 at the City and Country School in New York in exchange for his teaching art there 30 He included the school s founder Caroline Pratt in City Activities with Dance Hall one of the ten panels in America Today 31 Benton taught at the Art Students League of New York from 1926 to 1935 and at the Kansas City Art Institute from 1935 to 1941 His most famous student Jackson Pollock whom he mentored in the Art Students League founded the Abstract Expressionist movement Pollock often said that Benton s traditional teachings gave him something to rebel against 32 With another of his students Glen Rounds who went on to become a prolific author and illustrator of children s books Benton spent a summer touring the Western United States in the early 1930s 33 34 In the 1930s Benton taught at the Ste Genevieve Art Colony in Ste Genevieve Missouri 35 Benton s students in New York and Kansas City included many painters who contributed significantly to American art They included Pollock s brother Charles Pollock Eric Bransby Charles Banks Wilson Frederic James Lamar Dodd Reginald Marsh Charles Green Shaw Margot Peet Jackson Lee Nesbitt Roger Medearis James Duard Marshall Glenn Gant Fuller Potter William Fredrick Kautzman 36 and Delmer J Yoakum 37 Benton also briefly taught Dennis Hopper at the Kansas City Art Institute Hopper later became well known as an independent actor filmmaker and photographer 38 Later life editDuring World War II Benton created a series titled The Year of Peril which portrayed the threat to American ideals by fascism and Nazism The prints were widely distributed Following the war Regionalism fell from favor eclipsed by the rise of Abstract Expressionism 39 Benton remained active for another 30 years but his work included less contemporary social commentary and portrayed pre industrial farmlands nbsp Again by Thomas Benton ca 1941 Washington D C National Archives and Records Administration Benton was hired in 1940 along with eight other prominent American artists to document dramatic scenes and characters during the production of the film The Long Voyage Home a cinematic adaptation of Eugene O Neill s plays 40 Benton was also an accomplished harmonica musician recording an album for Decca Records in 1942 titled Saturday Night at Tom Benton s He continued to paint murals including Lincoln 1953 for Lincoln University in Jefferson City Missouri Trading At Westport Landing 1956 for The River Club in Kansas City Father Hennepin at Niagara Falls 1961 for the Power Authority of the State of New York Joplin at the Turn of the Century 1972 in Joplin and Independence and the Opening of the West for the Harry S Truman Library in Independence His commission for the Truman Library mural led to his developing a friendship with Harry S Truman that lasted until the former U S President s death Benton died in 1975 at work in his studio as he completed his final mural The Sources of Country Music for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville Tennessee 39 Legacy and honors editBenton was elected into the National Academy of Design in 1954 as an Associate member and became a full member in 1956 In 1961 Benton was chosen as one of 50 outstanding Americans of meritorious performance in the fields of endeavor to be honored as a Guest of Honor to the first annual Banquet of the Golden Plate in Monterey California Honor was awarded by vote of the National Panel of Distinguished Americans of the Academy of Achievement 41 nbsp Exterior of the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic SiteIn 1977 Benton s 21 2 story late Victorian residence and carriage house studio in Kansas City was designated by Missouri as the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site 42 The historic site has been preserved nearly unchanged from the time of his death clothing furniture and paint brushes are still in place Displaying 13 original works of his art the house museum is open for guided tours Benton was the subject of the eponymous 1988 documentary Thomas Hart Benton directed by Ken Burns and produced by WGBH TV In December 2019 a lawsuit was filed by Benton s daughter Jessie her son and her two daughters against the UMB Bank a trustee of the Benton Trusts and manager of Benton s estate since 1979 More than a hundred paintings gone priceless works of art stored in subpar conditions paintings sold for fire sale prices those are the allegations put forward by a new lawsuit filed by the heirs of famous American artist Thomas Hart Benton 43 The bank did not directly respond to the specific allegations in the lawsuit but characterized them as misguided The bank s president Jim Rine said that it regrets that the Bentons chose to resolve the issue through litigation and that the bank takes its role as trustee of Benton s art very seriously 44 Writings editBenton Thomas Hart 1951 An Artist in America University of Kansas City Press Benton Thomas Hart 1969 An American in Art A Professional and Technical Autobiography University Press of Kansas Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Europe After 8 15 H L Mencken 1914 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Schoolhouse in the Foothills Ella Enslow 1937 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Tom Sawyer Mark Twain 1939 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck 1940 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Huckleberry Finn Mark Twain 1941 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Taps for Private Tussie Jesse Stuart 1943 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Benjamin Franklin s Autobiography amp Other Tales 1944 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Life on the Mississippi Mark Twain 1944 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton The Oregon Trail Francis Parkman 1945 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Ozark Folksongs 4 Vols Vance Randolph endpapers only 1946 50 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton We the People Leo Huberman 1947 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Green Grow the Lilacs Lynn Riggs 1954 Illustrated by Thomas Hart Benton Three Rivers South Young Abe Lincoln Virginia Eifert 1955References editNotes edit ULAN Full Record Display Thomas Hart Benton Getty Research Retrieved December 2 2012 Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site Missouri State Parks December 10 2010 Retrieved December 2 2012 WETA 2002 Thomas Hart Benton Timeline PBS Retrieved September 15 2011 a b c d e WETA 2010 Thomas Hart Benton Benton Profile PBS retrieved September 15 2011 Benton Genealogy Missouri State Parks mostateparks com February 9 2011 Retrieved March 1 2018 Dictionary of Missouri Biography Lawrence O Christensen University of Missouri Press 1999 pg 62 Thomas Hart Benton Murals in the Missouri State Capitol benton truman edu Archived from the original on February 21 2015 Retrieved March 1 2018 Craven Wayne 2003 American Art History and Culture McGraw Hill p 439 ISBN 978 0 697 16763 7 Exhibit on artist Thomas Hart Benton highlights influence from Navy stint Retrieved March 1 2018 An Artist in America Thomas Hart Benton University of Missouri Press p 44 Hufstader Louisa September 19 2019 Benton s Vineyard Legacy Lives On in His Work and Family The Vineyard Gazette Thomas Hart Benton s Heirs Accuse UMB Bank of Mismanaging the Renowned Kansas City Artist s Works December 19 2019 Jessie Benton 83 Vineyard Gazette February 22 2023 Republished as Jessie Benton Carried on Her Parents Legacy Once Notorious 60s Commune Evolves into Respectability After 19 Years the Lyman Family Prospers as Craftsmen and Farmers Los Angeles Times August 4 1985 Van Zuylen Wood Simon February 19 2017 The Life and Death and Rebirth of Boston s Counterculture Boston Magazine Cardin Dinah August 14 2015 Benton painting Native Americans www pem org Salem Massachusetts Peabody Essex Museum Archived from the original on September 30 2020 Retrieved February 21 2022 The Collection Archived 2012 08 25 at the Wayback Machine AXA Gallery accessed August 2 2012 http www metmuseum org about the museum press room news 2012 benton AXA Equitable Donates America Today Thomas Hart Benton s Epic Mural Cycle Celebrating Life in 1920s America to Metropolitan Museum Thomas Hart Benton sAmerica Today Mural Rediscovered The Metropolitan Museum of Art Retrieved March 1 2018 Craven 2003 p 440 a b Indiana University July 27 2009 IU Art Museum opens doors to conservation of famed Thomas Benton murals IU News Room retrieved September 15 2011 Ku Klux Klan in Indiana Indiana State Library November 2000 Retrieved September 27 2009 The Murals of Thomas Hart Benton New Britain Museum of American Art 2010 retrieved September 15 2011 A Glimpse of the Five Major Panels New Britain Museum of American Art 2010 retrieved September 15 2011 For an online reproduction of the cover see TIME Magazine Cover Thomas Hart Benton Time Archive 1913 to the present archived from the original on December 2 2008 retrieved September 15 2011 The U S Scene Time December 24 1934 archived from the original on February 3 2009 retrieved September 15 2011 American Heritage magazine June 1973 pg 87 Slim Jim and Lem Newsweek November 1 1937 p 25 The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton Compiled and edited by Creekmore Fath University of Texas Press 1969 p 3 Hauser Mary E 2006 Learning from Children The Life and Legacy of Caroline Pratt Peter Lang p 131 ISBN 978 0 8204 6751 1 Caroline Pratt and Thomas Hart Benton Go to the MET cityandcountry org Accessed February 6 2024 Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics p 137 ed Clifford Ross Abrahams Publishers New York 1990 Glen Rounds North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame Retrieved September 15 2014 Malcolm Blue Society Celebrates 40 Years ThePilot com July 8 2013 Retrieved September 15 2014 Dick R H Kerr Scott 2004 An American art colony the art and artists of Ste Genevieve Missouri 1930 1940 St Louis Mo McCaughen amp Burr Press pp 163 164 ISBN 978 0976242406 Art of Estates Artist Biographical Rsearch Marianne Berardi Under the Influence The Students of Thomas Hart Benton Kansas City The Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art 1993 Gross Terry June 1 2010 Anarchic Actor Artist Dennis Hopper 1936 2010 Fresh Air National Public Radio retrieved September 15 2011 a b Thomas Hart Benton Biography New Britain Museum of American Art 2010 Archived from the original on July 26 2011 Retrieved September 15 2011 The Long Voyage Home thenedscottarchive com Archived from the original on May 24 2019 Retrieved March 1 2018 Golden Plate Awardees of the American Academy of Achievement www achievement org American Academy of Achievement Kansas City Attractions Thomas Hart Benton Home Frommer s USA 10th edition The New York Times 2007 ISBN 978 0 470 04726 2 dead link Lawsuit Alleges Missouri Bank Mismanaged Painter Thomas Hart Benton s Estate NPR NPR org December 27 2019 Archived from the original on December 27 2019 Retrieved December 29 2019 More than a hundred paintings gone priceless works of art stored in subpar conditions paintings sold for fire sale prices those are the allegations put forward by a new lawsuit filed by the heirs of famous American artist Thomas Hart Benton Lawsuit Alleges Missouri Bank Mismanaged Painter Thomas Hart Benton s Estate NPR org Archived from the original on December 27 2019 Retrieved December 29 2019 Well the bank hasn t responded to the specific allegations in the lawsuit although it called them misguided The bank s president said it regretted that the Bentons are choosing to resolve the issues here through litigation and he said the bank takes its role as trustee of Benton s art very seriously Catalogs and monographs edit Benton Thomas Hart Craven Thomas 1939 Thomas Hart Benton A Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of Thomas Hart Benton Spotlighting the Important Periods during the Artist s Thirty two Years of Painting with an Examination of the Artist and His Work Associated American Artists University of Kansas Museum of Art 1958 Thomas Hart Benton A Retrospective Exhibition of the Works of the Noted Missouri Artist Presented under the Patronage of Harry S Truman and Mrs Truman of Independence Missouri April 12 to May 18 1958Major museum exhibitions edit Thomas Hart Benton s America Today Mural Rediscovered organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art Thomas Hart Benton sAmerica Today Mural Rediscovered The Metropolitan Museum of Art metmuseum org Retrieved January 26 2016 American Epics Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood organized by the Peabody Essex Museum the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art American Epics Thomas Hart Benton and Hollywood The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art The Nelson Atkins Museum of Art Archived from the original on October 13 2015 Retrieved January 26 2016 Further reading edit Adams Henry Thomas Hart Benton s Fall from Grace Missouri Historical Review 109 April 2015 145 57 Heavily illustrated Adams Henry 1989 Thomas Hart Benton An American original Alfred A Knopf ISBN 0 394 57153 3 Adams Henry Henry Art Gallery 1990 Thomas Hart Benton Drawing from Life Abbeville Press ISBN 978 1 55859 011 3 Adams Henry 2009 Tom and Jack The Intertwined Lives of Thomas Hart Benton and Jackson Pollock Bloomsbury Publishing USA ISBN 978 1 59691 420 9 Baigell Thomas 1975 Thomas Hart Benton H N Abrams ISBN 978 0 8109 2055 2 Berardi Marianne Adams Henry 1993 Under the Influence The Students of Thomas Hart Benton Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art ISBN 978 0 9615372 2 7 Foster Kathy A Brewer Nanette Esseck Contompasis Margaret 2001 Thomas Hart Benton and the Indiana Murals Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0 253 33760 3 Low Sam July 2004 It freed his heart Martha s Vineyard Magazine pp 45 51 92 It wasn t until Thomas Hart Benton came to the island in 1920 that he found himself and the painting style for which he would become famous Wien Jake Milgram The Gold Dust Twins Thomas Hart Benton Walt Disney and the Mining of Frontier Mythology The Magazine Antiques May June 2015 Wolff Justin 2012 Thomas Hart Benton A Life Farrar Straus and Giroux ISBN 978 0 374 19987 6External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Thomas Hart Benton The Official Website for Thomas Hart Benton Works by Thomas Hart Benton in the Smithsonian American Art Museum Thomas Hart Benton papers 1906 1975 from the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Thomas Hart Benton America Today AXA Gallery Press Release AXA Gallery archived from the original on August 25 2012 Works by Thomas Hart Benton at the State Historical Society of Missouri The Long Voyage Home Artist Portraits and Paintings Archived May 24 2019 at the Wayback Machine at The Ned Scott Archive Works by Thomas Hart Benton at Project Gutenberg Works by or about Thomas Hart Benton at Internet Archive Thomas Hart Benton collected news and commentary at The New York Times Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Thomas Hart Benton painter amp oldid 1204494070, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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