Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton (1889–1975) was one of America’s foremost Regionalist painters and muralists. Born in Neosho, Missouri, he made his name in New York before returning to his home state in 1935 to head the painting department at the Kansas City Art Institute and to paint the Missouri State Capitol mural A Social History of the State of Missouri. He lived and worked in Kansas City for the last four decades of his life, dying in his studio there in 1975; that house and studio is now preserved as the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site.¹²

Biography

Early life + training

Benton was born April 15, 1889, in Neosho, in southwest Missouri.¹ He was named for his great-great-uncle, Thomas Hart Benton, one of Missouri’s first two U.S. Senators — a different and earlier figure from the painter.¹ He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago beginning in 1907 and then moved to Paris in 1909 to continue his training at the Académie Julian, where he was exposed to the modernist currents he would later reject.¹

Regionalism + national fame

Benton became a leading figure of American Regionalism, the 1930s movement that turned away from European modernism toward realist scenes of rural and small-town American life. He is grouped with fellow Regionalists Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry; the three were featured together in Time magazine on December 24, 1934, as the new heroes of American art.¹ During his New York years he taught at the Art Students League (1926–1935), where his students included a young Jackson Pollock.¹

Kansas City years — KCAI + major murals

In September 1935 Benton left New York for Kansas City, drawn by two offers: an invitation from the Kansas City Art Institute to head its painting department, and a commission to paint a mural for the Missouri State Capitol.³ The Capitol mural, A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936), in Jefferson City, became his best-known monumental work; Benton himself called it his best.¹ In 1939 the Benton family purchased a 1903 limestone-and-shingle house at 3616 Belleview in Kansas City’s Roanoke neighborhood, where he lived and painted for the rest of his life.² Other major works of his Kansas City decades include Persephone (1939) and, late in life, Independence and the Opening of the West (1959–1962), painted for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library in collaboration with Truman.³

The KCAI dismissal (1941)

Benton’s tenure at the Kansas City Art Institute ran from 1935 to 1941.¹ He lost the position in 1941 after making public remarks attacking museum culture — including publicly accusing employees of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art of homosexuality.³⁴ The provocative comments, consistent with a pattern of inflammatory public statements, cost him his teaching post; despite the dismissal he remained in Kansas City and continued to sell work through his New York gallery.⁴

Later work + death (1975)

Benton continued to paint and produce murals from his Kansas City studio into his eighties. He died of a heart attack in that studio in January 1975 (sources give January 18 or 19 — “ to reconcile), while completing The Sources of Country Music, a mural for the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville that he had been asked to paint in 1973 at age 84 (encouraged by singer Tex Ritter); he had laid the final brushstrokes but had not yet signed the canvas.¹²⁵ His Belleview home and studio were established as a Missouri state historic site in 1977 and added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980; the property is preserved with the Bentons’ original furnishings and is managed by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources.²

Major Kansas City–era works

A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936) — painted in the House of Representatives Lounge of the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City, this is Benton’s best-known mural and one of the most controversial. Rather than heroic statesmen, Benton filled it with unvarnished Missouri life — slavery, the outlaw Jesse James and his gang, the “Frankie and Johnny” ballad, and a prominent portrait of political boss Tom Pendergast. The result provoked open fury: one legislator proposed whitewashing the mural, another dismissed Benton’s murals as “manurials,” and Black Missourians met with Governor Guy Park to protest the depictions of slavery.⁶⁷

Persephone (1938–1939) — a large tempera-with-oil-glaze canvas (about 72 × 56 inches) reworking the Greek abduction myth as a Missouri farm scene. Benton exhibited it not in a museum but at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe nightclub in New York in April 1941. It is now a centerpiece of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, which acquired it from the Benton Trust in 1986.⁸

Independence and the Opening of the West (1959–1961) — a roughly 19-by-32-foot mural for the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, commissioned in a contract signed June 6, 1958. Benton began painting in December 1959 and finished in early 1961; it was dedicated on April 15, 1961 — Benton’s 72nd birthday. Truman took a close personal interest, refused to be depicted in it, and famously climbed the scaffold to add “a few strokes of blue” to the sky himself.⁹

Personality and the public man

Benton was as known for his combativeness and his populism as for his painting. He published a candid memoir, An Artist in America (1937), and in 1942 recorded a harmonica album, Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s, for Decca Records with his American Chamber Music Group — a reminder that the painter was also a folk musician who hosted regular music nights at his home.⁶

Significance to Kansas City

Although born in Neosho, Kansas City was Benton’s adult home city and the base from which he conducted the central, mature phase of his Regionalist career. For nearly forty years he was the city’s most nationally prominent resident artist — head of the painting department at the Kansas City Art Institute, painter of the defining mural of Missouri’s state government, and a public personality whose outspokenness kept him in the national press.¹³ His preserved Roanoke home and studio remains one of Kansas City’s notable cultural landmarks and a Missouri state historic site.²

Sources

Footnotes

1. Wikipedia — “Thomas Hart Benton (painter).” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hart_Benton_(painter) ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰

2. Wikipedia — “Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hart_Benton_Home_and_Studio_State_Historic_Site ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵

3. The Pendergast Years (Kansas City Public Library) — “Thomas Hart Benton.” https://pendergastkc.org/articles/thomas-hart-benton ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴

4. Missouri State Parks — “Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site.” https://mostateparks.com/historic-site/thomas-hart-benton-home-and-studio-state-historic-site ↩ ↩²

5. Flatland KC — “The Story Behind Thomas Hart Benton’s The Sources of Country Music.” https://flatlandkc.org/arts-culture/the-story-behind-thomas-hart-bentons-the-sources-of-country-music/ — Confirms: the 1973 commission at age 84, Tex Ritter’s encouragement, and Benton’s death in his studio in January 1975 before signing the finished canvas. ↩

6. The Pendergast Years (Kansas City Public Library) — “Thomas Hart Benton.” https://pendergastkc.org/articles/thomas-hart-benton — Confirms: the Missouri Capitol mural controversy (whitewash proposal, Pendergast portrait, protests over slavery depictions); An Artist in America (1937); the 1942 Decca harmonica album Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s; ~40 years at 3616 Belleview. ↩ ↩²

7. Missouri Life — “The Missouri Murals.” https://missourilife.com/from-our-archive-the-missouri-murals-2/ — Confirms: the “manurials” jab, the Frankie-and-Johnny and Jesse James content, and the legislative furor over A Social History of the State of Missouri (1936). ↩

8. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art — “Persephone” (accession F86-57). https://art.nelson-atkins.org/objects/27583/persephone — Confirms: 1938–39 tempera-with-oil-glaze canvas (~72 × 56 in); April 1941 showing at Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe; acquired from the Benton Trust in 1986. ↩

9. National Archives, Prologue (Spring 2009) — “Benton’s Independence and the Opening of the West.” https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2009/spring/benton.html — Confirms: June 6, 1958 contract (commissioned by David Lloyd of the Truman Library); ~19 × 32 ft; painted Dec 1959–early 1961; dedicated April 15, 1961 (Benton’s 72nd birthday); Truman’s refusal to be depicted and his “few strokes of blue.” ↩