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Opening Day Collection For:

Thomas Hart Benton

1889-1975

This Opening Day Collection focuses on Thomas Hart Benton, an American Regionalist painter. The collection includes resources on his life, works, the period in which he lived, as well as instruction on the mediums and techniques he used.

Born in Neosho Missouri, Thomas Hart Benton was known as a rebel. His family was steeped in politics, as both his father and grandfather (his name sake), were Congressmen and he was expected to follow in their footsteps. Except for a brief stint where he filed briefs in the local courthouse, the political arena was not for him. Unfortunately, this caused an estrangement between him and his father, until his father’s death.

At the age of 16 he went to study at the Art Institute in Chicago. In 1908, Thomas headed to Paris where he continued to experiment with modernism, copying styles such as Pointillism and Cubism, which he had already experimented with. He served in the Navy from 1918 until the end of the war. It was here that his naval art came about and his American art style developed.

After the war, he spent his summers at Martha’s Vineyard and in 1922 he married Rita Piacenza, one of his former students. He and his new wife roamed across America, soaking in its nuances, creating a realism style of art that had not been seen before.

He began doing murals. 1930 had him in New York City, doing a mural in what is now the New York Equitable Center. In 1936, he did murals for Missouri’s State Capital building in Jefferson City. He did a mural for the State of Indiana in the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair. In the 1960’s he did murals for the Truman Presidential Museum & Library. In all of his murals are people, Americans, doing what Americans do – eating, dancing, working. And it is through these people that Benton was able to convey the message in his murals of how these hard working people made Missouri or Indiana – actually, America, what it was then and still is today. He is described as both a painter and a historian, revealing America’s evolution from a rural frontier to an industrialized nation.

His works were not limited to murals. Benton was not limited to a medium - creating paintings, sketches and lithographs, while working in oils, watercolors, pen and ink, charcoal and pastels. Benton was the first artist featured on the cover of Time Magazine (1934). He died in his studio, just after finishing a painting, in January 1975.

(Below are three self portraits, done at different stages of Thomas's life.)