Thomas Hart Benton

Thomas Hart Benton (Born April 15, 1889, Neosho, Missouri -- Died January 19, 1975, Kansas City, Missouri). From an early age, Benton has been a skilled artist, drawing caricatures and cartoon drawings on letters home while attending military school as a teenager. At the age of 18 he began his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago later continuing his studies at the famed Academie Julian in Paris. Benton moved to New York in 1911, where he spent the next 24 years, establishing his reputation as one of America's foremost regionalist mural painters. Accepting a teaching postition at the Kansas City Art Institute, Benton returned to Missouri in 1935. Thomas Hart Benton has been acknowledged as the finest muralist ever to come from America. Gus Shafer was allowed to sculpt a life-size bust of Benton in his studio, which is now displayed at the Harry S. Truman Library in Independence, Missouri.

Thomas Hart Benton
Island Hay, 1945
Lithograph
(C.E. Denman Collection)