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Historical records matching Thomas Hart Benton
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About 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.
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.
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. His mother was Elizabeth Wise Benton and his father, Col. 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, Thomas Hart Benton, one of the first two United States Senators elected from Missouri.
At the age of 33, Benton married Rita Piacenza, an Italian immigrant, in 1922. 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), and a daughter, Jessie Benton, (1939-2023), 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." (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0)
Sources
- https://www.jstor.org/stable/25089171
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Hart_Benton_%28painter%29
- http://www.house.mo.gov/famous.aspx?fm=5
- 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
- https://kansassampler.org/8wondersofkansas-art/a-thomas-hart-benton...
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Thomas Hart Benton's Timeline
| 1889 |
April 15, 1889
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Neosho, Newton County, Missouri, United States
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| 1900 |
1900
Age 10
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Neosho City, Newton, Missouri
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| 1910 |
1910
Age 20
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| 1926 |
1926
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| 1939 |
1939
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| 1975 |
January 19, 1975
Age 85
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while working in his studio, Kansas City, Jackson County, Missouri, United States
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