Thomas Hart Benton became one of the “Big Three” regionalist painters in America in the 1930s. At the end of that decade he purchased an existing home for his family of four at 3616 Belleview in the Roanoke District. The house was designed by the same architect who laid out Janssen Place in the Hyde Park area, but had fallen on hard times during the Depression. Benton bought it for less than $10,000.

Benton’s artistic style endeared him to many and angered not a few critics and members of the public. Painting everything from historic subjects to mythological figures [sometimes in the nude], Benton always added his inimitable touches such as elongated necks, flowing clouds or billowing smoke. While he always claimed in later life to be strictly a representational artist, the fact remains that he frequently added somewhat abstract components to paintings if he believed it improved the design.

The artist entered the world in Neosho, Missouri, in 1889. His father served several terms in Congress around the turn of the 20th century, so Tom grew up both in Missouri and Washington, D. C. He gained artistic instruction and experience in Chicago, Paris and New York prior to World War I. After serving in the Navy, he returned to New York and maintained residence there until moving to Kansas City in 1935.

In 1922, he married Rita Piacenza, daughter of Italian immigrants and former art student. She became his wife, mother to their two children, T. P. and Jesse, and art dealer, par excellence. In the ‘20s they purchased land and basic structures in the Chilmark section of Martha’s Vineyard. The family spent summers there most of their remaining lives.

For an artist, Thomas Hart Benton maintained rigorous work habits. He painted daily up to and including the last day of his life in 1975. An early riser, he utilized the north light in his carriage house studio at 3616 Belleview to good advantage. Often painting from before 8 a.m. until around 4 p.m., Benton retired to the house for “children’s hour,” as he called the standard cocktail hour.

During the 1930s, Benton was identified by Time magazine as the leading regionalist along with Grant Wood of Iowa and John Steuart Curry of Kansas. While each had distinctive styles, they all chose to concentrate on American subject matter, much of it in their Midwestern and Southern [in the case of Benton] environments. Additionally, they became fast friends. Both Wood and Curry died relatively young in the 1940s, so it was left to Benton to survive the changing fads of the art world that had lauded him in the ‘30s and condemned him in the ‘50s.

Ironically, one of the most heralded abstract artists of the 1950s who became the darling of East Coast art critics proved to be Jackson Pollock. What none of those critics could explain away was the fact that Thomas Hart Benton had been the only art instructor Pollock ever had. The younger artist studied with Benton in New York in the late ‘20s and late ‘30s. They remained in contact with Pollock often arriving unannounced [and staying for days] at the Chilmark house on Martha’s Vineyard. It would be difficult to find two more contrasting artistic styles that those of Benton and Pollock.

The former Benton home became a Missouri state historic site upon the deaths of both Tom and Rita Benton in 1975. Their friend Lyman Field managed to get the State of Missouri to take control of the property. Today it functions as an historical and cultural site operated by the Department of Natural Resources. It is open for tours daily and sponsors occasional special events that commemorate the unique contribution of this memorable man to his home state, the region and the world.

Dr. Bill Worley, Instructor in History, MCC-Blue River