LITTLE ROCK — The Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site in Kansas City, Mo., is a slice of Americana not to be missed.
If you’re a fan of Benton, a leader of the pre-World War II Regionalist art movement whose self-portrait once graced the cover of Time magazine, you have a ready-made reason to visit the artist’s comfortable Victorian-era home and carriage-house studio in Kansas City’s genteel Roanoke district. If you’re not a Benton aficionado, or perhaps aren’t acquainted with his work, you still may be interested to know that the furnishings of the two-and a-half-story limestone house and the belongings of the artist and his wife, Rita, have been kept virtually intact since their deaths 38 years ago. The same is true of Benton’s studio, where paint jars and coffee cans filled with paintbrushes are just as he left them.
And if you’re not a Benton fan when you start your tour, you may very well be one by the time you’re finished.
The Neosho, Mo., native died on Jan. 19, 1975, while he was putting the finishing touches on The Sources of Country Music, a 6-by-10-foot painting that had been commissioned by the Country Music Foundation in Nashville, Tenn. (The mural is currently on display in the rotunda of that city’s Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.) Rita Piacenza Benton discovered the body of her 85-year-old husband when she went to his studio to check on him. Eleven weeks later, she died, too. The Bentons had been married for almost 53 years.
The State of Missouri offers tours of the Benton historical site for a nominal fee. After an orientation in a waiting area in the former carriage house, a knowledgeable guide will take you next door to the artist’s studio.
The studio provided Benton with a quiet, well-lighted space for creating art. Steve Sitton, historic site administrator with Missouri State Parks, said that the artist added an 8-by-12-foot multi-pane window on the north wall to guarantee abundant indirect light.
In addition to tools and paints, the studio contains some of Benton’s personal items, such as his easy chair, pipes and two of his hats. Frugal as well as practical, Benton placed a piece of cardboard over an old barbecue grill to make a work table. It’s still there for visitors to see.
Also on display are preliminary sketches and maquettes, small plasticine models that the artist made to assist with the spatial organization of his paintings. Other steps in Benton’s creative process included compositional sketches with cubist shapes, color studies and cartoons in scale. He followed a week-by-week schedule for each painting.
Not only was Benton systematic in his approach to painting, he also was a stickler for accuracy. Sitton pointed out an example of the artist’s attention to detail in the reproduction of The Sources of Country Music that hangs in his studio: All five musicians in the painting are fingering the same chord.
The Bentons’ 7,800-squarefoot home is next on the tour. Built in 1903 and bought by Tom and Rita Benton in 1939 at the height of the artist’s popularity, the rambling house at 3616 Belleview Ave. is now on the National Register of Historic Places.
13 ORIGINALS
More than two dozen sculptures, paintings and lithographs, of which 13 are originals, can be found on the house’s main and upper floors. The home’s simple,neutral decor serves as a fitting backdrop for Benton’s colorful artwork.
The pieces displayed in the Benton home demonstrate the artist’s fluid, energetic style, and many of them portray everyday people, in all their imperfections, at work and play.
“One of Benton’s core beliefs was ‘common art for the common man,’” Sitton said. He also noted that the artist didn’t like the term “Regionalism,” preferring to think of himself as an American artist.
Benton’s artwork does not dominate his house; instead, it blends with its furnishings to create a homey yet expressive ambience. The feeling of intimacy is so pervasive that you almost expect to run into a Benton family member - Tom; Rita; their daughter, Jessie; or their son, Thomas Piacenza (“T.P.”) - as they go about their daily lives.
The living room’s baby grand piano testifies to the Benton family’s love of music. Rita played the guitar and sang songs from her native Italy; Jessie was also a guitarist. T.P. was a flutist who later was with the Boston Symphony, and Tom played the harmonica. Atop the piano is a three record set, titled “Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s,” that Benton and his son recorded in 1941 with the American Chamber Music Group and Frank Luther Singers. Benton provided the record set’s cover art, a lively interpretation of one of his family’s frequent musical gatherings.
ROOM BY ROOM
Other first-floor highlights are 15-year-old Jessie’s paintings of angels and saints on leaded-glass windows; two still lifes - a vase of roses and a bowl of fruit, with the actual vase and glass bowl displayed below the respective paintings; and a cart with liquor bottles (the liquids have been replaced by colored water), mixers and an ice bucket, all set for the Bentons’ many guests. Among them were Harry S. Truman, R. Buckminster Fuller, Frank Lloyd Wright and Burl Ives.
Although the kitchen is off limits on the tour, you can peek in and imagine Tom Benton drinking coffee at the dinette table and Rita bustling around in preparation for a dinner party. Be sure to take a copy of Rita’s spaghetti recipe from the display on the kitchen counter.
Directly up the stairway is Benton’s library (the artist was an avid reader, partly to ensure accuracy in his work), and tucked in a corner are his desk, chair and reading lamp. The bright, airy second floor also contains the family’s bedrooms and Rita’s sewing room and ironing alcove.
Although Rita’s work areas and other aspects of the house suggest that domestic duties consumed her energies, don’t be fooled by this circumstantial evidence. In addition to managing the bustling Benton household, Rita was Tom’s able business manager, showing and selling paintings out of their home. She had complete faith in her husband’s genius and urged him to keep laboring at his art.
The tour of the Benton state historic site takes less than an hour. By its end, said Sitton, “You get a good sense of who the Bentons were. They were fairly ordinary people.”
In particular, you’ll have a much better understanding of the memorable man who painted America as he saw it.
In case a visit to the Benton home and studio whets your appetite to see more of the artist’s work, stop by Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, home to more than 100 Benton pieces. To see a sterling example of a Benton mural, visit Missouri’s Capitol building in Jefferson City.Although A Social History of the State of Missouri was extremely controversial when it was made public in 1936, the 13-panel panoramic mural is now a source of pride for the Show-Me State.
The Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site’s winter hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The site is closed Tuesday and Wednesday. Admission is $4 for adults and $2.50 for children 6-12.
For more information, call (800) 334-6946 or visit mostateparks.com. You can also learn more about the state Capitol at the website.
Travel, Pages 48 on 02/03/2013