Tombenton19-Vetted

Polly McCann November 2011 2,216 words Larger than Life: The Story of Thomas Hart Benton, American Painter by Polly McCann Dust blew from the west into the small town of Neosho, Missouri. It was tornado season when Tom took his first breath in April of 1889. His parents, proud of their firstborn, named him after his famous great uncle-- Thomas Hart Benton, the first senator for the state of Missouri –known for trying to out-talk every politician in America. Little Tom didn’t take to talking much, he was all action.i As a boy, Tom had the energy of the speeding trains he tried to outrun as they pushed out of town. When he drew them with pencil and paper, his sketches felt nothing like those large, powerful engines. His mother’s cream wallpaper seemed a much better size. With charcoal from the fireplace, he drew thick black lines on the walls over the landing. When he finished, the drawing of the train roared up the stairway with shining headlights; its engine belching black smoke. Tom could almost hear the bells ringing and the pistons clanking. ii Tom’s mother made him erase it. Tom did all the things other boys his age did-- before the turn of the twentieth century. He liked to swim in creeks, ride horses, collect arrow heads, and hunt opossum [email protected]/ Benton/ page 1 Polly McCann November 2011 2,216 words and copperheads.iii But Tom did something his friends didn’t. He drew in a notebook he often carried with him. Because he loved to draw, Tom might stop for a long time to stare at the texture of a fencepost, a rock, a bush, or a ripple of water. Colonel Benton, as he was called, didn’t understand Tom. What kind of boy could miss catching a train while staring at the smoke from its engine? Tom must stop wasting time dawdling about with distractions, and dedicate himself to reading Latin—if he wanted to continue in the family tradition of politics.iv Tom continued to draw. Colonel Benton found a way to teach Tom the family business that agreed with both of them. At age seven, Tom’s father campaigned in a tour around the state of Missouri. Tom went with him. They traveled by train, over muddy roads in high-wheeled buggies, and buckboard and stage.v Tom joined his father at camp meeting, political rallies, and backwoods hotels. vi Colonel Benton promised if elected, he’d take the people’s concerns to Washington. He called people by name and shook hands with everyone—including Buffalo Bill. Tom did too.vii Before the new year, in 1896, Tom’s father won the election to the House of Representatives. Tom, along with his mother, brother, and sister took the train to the [email protected]/ Benton/ page 2 Polly McCann November 2011 2,216 words nation’s capital. Tom was a natural for city life. Each winter, Tom lived in the city. He went to school in a clean suit and shiny shoes. In the evenings, he liked to listen to the important people who came to talk to his father. Best of all, Tom took art lessons at the Corcoran Art Gallery, and studied the paintings there. Tom spent summers, back home in Neosho. Colonel Benton made sure that Tom had plenty of hard work to do, so he wouldn’t forget “his Missouri Values.” By the time Tom was a teenager, he was in charge of his father’s stable, his horse, and two milk cows. When Tom’s father put their cow, Bluey, out to graze she was known to pull her tether hard enough to land Colonel Benton face down in the field. Tom simply tied an extra tether to a wide tree. When Bluey went to run, she learned the hard way--Tom always won in a battle of wills.viii When Tom was seventeen, he found a summer job working for his cousin surveying for a waterworks system. The job took him all the way to Joplin. But something happened there which helped Tom avoid law school forever. A few local men heard Tom brag that he was an “artist.” They dared him to apply for the job at the local newspaper, The Joplin American.ix “Yes, we need an artist,” the editor told Tom, “but we need a good one.” “I’m your man,” said Tom. [email protected]/ Benton/ page 3 Polly McCann November 2011 2,216 words “Sonny, do you see that man behind the counter near the window?” the editor said pointing down to the drugstore across the street. “If you can make a drawing that’ll look like that man, there’s a fair chance we can give you work.” Tom got the job. When summer ended, Tom convinced his parents to let him attend college at the Chicago Art Institute. A political cartoonist wasn’t a bad job for a politician’s son. In Chicago, Tom didn’t take to drawing classes as he had hoped. Drawing with white plaster casts as models, made Tom want to run out of the room. He’d rather be in the Windy City with all the hustle and bustle of living people over statues. One weekend, Tom visited a fellow student who studied oil painting.x He just had to try it for himself. The moment Tom dipped a brush into a gob of red paint, he felt completely happy. Instantly, his ideas about a newspaper career collapsed. Tom knew he would be a painter for the rest of his life.xi Once Tom decided his future, he had to look the part. He walked to his painting classes wearing a new outfit to match his new identity: corduroy pants, black shirt, red tie, and a derby hat. This fashion didn’t go over well with his neighbors when Tom walked to class each morning. To avoid looks, Tom hid his “genius” clothes in his bag and changed at school. Soon enough, Tom began to think Chicago wasn’t the right place to study a fine art like painting. So at age nineteen, Tom sailed for Europe. In 1908, everyone knew [email protected]/ Benton/ page 4 Polly McCann November 2011 2,216 words painters belonged in Paris, France. The city was brimming with artists from the world over. Cezanne was the talk of the town when Tom arrived in Paris, but Tom admired Pissarro’s work the most. After experiencing the quality of painting by so many artists in Europe, Tom quickly saw the idea of himself as an “artistic genius” as mostly his imagination.xii Tom needed to learn how to paint! He tried several schools of art, but found himself in the beginners’ class--drawing indoors in front of plaster models. Tom would spin his wheels in class for a few days then start to roll out of class like a train out of the station. Tom needed to see things in person, so he set out to teach himself painting the same way. He studied from the paintings at the famous art museum, the Louvre. For three years, Tom painted every day. He painted en plein air, out in fresh air, or in his apartment, until he could imitate every style and color from burnt browns of the Realists, to the pastel lights of the Impressionists, to the clashing colors of the Fauves.xiii Still Tom was not satisfied. He, a young man from America, made paintings of baskets of fruit, or landscapes, which looked the same as those by men and women from other countries. Why? Shouldn’t a painting tell a story about who made it and where it was from? What would a “Tom Benton” painting look like? [email protected]/ Benton/ page 5 Polly McCann November 2011 2,216 words When Tom’s mother and sister arrived in Paris unexpectedly, they hardly recognized Tom. He wore a serge suit with his French beret and shoes. Worse, he spoke with an accent -- when he remembered English at all. His mother convinced Tom to come back to America. By 1912, Tom was twenty-three and now settled in New York City where he loved to paint city life with its skyscrapers, cranes, and machines with large engines. Tom still searched for his own style, but he also needed money to live on. For five years, he found work making movie posters, advertisements—any kind of work an artist could find to do. In 1918, when Tom was drafted into the military for the First World War, Tom visited a friend of his father’s to ask for papers to get into the Navy.xiv Soon Tom found himself serving as an architectural draftsman at the Norfolk Naval Base in Virginia. Three square meals a day and a clean cot to sleep in were a nice change for a starving city artist. It was here at the base, on a dusty shelf, that Tom found something that changed his life forever—a book of American history. Tom was fascinated. He couldn’t stop reading. Now he knew what he wanted. He would paint about America and tell her story. After the war, at thirty-three, Tom married Rita, a beautiful art student he’d met while teaching sculpture classes in Chelsea. She first caught his eye wearing a red hat— and soon invited him to her family’s home each Sunday for an Italian feast. Tom couldn’t speak Italian, but he liked to eat.

Load more