Detours: Artist’s Missouri home a true original

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Thomas Hart Benton's home studio looks much as it did when the artist lived here. | Dave Hoekstra~Sun-Times

IF YOU GO

THOMAS HART BENTON HOME AND STUDIO: 3616 Belleview in Kansas City, Mo. Open from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Monday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday; 11 a.m.- 4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $4 for adults, $2.50 ages 6-12; kids age 5 and under free; (816) 931-5722.

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Updated: May 6, 2011 4:45AM

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — America’s byways are well illustrated by words. William Least Heat-Moon, Ernie Pyle and Sam Shepard are my favorite road writers. They saw writing as a fluid motion.

I feel I’m going somewhere when I’m reading their stuff and writing my stuff.

Painting seems to require more patience.

Plenty of photographers have set up shop under the neon signs of Route 66, but not as many painters take their brushes to endless sunsets in dim motels.

Thomas Hart Benton (1889-1975) is my favorite road painter. He had a muscular, rhythmic flow to his work, like swerves down a highway.

Benton was from here. He also sketched rivers in his beloved Ozarks and illustrated limited editions of Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi (1944) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1941). He wrote a superb autobiography, An Artist in America (University of Missouri Press), which I brought along on my road trip to Kansas City.

Benton dropped dead of a heart attack in his Kansas City studio while working on the large-scale painting “The Sources of Country Music,” which hangs in the hallway of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville. Country music is good road music.

The Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio historic site is an amazing stop. The four-bedroom house is in a residential neighborhood not far from the 39th Street shopping strip and Zebedee’s RPM (816-960-6900, zebedeesrpm.com), where I picked up a vinyl copy of Colonel Sanders’ “Tijuana Picnic” for $6.

The house remains as it was when Benton died. You can wander through the living room and look at the books in his library. Here are some titles I found while snooping around: A Field Guide to Mexican Birds, Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People and John Steinbeck’s last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent. Original bottles of liquor (fluids have been replaced) stand on a party cart in the dining room. It was in this house, over a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, that Cowboy singer Tex Ritter (father of the late actor John) asked Benton to do the country music mural.

The home contained an assortment of Benton’s artwork, including three tabletop bronze sculptures. Folks visited to buy artwork and cut their deals with Benton’s wife, Rita. The sculptures that remain today are original. About half of the 26 Benton lithographs and paintings are original.

Benton, a frugal Midwesterner, converted half of his backyard stable into his studio. Old coffee cans were recycled for his paint brushes. He propped cardboard atop a discarded barbecue grill to make a work table.

Benton could read French and Italian. He did not trust translation. His wife of 52 years was Italian-born.

Benton was born in Neosho, Mo. He moved to Kansas City in 1935 after studying at the Art Institute of Chicago (he lived on the South Side), serving in the Navy and teaching in New York City. Benton bought the house in midtown Kansas City in 1939 and lived there until his death. The limestone house with cedar shingles was built in 1903.

“It’s rare to have things preserved like this,” said Steve Sitton, administrator of the historic site. The state of Missouri bought the home in 1977. “A lot of times, you go to a historic house and it’s, ‘This chair belonged to the family,’ but here it is the dishes, clothes, carpets and all of it.”

The Bentons had two children. Daughter Jessie is 71 and lives on the West Coast. She studied art and played acoustic guitar. When she was 15, she painted angels and saints on two leaded-glass windows in the house, a gentle touch that still can be seen today. The Bentons’ son, T.P. (Thomas Piacenza), died last Valentine’s Day at the age of 83.

A piano in the home’s living room features a copy of the 1941 three-record set “Saturday Night at Tom Benton’s” with the American Chamber Music Group and Frank Luther Singers. Benton played harmonica and T.P. chipped in on flute. In a whimsical note, the gift shop at the house sells souvenir harmonicas.

At age 83, Benton was planning his annual canoe trip to his beloved Ozarks.

“His doctor told him he shouldn’t go and that he should take it easy,” Sitton said. “Tom went on the trip and made his doctor go with him.”

Benton painted with wanderlust soul. His work is worth a road trip.