Thomas Hart Benton: Missouri State Capitol

How Thomas Hart Benton worked with the door frames

"The Indiana mural had publicly reestablished my ties with the Midwest, and a number of my Missouri friends began thinking of ways to set up a Benton mural project for our home state. A bill was passed by the Missouri legislature in the spring of 1934, commissioning a mural for the Capitol in Jefferson City. Shortly after this I received an invitation to take over the painting and drawing classes at the Kansas City Art Institute, and with the assurance that my duties there would not be allowed to interfere with work on the mural project, I moved to Kansas City and established my home there.

The mural space offered was made up of three walls, one fifty feet long and two of twenty-five feet. The height of the space was sixteen feet. Each wall was cut by a very prominent door, which created designing problems. Whatever I did had to be adjusted to them. After approximately placing the subject sequences in a drawing, I constructed a plastilene model of the whole mural space, setting the doors on the first plane of the design. The actions of the figures also began on this plane but moved back to planes further in the rear. In order to attach the frames of the doors to the design of the mural and keep them from standing out too much, I continued them illusionarily into the mural space, imitating their color and texture in the final painting. In this way I also produced architectural frames for my representations of Missouri legends Jesse James, Frankie and Johnny, and Huck Finn, since because of their mythical character, I did not want to introduce them into the main part of the mural.

My contractual deadline was January, 1937, but I finished the work in December of '36. As usual, the 'Social History of Missouri' raised a storm of criticism, this time from good old hidebound, middle-class Missouri conservatives who saw its 'common life' representations as an insult to the State. However, the mural is still in the State Capitol and has grown so respectable that school children from all over Missouri are now bussed to see it."

To be continued

(Excerpts are from "An American in Art: A Professional and Technical Autobiography" by Thomas Hart Benton.)