Investigation

1926–1935

Employed by: Art Students League of New York

1935

Leaving New York for Missouri

Having alienated both the left-leaning community of artists with his disregard for politics and the larger New York–Paris art world with what was considered his folksy style, Benton leaves the artistic debates of New York for his native Missouri. Settling in Kansas City and taking a teaching job at the Kansas City Art Institute, he gains greater access to a rapidly changing rural America; a Populist by upbringing, he sympathizes with the working class and the small farmer.

1935–1941

Employed by: Kansas City Art Institute

1937

The autobiography “An Artist in America”

Publishes his autobiography An Artist in America, which is critically acclaimed; the writer Sinclair Lewis remarks that a painter who can write is a rare thing.

10 juillet 1939

Daughter born: Jessie Benton

1939–1944

Illustrates Twain and Steinbeck

Creates illustrations for Mark Twain's “Tom Sawyer” (1939), John Steinbeck's “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940), Twain's “Huckleberry Finn” (1941) and “Life on the Mississippi” (1944).