Thomas Hart Benton was born in Neosho, Missouri, the son of a United States congressman. Showing an aptitude for drawing at a young age led him to attend classes at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1907 when he was eighteen years of age. His desire to then become a painter led him to Paris, where he spent five years observing new trends, familiarizing himself especially with Picasso and Cubism. Upon his return to the United States in 1912, he became a devotee of the painting movement called “synchronism” (Synchronism --"with colour and sound"--was a non-objective mode of painting featuring intersecting planes. Similar to that of Cubism)

Though Benton’s work continued to be influenced by synchronism, he continually struggled with non-objectivity and realism in his painting. Benton spent two years in the Navy (from 1918-1919) and he stated that it was there that he finally realized which direction he needed to take his art. He began immediately to set a course toward an art devoted entirely to American subjects treated in a realistic manner, devoid of traces of any European avant-garde trends. Between 1919 and 1924 Benton made studies for his projected series of murals based on American history. From 1924 to about 1931 he traveled through the Midwest and the Southern States, taking close note of the people he met and incorporated these observations in his paintings.

Benton's murals generally show his overwhelming concern for the arrangement of figures and design, as in his paintings done in 1931 for New York City's New School for Social Research. In the New York murals a rhythmic movement sweeps through scenes of ordinary Americans shown purposefully at various activities--eating, dancing, or working. Benton's energetic, turbulent style is intended to suggest the vigour of the American people.

Benton produced a large number of murals depicting Americans in scenes of mining, farming, and lumbering. He also painted scenes of burlesque houses, boxing, and rodeo themes. Benton believed that art should be available to the general public (hence the large mural series). He planned a pictorial history of the United States in 64 panels, a project that unfortunately he never completed.

Benton continued to paint on a daily basis and was productive well into his 80s. His portrait of Harry Truman, completed shortly before Truman's death, elicited this compliment from the equally earthy former president: "the best damned painter in America." Benton died in his studio on January 19, 1975, at the age of 85.