"If nothing else," says Burns, "Thomas Hart Benton is a hell of a good story ... where he persevered as an impoverished painter for more than a decade but found his "regionalist" roots.

The egg was hurled with a will by tough, swart little Missouri Painter Thomas Hart Benton. Growled he: the average museum was “a graveyard run by a pretty boy with delicate wrists and a swing in ...