Arguably the most influential and well known artist of the Regionalist movement, Thomas Hart Benton created naturalistic, undulating paintings and prints that captured the mood of Depression-era America. Born in Neosho, Missouri in 1889, Benton was the great-nephew of the American senator after whom he was named. After spending a year at the Art Institute of Chicago, he moved to Paris to study at the Académie Julian where he worked closely with Stanton Macdonald-Wright, a founder of Sychromism. During WWI, Benton documented the daily happenings of the Naval shipyards of Norfolk, Virginia, an assignment that influenced the rest of his career. Upon returning to civilian life, he developed the naturalistic and representational approach that combined social realism of the hard-hit Midwest and the narratives of American folklore and bible stories that was later called Regionalism. He continued to make prints and paintings in this style until his death in 1975.