02-03-2025
An iconic Chiefs win inspired a famous artist's painting. Its whereabouts are a mystery
Fifty years after Thomas Hart Benton suffered a heart attack and died at age 85 while working in his Belleview Avenue studio, his legacy still resonates as one of the most significant American artists of the 20th Century.
Some of his most celebrated works are prominent from the state capitol in Jefferson City to the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum in Independence; from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City to the Smithsonian America Art Museum in Washington, D.C.
And then some, particularly around what 90 years ago became his adoptive hometown of Kansas City.
But because it's nearly a century since Benton was propelled into fame in 1934 when his self-portrait was featured on the cover of Time magazine and since he rarely ventured into the sports realm, an anomalous creation late in life — and the fascinating way it came to be — has remained relatively obscure through the years.
When the Chiefs in February returned to New Orleans for a Super Bowl for the first time since winning Super Bowl IV there in 1970, they evoked the scene that inspired Benton's 'Forward Pass' painting and seven accompanying sculptures focusing on Len Dawson under duress about to throw a pass.
If you haven't heard much about it over the decades, it's also because the whereabouts of the painting are a mystery. At least publicly.
When it was unveiled at the Kansas City Club on the eve of Benton's 83rd birthday in April 1972 with one of the bronzes, Benton told The Star he planned to sell the sculpture.
As for the painting, he said, 'I'll put it in storage.'
So … where did it end up?
Most likely as an undisclosed part of a private collection, it seems.
The Thomas Hart Benton Home & Studio State Historic Site was unsure and referred questions to the Benton Trust via the official Thomas Hart Benton website, which did not respond Thursday or Friday to an emailed request to clarify where it is.
Which leaves us with a trail apparently gone cold.
After Benton's death in January 1975, the Columbia Daily Tribune wrote, 157 of his works were added to the existing collection of his art at The State Historical Society of Missouri in Columbia.
But it's not there, curator of art collections Joan Stack said via email, adding, 'I wish we did!'
At a glance online, it appeared it may be at the Wichita Art Museum — especially since the website said 'image restricted by copyright holder.'
Alas ...
'Wish we did, but we don't,' said the museum's Kirk Eck, noting it was an original lithograph.
Down another avenue, upon Benton's death several thousand of his works were under the trust for which he'd appointed UMB Bank as co-trustee and co-executor. And according to Stack, Creekmore Fath, the author of 'The Lithographs of Thomas Hart Benton,' said it was part of Benton's estate when he died.
But even that route is a labyrinth. Because in a sensational twist, Benton's heirs in 2019 sued UMB seeking $85 million, alleging, among other things, that it had lost more than 100 pieces of his art.
In a 59-page judgment last year, Jackson County Circuit Court Judge Mark Styles Jr. concluded that the bank had not breached its fiduciary duty and that only five works were unaccounted for. Those, he added, were not paintings but 'likely sketches or studies' of a value estimated to be $35,000 — the amount he awarded the heirs.
Meanwhile, Benton's grandson, Anthony Benton Gude, told The Star that to the best of his knowledge 'Forward Pass' had never been held by the trust and said he thought it had been sold before his grandfather died.
'I do believe it's in Kansas City somewhere,' said Gude, who recalled his grandfather's enthusiasm both for the work and the Chiefs.
Wherever it might be, it figures to have immense value. In 2017, a study (basically a near-final rendering, in this case with some subtle differences in detail) for 'Forward Pass' realized a price of $588,500 through Christie's.
Although 'Forward Pass' was pegged to Super Bowl IV, it actually was a composite.
Because while the arrowhead logo on his helmet and red No. 16 jersey distinguish Dawson and other jersey numbers suggest receiver Otis Taylor and offensive lineman Mo Moorman and Dave Hill, the background appears more like old Municipal Stadium than that Super Bowl site of Tulane Stadium. And the opponent's colors (including blue helmets) and jersey numbers don't align with those Vikings.
Moreover, despite the fact he became what might be considered the team's first celebrity fan — one whose office to this day still features an old Chiefs seat cushion — Benton once told The Star he would seek to avoid making any painting or sculpting 'too readily identifiable' so as to enable selling copies 'without the stamp of partisanship.'
So 'Forward Pass' basically was 'in honor of Super Bowl IV …' Steve Sitton, the outgoing historic site administrator at the Thomas Hart Benton Home & Studio said days before the Chiefs lost Super Bowl LIX 40-22 to the Eagles. 'I don't think it was supposed to depict' the game.
While Benton indeed was at Super Bowl IV with the team, then-Chiefs coach Hank Stram's son Dale told me, the painting and sculpture largely were derived from sketches on the sidelines of Chiefs practices and games over a roughly three-year period first mentioned in The Star in November 1969.
'From a distance, the diminutive, slightly stooped figure with a silver-topped cane along the sidelines during yesterday's player warmup at the Chiefs-San Diego game looked totally out of place, yet at the same time vaguely familiar,' The Star wrote.
His 'remarkably twinkling eyes,' the story continued, were focused 'on the explosion of power triggered by the snap of the ball. … He absorbed the thud of shoulder pads, the crunch of helmets, the grunts of exertion, the groans and curses of disappointment and pain.'
What compelled Benton the most and what he'd seek to bring to life was what he called 'the magic moment (of) the second the ball is released for a pass while the blitz is on' — something he soon began painstakingly working toward.
'It will be wonderful if I can capture this,' he said that day. 'Being down here on the field has opened up a whole new dimension on the game. Now, I can really appreciate the action of football.'
The very endeavor was an improbable, even seemingly incongruent, foray into Benton trying to animate football.
Not that he disdained the game.
The 5-foot-3 Benton, born in Neosho, Missouri, said over the years that he had played in high school and even at the semipro level.
Before his fame, he chose boxing and wrestling as subjects because he could get immersed in the dynamics up close. For that matter, he was such an avid sportsman that at age 81 in 1970 he was the subject of a Sports Illustrated story headlined 'The Old Man and The River.'
But he had avoided portraying football in the work, he told Sports Illustrated in 1969, because it was so hard to see the 'men in armor' under the helmets and behind the facemasks.
All that began to change through his friendship with civic leader Dutton Brookfield, then the chairman of the Jackson County Sports Complex.
As Benton wrote in a lithograph edition kept at the home, 'I have an overgrown crony in Kansas City named Dutt who is a football fan with a box at the Kansas City football stadium. He is six foot seven inches tall and therefore a real matching companion …
'One October afternoon, he took me to see the Kansas City Chiefs play. I had never seen a pro football game, and I was fascinated with the spectacle and with the game itself.'
That soon led to a relationship with Stram, who invited him to be on the sideline for practices and games that included the Super Bowl
(If only some of the exchanges between Benton and the equally fascinating Stram had been mic'd up along the way — as Stram was for that Super Bowl.)
Even from afar at first, Benton told The Star, the 'color and spectacle (of football) knocked me out.'
As it happened, at times that was almost literally the closer he got.
At one practice, 'Pro!' magazine wrote in 1971, Benton was concentrating so intently on interior line action that a stray punt hit him in the head.
'No damage,' the story reported. 'He said he had a firm grip on the pencil.'
Consumed with movement as he was, informed by a lifetime of trusting his eyes and sketches more than cameras, Benton also had a firm notion of how he'd go about his venture into the gridiron — a process that also was reflected in his 1970 sculpture 'Contact.'
As Sitton last month looked at that piece featuring a ball carrier and would-be tackler about to collide, he considered how well Benton knew art history and art theory.
The scene in 'Contact,' he said, 'is actually intentionally almost a copy of a battle scene off (a centuries-old) Etruscan vase.'
Just add, say, spears and shields, he continued, and it's an ancient battle scene Benton 'repurposes' as football.
No doubt the same could be said for the underpinnings of 'Forward Pass.'
The Etruscan influence on Benton, Pro! wrote, was such that 'he could deliver a lecture about it.'
'It's sufficient here,' that story added, 'to say that he tried to make his figures move — or seem to be caught in mid-action.'
With Benton inspired by the notion that 'a curved line produces more action than a straight line,' as he put to the magazine, he began to convert his sketches into maquettes (scale models for sculptures) and molds whose dismembered remnants can still be found in the studio.
By way of example, Sitton sorted through a box and said, 'there's the arm.'
Along the way, Benton also used live models in his studio to try to further harness the energy and imagery as he created the sculptures that also became the basis for lithographs en route to the painting.
A painting few know about and fewer have seen — but that speaks to another aspect of a still-thriving legacy all these years later.
