Margot Peet

Marguerite Munger Peet (1903–1995) was an American painter. She did not have a far-reaching artistic reputation during her lifetime as she did not often exhibit her work in public. Her family found over 430 of her paintings after her death, and she has been the subject of three major retrospectives in the last 15 years. Her most significant work was created under the tutelage of famed American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton.

Margot Peet was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1903, and grew up in a prosperous merchant family that encouraged her interest in art. Her father, Williston Penfield Munger, was the owner of a local wholesale dry goods company. She attended The Barstow School, an exclusive school for girls in Kansas City. After graduation she attended Emma B. Hopkins French finishing school in New York City, where she received her first formal art training.

Margot Munger returned to Kansas City in 1922, and in 1924, she married Herbert O. Peet, a Princeton graduate whose family owned Peet Brothers' Company, the largest soap company west of the Mississippi River. The couple had two daughters, Marguerite, born in 1925, and Jeannette in 1931.

At 18 years old, the young Margot Munger was sent to the Miss Emma B. Hopkin's school, also known as the French House, a finishing school in New York City, despite having dreams of attending Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was at this time that she also received her first formal artistic training. She took portraiture lessons with Clinton Peters of Baltimore, who held classes in a New York studio on Broadway.

Peet began later intermittent studies at the Kansas City Art Institute in the 1920s. Her maternal aunt, Ruth Harris Bohan, was an accomplished oil painter who became an early role model. In the fall of 1935, when she was married with two small children at home, Peet enrolled in painting classes taught by the famous Regionalist painter, Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Institute. Under Benton's guidance, she produced her first multi-figural compositions, her first genre scenes, and her first paintings in egg tempera, a quick-drying medium using egg yolk as the binder. Benton painted in class alongside his students who produced "versions" of his subjects from slightly different angles. In 1939, Margot Peet painted a small version of Benton's iconic allegorical nude, Persephone, which is now one of the highlights of the American painting collection at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City. Her painting Do Unto Others is a version of Benton's well-known work, Instruction, which he painted as part of an Art Institute class in 1940. Peet's work produced during this period is now viewed as her best. Benton selected a still life painting by Peet for an exhibition of his students' work that was held at the Associated American Artists Gallery in New York City. For the remainder of her life, she continued to paint garden still lifes, flower pieces and portraits.

In 1993, some of Peet's paintings were featured in the exhibit, Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton, at The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art in St. Joseph, Missouri. Since her death in 1995 and the subsequent discovery of many unknown paintings, she has been the subject of two major retrospectives: With Grace & Wit: The Paintings of Margot Peet, 1903-1995 at the Johnson County Museum of History in 1999, and Margot Munger Peet, 1903-1995, The Barstow School Exhibit, in 2004. A full length art historical biography of Peet, Discovering Margot Peet: The Artist and the Art World of Kansas City was published in 2010.

Peet was involved with multiple organizations in the Kansas City area, including the Westport Garden Club, an investment club, The Beautification Committee for Mission Hills, the Jewel Ball, and Planned Parenthood. Her affiliation with Planned Parenthood Started in New York in 1916. The Peets made the first substantial gift to the organization in 1956, and she joined the board that year, continuing to serve for nearly 20 years.

Margot Peet enjoyed a rich family life as a wife and mother of two daughters, Marguerite and Jeannette. The Peets were an upper-class family with a full-time staff to assist in the running of the house and raising of the children. Art was ever present in her home and family life as she continued to create. She often could be found painting her own paper dolls for her daughters and friends to adorn with their own tabbed paper dresses. Her artistic talents extended to the kitchen, as she was described as a brilliant cook. Margot had a wide array of friends, including Ernest Hemingway, who made references to her in his work.