Margot Peet

Margot Peet was born in Kansas City on June 8, 1903. Peet began to paint at age seven and had two relatives who were also artists, her aunt Ruth Harris Bohan and her uncle Thomas Langrel Harris. Peet often painted with her aunt. In Kansas City, Peet attended the Barstow School, and Ruth Bohan was the art instructor there during Peet’s education. In 1921-1922, Peet attended finishing school in New York City. While there, she studied art under Dewitt Clinton Peters. In 1922, Peet began her studies at the Kansas City Art Institute, and over a period of eighteen years studied at the Art Institute intermittently under several artists, including Randall Davey, Ernest Lawson and Thomas Hart Benton.

Peet exhibited at the Midwest Artists’ Exhibition in 1927, 1936, 1937 and 1942. In 1936 her painting Culture received an Honorable Mention in the Kansas City Artists’ category.

After her marriage she lived on a 160-acre farm with her husband until 1956, when she moved to a home in Mission Hills, Kansas. There she began to make landscape paintings.

Peet was also a patron of the arts. She endowed a scholarship fund at the Kansas City Art Institute and made a bequest to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art to fund special exhibitions.

Most of her work came to light after her death. After her death in 1995, many of her works were found in storage in her home, totaling 430 paintings, watercolors and pastels.