Thomas Craven

American writer and art critic Thomas Craven was born in 1888 in Salina, KS. Educated at the University of Kansas and Wesleyan University (from which he graduated with a B.A. in 1908), he worked for a time as a reporter and a night clerk at a railroad station, then traveled to Paris, France, He wrote poetry and studied art, but couldn't make a living as a painter. He eventually returned to the US and settled in New York City's Greenwich Village, a bohemian enclave of writers, artists, poets and other artistic types, and roomed with painter Thomas Hart Benton. He joined the US Navy in World War I, serving as a second-class seaman. After leaving the service, he eventually secured a job in the arts, but as a critic, not a painter. He gained a reputation as an insightful and incisive critic, although somewhat blunt and pointed (he has been called the H.L. Mencken of the art world) and wrote several books and lectured on art criticism. In 1923 he married English writer Aileen Saint John-Brennon. They settled in Great Neck, Long Island, NY, and had one son, but they divorced in 1947. Thomas Craven died in Boston, MA, in 1969.