McKinley was born Barbara Hazel Guggenheim on April 30, 1903, in
New York City to
Benjamin Guggenheim and Fleurette (Seligman) Guggenheim. The marriage united two wealthy German-Jewish families. Born into the well-known
Guggenheim family she grew up in New York, alongside her sisters Benita Guggenheim and
Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim who would become the influential gallery proprietor, art collector, museum founder, and midwife to the
Abstract Expressionism art movement. McKinley studied at
Washington Square College,
New York University. In 1921, as an 18-year-old debutante, McKinley married banker
Sigmund Marshall Kempner. She divorced Kempner a year later, and moved to
Paris where she married journalist Milton S. Waldman in 1923. They had two sons, Terrence and Benjamin. During a visit to New York in 1928, Terrence and Benjamin both fell to their deaths from the rooftop of an apartment block. Speculation about the details of this tragic incident was largely kept hidden from the public by the Guggenheim family. At the time, McKinley was visiting her cousin who lived in the penthouse apartment. The fall was believed to be accidental, although McKinley "was unable to tell a coherent story of what happened". Two police investigations came to the conclusion that the deaths were accidental. However, within their social circle it was thought that she pushed the boys off the roof due to her deteriorating marriage. Two years after the death of their sons, McKinley and Waldman divorced. The mystery surrounding her sons' deaths left McKinley permanently stigmatized. In 1931, McKinley married the Englishman Denys King-Farlow. They settled in
Sussex, UK, and had two children, John King-Farlow, who became a philosopher and poet, and Barbara Benita King-Farlow, who became an artist in her own right. After McKinley and King-Farlow divorced, the children lived with McKinley in the United States, before a custody fight was won by their father, King-Farlow, and the children moved back to England. While her marriage to King-Farlow did not last, McKinley continued to use his last name when signing her paintings. McKinley next married Charles (Chuck) Everett McKinley Jr on August 13, 1940. He was an artist and USAAF pilot. Chuck McKinley died in 1942 in a plane crash in a farmer's field in Missouri during stormy weather while moving planes for military training purposes. McKinley used the last name McKinley on all of her subsequent work until the end of her life, but went on to marry at least three times more. On October 1, 1943, McKinley married Army Corporal Larry Leonard in Denver, a former actor and athletic instructor. The wedding was announced in newspapers across the country, and much was made of the fact that the bride was 40 and the groom a 28-year-old and that the bride was marrying down in rank, with previous husbands being a major and a lieutenant. Her next marriage was recorded by a certificate of marriage in the Commonwealth of Virginia where the Hazel G. McKinley, age 49, married F. Keith Cole, age 28, listed as a T.V. projectionist, on July 7, 1952. In later newspaper accounts, she was listed as Mrs. Hazel Hayes, but details of this marriage are unknown. In the late 1950s, McKinley moved back to Europe for a while, before returning to the United States in 1969. She lived in New Orleans until her death in 1995. On her death, her only living son, John King-Farlow, wrote a poem in his mother's honor, entitled "Eulogy For My Mother (Hazel Guggenheim McKinley, Artist)." Hazel died on June 10, 1995, and her two remaining children scattered her ashes on the
Mississippi River. == Painting and collecting career ==