This page explores the notable artwork by John Steuart Curry. During Curry's lifetime he was prolific in a number of mediums, including painting, mural work, and illustrations. The page captures the most notable works, alongside many of his other works and describes their publication context.

A list begins each section talking about the works contained within that medium or genre and are sorted by date. Following each list is a discussion of the context in which that work was produced. Currently the list is incomplete and does not include images of the individual pieces of artwork because much of it is still under copyright. The references on each citation for works links to websites for the organization holding the collection, or, if not available, links to website depicting the image.

Paintings

Baptism in Kansas, 1928, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City The Old Folks (Mother and Father), 1929, oil on canvas, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH The Roadworkers Camp, 1929, oil on canvas, F.M. Hall Collection, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Storm Over Lake Otsego, 1929, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Tornado over Kansas, 1929, oil on canvas, Muskegon Museum of Art, MI State Fair, oil on canvas, 1929, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA The Medicine Man, 1931, oil on canvas, collection of William Benton, Chicago, IL The Manhunt, 1931, oil on canvas, Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, NE The Flying Cadonas, 1932, oil and tempera on panel, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City The Line Storm, 1934, oil and tempera on panel, collection of Sidney Howard, New York Kansas Cornfield, 1935, oil on canvas, Wichita Art Museum, KS Ajax, oil on canvas, 1936–37, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC Wisconsin Landscape, 1938–39, oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City Madison Landscape, 1941, oil and tempera on canvas, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, WI

Murals Westward Movement: Justice of the Plains and Law Versus Mob Rule, 1935, oil on canvas, Department of Justice, Washington, DC The Oklahoma Land Rush, April 22, 1889, and The Homestead, 1938, oil on canvas, Department of the Interior, Washington, DC Tragic Prelude and Kansas Pasture, 1937–42, oil and tempera on canvas, Kansas Statehouse, Topeka

Department of the Interior murals Curry's murals at the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building in Washington D.C. — The Homestead and The Oklahoma Land Rush — were commissioned by the Treasury Section of Painting and Sculpture. They were painted in oil and tempera on canvas between 1937 and 1939.Czestochowski 126. The two murals depict events of the time period, the Homestead Acts and the Oklahoma Land Run of 1889. Early sketches of figures and ideas are held by archives located at the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University.

The Homestead

This mural is nine foot by 19 feet eight inch. It represents a homestead with the typical features that make up its ideal of blessed peace, happiness, and potential prosperity of ensuring rural life. The Homestead features a mother and her daughter paring potatoes near a small garden for the family meal. A young son holds the fence posts while his father drives them into the ground. An older sister drives the wagon full of spikes while she also cares for the youngest child. Each member of the family is actively working and contributing its energies to the productive whole.Czestochowski 38. Near the bottom left of the mural, roosters, chicks, and chickens peck and feed near the foreground garden as bountiful reminders of their capacity to provide this frontier family with eggs.Czestochowski 39.

The Oklahoma Land Rush

two inches taller than its partner painting, this nine feet two inch by 19 feet eight inchJunker 65 mural represents another historical event from the time period. The Oklahoma Land Rush depicts the Westward Migration in the representation of that famous day—twelve o'clock noon on April 22, 1889—when the Oklahoma Territory was opened to homestead settlement and over twenty thousand prospective settlers rushed into the new land to stake their claims. Anxious but looking forward to eventual security, an 1889 pioneer mother, sunbonnet intact, is of importance to the far left foreground of Curry's westward-moving mural. Perched on a broken-down wagon, she clutches her small son while waving and calling out to her certificate-holding husband, who, astride their rearing horse, is to ride on to claim a new farm site. His hellbent competition includes a cyclist riding safety bicycle from the 1880s and an overweight, overdressed lady in a rocking chair. She rolls back in an open wagon driven frantically by her balding husband, and, if nothing else, lends comic relief to balance the anxious sincerity of the mother on the ground.

John Steuart Curry's Oklahoma Land Rush repeated an important theme of the time: history told through the actions of common people. By emphasizing the rush of figures across the land, Curry shared his concern with capturing the energy and vigor of American pioneers.

Kansas State Capital murals

One of Curry's most famous works are the murals designed for the Kansas State Capitol, in Topeka, Kansas. In June 1937, newspaper editors raised money to commission John Steuart Curry (who was the most famous artist in Kansas) to paint murals in the statehouse. Curry's design was divided into three themes: first the Settlement of Kansas, which depicted the conquistadors and the Plainsmen; second the Life of a Homesteader, which would depict John Brown; and third, Pastoral Prosperity which would include scenes of modern Kansas. Curry wanted to be free to express his own ideas regarding the murals: "I have my own ideas about telling the story of pioneers coming into Kansas. I want to paint this war with nature and I want to paint the things I feel as a native Kansan."Kendall, M. Sue. Rethinking Regionalism: John Steuart Curry and the Kansas Mural Controversy. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1986

Political controversy stalled the completion of the murals. Expensive Italian marble slabs covered the spot in the rotunda where the eight panels depicting scenes from the Life of the Kansas Homesteader were to be painted. The legislative committee refused to move them from the wall to make way for Curry's mural. However, behind the refusal were two real issues with Curry's paintings, the first being that Curry's factual details were incorrect. For instance, "they criticized the tails of his animals calling them not natural-like." In Curry's opinion, those problems could be easily fixed. However, with the next issue the committee had an even stronger objection; and that was the image of Kansan abolitionist John Brown, in front of a crowd of people and a tornado. In particular, the committee objected to the blood on John Brown's hands, the prairie fires, and tornadoes. These inclusions were thought by some to show the state in a negative light because Brown, who was executed in 1859 for treason (leading an abolitionist raid on Harpers Ferry, Virginia), was considered by some to be a traitor and a murderer. Curry tried to explain that while the blood on Brown's hands was not literal, his acts caused bloodshed, and that the tornado was a symbol of the abolitionist's passion. However, the people of Kansas saw its inclusion as a negative statement about bad weather.KSHS "Curry's Statehouse Studies" Kansas State Historical Society In his presentation to the people, Curry expressed that he wanted to get into his pictures the irony that is the Kansas people; not a soft, soppy presentation.Dennis, James M. Renegade Regionalists: The Modern Independence of Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Curry. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998. When rejected, Curry in anger left the finished murals unsigned at his death in 1946. Since Curry's death, his murals have come to be regarded as on par with similar works done by his contemporary Thomas Hart Benton.

Prints

Manhunt, 1934, lithograph, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA The Fugitive, 1935, lithograph, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan Elephants, 1936, lithograph, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA John Brown, 1939, lithograph, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan The Plainsman, 1945, lithograph, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan

Illustrations

While studying at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1917, Curry wrote home to his parents about his decision to study illustration. He noted his interest in studying with Harvey Dunn who Curry said was “making the illustrators of today." In 1920, Curry met Dunn, and while he did not become one of Dunn’s students the established artist became a mentor, helping Curry further his illustration education and career. Curry began publishing illustrations in 1921 and continued through 1926 when he took a hiatus from illustration, writing “Came to NY to be an illustrator. Was not a brilliant success. Went to Paris and learned something from M. Schoukhareff of the Russian Academy. Learned something, also, from the Louvre and have been trying since to carry out my ideas of how an American should paint."

In 1940 John Curry returned to making illustrations for books and other media, and he contributed to this field until his death in 1946. His last illustrations can be found in John Brown’s Body: A Poem by Stephen Vincent Benét, published by Limited Editions Club in 1948.

My Friend Flicka was originally written as just a short story by Mary O’Hara while she was living on a ranch in Wyoming. It was later requested by the Lippincott Publishing Company of New York that she make it into a novel. It was published in 1941 and John Steuart Curry contributed fifteen drawings for the illustrations. They were rendered in mostly ink with some pencil and conte crayon. He did one picture with watercolor for the title page of the book.

Book illustrations Cooper, James Fenimore. The Prairie. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1940. O’Hara, Mary. My Friend Flicka. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1941. Lincoln, Abraham, and Carl Van Doren. Literary Works of Abraham Lincoln. New York: Heritage Press, 1942. O’Hara, Mary. Thunderhead. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1943. Crane, Stephen. The Red Badge of Courage. New York: Heritage Press, 1944. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York: Illustrated Modern Library, 1944. Benet, Stephen Vincent. John Brown’s Body: A Poem. New York: Heritage Press, 1948.

Magazine illustrations

Curry created illustrations for: Boys' Life St. Nicholas Magazine The Country Gentleman The Saturday Evening Post

Important illustrations that are now held by art institutions include: Hoover and the Flood, 1940, oil on panel, LIFE magazine commission, Original at Morris Museum of Art, August, GA Lucky Strike print advertisements for American Tobacco Company, 1941-1947, Originals at Marianna Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan Our Good Earth, Keep It Ours, 1942, for WWII war bond posters, Originals at Marianna Beach Museum of Art, Kansas State University, Manhattan

The Country Gentleman In 1941, John Steuart Curry was commissioned by the Associated American Artists to create a painting about tobacco for an illustration in the American agricultural magazine, The Country Gentleman.Curry Family papers, S1-AAA, Series 3, correspondence

Lucky Strike ads Along with other regional artists, Curry was commissioned to create advertisements for a Lucky Strike ad campaign that spanned from 1942 to 1944. This campaign associated Luckies with the down-home, folksy look of regional art. The American Tobacco Company did not capitalize on the war or use military themes when advertising for their cigarettes.

Curry only made two Lucky Strike tobacco ads: