John Steuart Curry
Tornado over Kansas
In the late 1930's, Life magazine commissioned a series of contemporary paintings and presented them as it's "Pageant of America", making the magazine a significant force in the development of the appreciation of art in America. In 1939, Life made the beautiful full-color plates available to be published in a single volume, which heralded the coming-of-age of art in the New World.
This plate, not a modern reproduction, was rescued from a 1940 reprint of that publication.
The original work, painted in 1929, was oil on canvas, and measured 48" X 63". It represents man's elemental terror of nature, expressed in the artist's own boyhood fears and emotions. As in many of Curry's works, a great deal of life is organized into a compact composition.
Excellent condition, on smooth, medium-weight paper.
White margins all around, very lightly & evenly toned from age.
Highly suitable for framing!
plate size: 13 X 10 3/8 inches
(may be cropped closer to frame)
printed area: 7 X 9 1/16 inches
Caption underneath: "Tornado over Kansas--JOHN STEUART CURRY"
The left edge is a little rough where it was removed from the binding.
There is a faint bluish smudge at left edge in the white margin, and some faint smudging in the bottom margin, both would be covered upon framing.
Back side has other Curry images, but nothing shows through.
Painter of rural American life, Kansas-born John Steuart Curry (1897-1946) was descendant of many generations of farmers. "I was raised on hard work and the shorter catechism. Up at four o'clock the year round, doing half a day's work before we rode to town on horseback to our lessons." As a child and on the farm he drew pictures of animals, windstorms and catastrophes of the plains about him, and they remained his favorite subjects. He left high school to enroll at the Art Institute in Kansas City, after a month, moved on to the Art Institute of Chicago. Two years later he tried to join the war but was sent home when he was discovered under age. For 5 years he tried to earn a living as an illustrator for western story magazines, then spent a year in Paris only to return penniless. He settled in Connecticut, and swore that he would turn out a worthwhile picture or give up painting. From memory, he painted this, his first famous picture, Baptism in Kansas. Slowly, over years, be became appreciated. The U.S. Government selected him to paint murals for the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior Buildings in Washington, D.C. Finally, his native Kansas commissioned Curry to do a series of murals for it's state capitol.
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