 John Steuart Currypainter known for his realistic
depictions of rural midwestern scenes
John Steuart Curry was born in
Dunavant, Kansas, on November 14, 1897. Raised on
a farm, he developed an attachment and respect
for farm animals, as well as an understanding of
how weather conditions can affect farm life. He
also showed interest and talent in art,
especially painting. Curry studied at various art
centers across the country, including the Kansas
City Art Institute (1916), the Art Institute of
Chicago (1916-1918), and Geneva College of New
York (1918-1919). In 1926, he went to Paris,
where he spent a year studying the works of the
old masters, especially Peter
Paul Rubens, Gustave
Courbet and Honore Daumier. Soon after returning
to the United States he settled in New York City,
taught at the Art Students League and Cooper
Union, and for a brief time traveled with the
Ringling Brothers Circus.
  After a career as a magazine
illustrator, Curry worked with notable success as
both an easel and mural painter. His murals
include decorations for the buildings of the
Department of Justice and the Department of the
Interior, in Washington, D.C., and dramatic
scenes of Kansas landscape and history for the
state capitol in Topeka, Kansas. His oil
paintings are realistic depictions, primarily of
rural midwestern scenes.
With the American artists Thomas Hart
Benton and Grant Wood, whose work also dealt with rural life,
Curry contributed to the regionalist school of
American painting. Among his most notable works
(besides the public murals) are Spring Shower
(1931) and Wisconsin Landscape
(1938-1939), both in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York City; and Baptism in Kansas
(1928), The Flying Codonas (1932),
painted during his travels with a circus, The
Ne'er-Do-Well (1929), and The Stockman
(1929), all in the Whitney Museum of American
Art, New York City.
Curry was artist in residence
at the University of Wisconsin from 1936 until
his death, on August 29, 1949.
Peter
Paul Rubens
Thomas
Hart Benton
Grant
Wood
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