John Steuart Curry

THE GALLERY SEEKS WORK BY JOHN STEUART CURRY

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BORN: November 14, 1897 in Dunavant, Kansas

DIED: Aug. 29, 1946 in Madison Wisconsin

John Steuart Curry recognized as the youngest member of the famed "Benton-Wood-Curry trio" of Regional Painters of the early 20th-century American Scene movement. 

The first born of five children, Curry said of his childhood: "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." 

From a young age, he was constantly drawing, an activity encouraged by his mother, who arranged art lessons for him from age 12.  She also gave him his first glimpse of the Old Master painters through reproductions of their work she had collected on her honeymoon. 

Not very studious, Curry quit the county high school in Winchester, Kansas and spent that summer as a railroad section-hand. His earnings provided him with enough money to buy a suit of clothes so that he could go to Kansas City and attend the Art Institute. A month later he moved to the Art Institute of Chicago, and remained there for two years, supporting himself by sweeping floors and acting as a bus-boy in the cafeteria. Upon America's declaration of war, Curry went to training camp, only to be sent home when it was discovered that he was still under age.  In 1918 he enrolled at Geneva College, played football for two seasons, and spent the following five years training to earn his money as an illustrator of "blood-and-thunder" scenes for a popular western story magazine.  In this capacity, he worked for illustrator Harvey Dunn in New Jersey from 1919 to 1926.  He married and then persuaded art patron Seward Prosser to loan him $1000. 00,, which he used for one year of study in Paris in 1927. 

The year in Europe, which included study at the Academy Julian, reinforced his independent nature.  He was much more impressed by the paintings of Rembrandt and Rubens than by the modernist American painters, many whom were adopting the 'isms' of abstract styles of French contemporary artists such as Pablo Picasso's Cubism and Max Ernst's Surrealism.  Curry determined to paint American subjects without European models and to celebrate American patriotism and regional pride rather than lofty, remote ideals espoused by the academics. 

He returned to America penniless, and settling in Westport, Connecticut, swore that he would turn out a worthwhile picture or give up painting entirely.  There in 1928 from memory he painted his first picture that became famous, Baptism in Kansas.  Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney bought it for her museum and subsidized him for two years at $50 a week.

He gained national reputation for his Kansas rural scenes of people terrorized by natural phenomena such as tornadoes, drab farm-house living conditions, religious gatherings such as prayer meeting and baptisms, and spirited animals who got out of control. 

He was especially focused on people who were down-to-earth, plain spoken and who were self reliantly making a living through hard physical labor challenged by harsh weather.  In many of his paintings, he showed his disdain for racial discrimination and hatred, something he believed was psychologically poisonous.  He did many murals dealing with land settlement and these themes of racial justice, and his, reflecting these themes, murals are in the Capitol Building in Kansas, the University of Wisconsin, Department of the Interior, and Department of Justice in Washington D.C.

Baptism in Kansas was heralded nationally as work of a new American genre, but fellow Kansans were not impressed until much later when they realized the scope of his recognition.  Purchased by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, one of his key benefactors, Baptism launched his career as a regionalist.  In 1930, he had his first one-man exhibition, held at the Whitney Studio Club, and was received enthusiastically by critics.

Although he lived primarily in the East, he returned often to Kansas where he stayed at his parents' farm and sketched rural-life scenes.  His first wife died, and he gave up his studio in Westport, and secluded himself in a drab New York City studio. He taught at the Cooper Union and the Art Students' League, and held a show of circus studies after touring New England with Ringling Bros.-Barnum & Bailey Circus.  This tour and the resulting circus sketches and watercolors were inspired from his attendance in Kansas at many rural county fairs. Reportedly the circus people said they liked Curry but "quibbled over minor technical errors in his series of circus paintings."

In 1934 he married Kathleen Shepard, returned to Westport, recovered his old enthusiasm, and painted one of his most famous paintings, Line Storm.  Westport beginning to appreciate him, commissioned him to do a double mural for the local high school.  Additionally, the United States government selected him to paint murals for the Department of Justice and the Department of Interior buildings in Washington, D.C. 

In 1936, he was appointed the first artist-in-Residence at University of Wisconsin- Madison. At $4,000 a year he had his studio on the campus, where he could mingle with students, but he conducted no formal classes. His main responsibilities were to travel rural Wisconsin and promote the visual arts, and the Wisconsin Rural Art Program (WRAP). One of his notable students who he later encouraged to attend school in Madison was Lois Zwettler Ireland.

Curry painted many murals in Kansas, Wisconsin and Washington's Goverment buildings (although Kansas long neglected its native sun during his life). His work hangs in the Metropolitan Museum and he ranks with top United States artists. He has shown in the Whitney Museum of American Art and in the Chicago Art Institute. His Student assistants at UW Madison included Robert Overton Hodgell and William Ashby McCloy who both went on to have notable artistic careers.

Curry also traveled occasionally to Arizona where he visited his parents who had a second home there and spent their winters. 
Curry always tried to instill "community appreciation of art" wherever he went.  

He died unexpectedly in Madison, Wisconsin in 1946 at a very early age of 48. His assistant Robert Hodgel completed many of the remaining unfinished morals.

Sources:
AskArt.com

The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Art, edited by Harold Osborne 
Life Magazine (date unknown)
Art in America, July, August 1976
Blake Benton Fine Art
Vivian Kiechel Fine Art
Bill North, Senior Curator, The Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art