John Steuart Curry

(American, 1897 – 1946)

Horses

John Steuart Curry
(American, 1897 – 1946)

  • oil on canvas
    30 x 40 inches
    signed and dated lower left
    painted c. 1940

    Provenance:

    Spanierman Gallery
    Private collection, New York

    This painting relates to the - "My Friend Flicka" works done in 1940

    Curry provided the artwork for the original 1941 publication of My Friend Flicka, written by Mary O'Hara in 1941. The story recounts the experience of the McLaughlin family on their family-owned Goose Bar Ranch in Wyoming, which later became a movie. While not directly used in the book, the painting clearly served to inform some of the illustrations that Curry created.

    In 1936, Curry was appointed as the first artist-in-residence at the College of Agriculture of the University of Wisconsin, which built him a small studio. He had no classes to teach nor any specific duties; he was free to travel throughout the state and promote art in farming communities by providing personal instruction to students. The painting was produced during this period. As seen later, the experience turned Curry into a conservationist.

    Curry continued to work at the University of Wisconsin until he died of a heart attack in Madison in 1946, at the age of 48.

  • Like Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry was a major American scene painter of the 1930s. His subjects were taken from American history and his most famous mural, The Tragic Prelude (1938–40), is in Topeka at the Kansas State Capitol.

    John Steuart Curry was born on a farm in Dunavant, Kansas, in 1897. He studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design in 1916, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago from 1916 to 1918, and Geneva College from 1918 to 1919. His first solo exhibition was at the Whitney Studio Club in New York City in 1930.

    The artist died in 1946 while serving as artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, a position he had held for ten years.