01 Work, The Art of War, John Steuart Curry's Parade to War, Allegory, with footnotes

John Steuart Curry (American, 1897 – 1946)

Parade to War, Allegory, c. 1938

Oil on canvas

47 13/16 x 63 13/16 in.

Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens

Painted in the years between the Great Depression and World War II, Parade to War, Allegory reflects many Americans’ apprehension about joining the looming conflict. John Steuart Curry transformed a celebratory parade into a gruesome scene, where young soldiers morph into skeletons. Beneath the streamers and waving flags, Curry portrays conflicting emotions. In the center of the canvas, a young woman in a white dress and two small boys seem unaware of the impending peril, while two women in the foreground are distraught and overcome with grief. More on this painting

John Steuart Curry (November 14, 1897 – August 29, 1946) was an American painter whose career spanned the years from 1924 until his death. He was noted for his paintings depicting rural life in his home state, Kansas. Along with Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, he was hailed as one of the three great painters of American Regionalism of the first half of the twentieth century. Curry's artistic production was varied, including paintings, book illustrations, prints, and posters.

Curry was Kansas's best-known painter, but his works were not popular with Kansans, who felt that he did not portray the state positively. Curry's paintings often depicted farm life and animals, tornadoes, prairie fires, and the violent Bleeding Kansas period (featuring abolitionist John Brown, who at the time was derided as a fanatical traitor) – subjects that Kansans did not want to be representative of the state. Curry was commissioned to create murals for the Kansas State Capitol, and he completed two: Kansas Pastoral, and his most famous and controversial work, Tragic Prelude, which he considered his greatest. Reaction was so negative that the Kansas Legislature passed a measure to keep them, or future works of his, from being hung on the capitol walls. As a result, Curry did not sign the works, which were not hung during his lifetime. He left Topeka in disgust; his planned eight smaller murals for the Capitol rotunda on the first floor never went beyond sketches, now held by the Kansas Museum of History.

Curry's works were painted with movement, which was conveyed by the free brush work and energized forms that characterized his style. His control over brushstrokes created excited emotions such as fear and despair in his paintings. His fellow Regionalists, who also painted action and movement, influenced Curry's style. More on John Steuart Curry

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