Remastered Art John Brown Study For The Kansas Mural by John Steuart Curry 20220519

by John Steuart Curry

Title

Remastered Art John Brown Study For The Kansas Mural by John Steuart Curry 20220519

Artist

John Steuart Curry

Medium

Painting - Remastered Art

Description

Remastered Art John Brown Study For The Kansas Mural by John Steuart Curry 20220519

John Brown (May 9, 1800 - December 2, 1859) was an American abolitionist leader. First reaching national prominence for his radical abolitionism and fighting in Bleeding Kansas, he was eventually captured and executed for a failed incitement of a slave rebellion at Harpers Ferry preceding the American Civil War. A man of strong religious convictions, Brown believed he was "an instrument of God",  raised up to strike the death blow to American slavery, a "sacred obligation". Brown was the leading exponent of violence in the American abolitionist movement:  he believed that violence was necessary to end American slavery, since decades of peaceful efforts had failed. Brown said repeatedly that in working to free the enslaved he was following the Golden Rule, as well as the U.S. Declaration of Independence, which states that "all men are created equal". He also stated often that in his view, these two principles "meant the same thing". Brown first gained national attention when he led anti-slavery volunteers and his own sons during the Bleeding Kansas crisis of the late 1850s, a state-level civil war over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state or a free state. He was dissatisfied with abolitionist pacifism, saying of pacifists, "These men are all talk. What we need is action - action!". In May 1856, Brown and his sons killed five supporters of slavery in the Pottawatomie massacre, a response to the sacking of Lawrence by pro-slavery forces. Brown then commanded anti-slavery forces at the Battle of Black Jack and the Battle of Osawatomie. In October 1859, Brown led a raid on the federal armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia (today West Virginia), intending to start a slave liberation movement that would spread south; he had prepared a Provisional Constitution for the revised, slavery-free United States he hoped to bring about. He seized the armory, but seven people were killed, and ten or more were injured. Brown intended to arm slaves with weapons from the armory, but only a few slaves joined his revolt. Those of Brown's men who had not fled were killed or captured by local militia and U.S. Marines, the latter led by Robert E. Lee. Brown was tried for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia, the murder of five men, and inciting a slave insurrection. He was found guilty of all counts and was hanged on December 2, 1859, the first person executed for treason in the history of the United States.  The Harpers Ferry raid and Brown's trial, both covered extensively in national newspapers, escalated tensions that led, a year later, to the South's long-threatened secession and the American Civil War. Southerners feared that others would soon follow in Brown's footsteps, encouraging and arming slave rebellions. He was a hero and icon in the North. Union soldiers marched to the new song "John Brown's Body", that portrayed him as a heroic martyr. Brown has been variously described as a heroic martyr and visionary, and as a madman and terrorist. -wikipedia

Emporia Gazette editor William Allen White began the campaign to get Curry to paint murals for his native Kansas rather than Wisconsin (whose university offered him employment he could not find in Kansas). Other newspapers joined in, and the result was the Kansas Murals Commission. Chaired by Governor Walter Huxman, it was charged with choosing a Kansas artist or artists to create murals for the Capitol, as Missouri artist Thomas Hart Benton had done in the Missouri State Capitol. Benton's very large mural was on the topic of, and titled, A Social History of Missouri. The Commission decided, not without some controversy, that in contrast with the Missouri Capitol, where Benton was one of several artists, Curry would be the sole artist to create murals for the Kansas Capitol, on the theme of Kansas history.  No state money was involved; White led a fundraising campaign that easily succeeded in raising the money to hire Curry. Tragic Prelude was completed in 1937, using egg tempera and oil paint. It is 11 feet 4 inches (350 cm) tall, and 31 feet (940 cm) long. In a newspaper interview of 1939, he explained that "I wanted to paint him as a fanatic, for John Brown was a fanatic. He had the wild zeal of the extremist, the fanatic for his cause - we had the Civil War, with its untold misery." Later, he wrote in a letter: "I think he is the prototype of a great many Kansans. Someone described a Kansan as one who went about wreaking good on humanity. This might be the kernel of my conception." -wikipedia

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 enough. 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 8 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. -wikipedia

Remastered Art and Photography are professionally restored and enhanced public domain art and photography to bring out the brilliance of the original art the way they were intended on the first day they were presented to the public. This type of art and photography would look terrific on a large canvas or framed print, and a print on any other media would look just as stunning!

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May 19th, 2022

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