Art of Kansas Home Art of Kansas and the Region

Like the Benton, there is a lot going on in this painting. There are several strong horizontal and vertical lines, aren’t there?

What do you see in the foreground, middle ground, background?

Is everything in the foreground, or does the artist lead our eye into deep space?

What stands out the most or is the center of interest? Why?

• Much larger than the others
• Strong horizontal and vertical lines
• In the center
• Dark shape against light background

What helps to unify this picture or hold it together?

• Horizon line and sky extend across the picture.
• The large man’s outstretched arms surround or include the whole scene

This artist was hired for a very big job: to paint pictures or murals on the walls of the Capitol building in Topeka.
Do you think he went right in and began painting pictures on the walls or would he have made some drawings and paintings ahead of time to plan what he wanted to paint on the Capitol walls?
This painting is one of the studies or practice paintings by John Steuart Curry for the murals he painted for the Capitol in Topeka.

What has the artist included in this preparatory study, practice painting, besides the murals themselves?

• The doorways and halls in the Capitol

Do you think the mood or feeling of this picture is gentle and peaceful or angry and hostile?

Besides the fighters in the foreground, what adds to the angry feeling?

• Tornado and prairie fire in the background

Who is Kansas’s most famous painter?

• John Steuart Curry. He was born and raised on a farm just north of Lawrence near Oskaloosa.
• He wanted his art to show American life and the things Americans believed in.

What do you think this painting is about?

• It’s about the disagreement and fighting over slavery in the Kansas territory before it became a state.

The man in the middle is John Brown. He wanted Kansas to come into the United States as a Free State, without slavery.

Where have you heard the name Free State before?

• Lawrence Free State High School

This painting is one of the sketches by John Steuart Curry for the murals he painted for the Capitol in Topeka. In his series of three murals, Curry wanted to express the underlying conflicts in the land and the history of his state. This painting is about the conflict over slavery in Kansas.

On either side are the warring free soil and proslavery forces, and at their feet, two figures symbolizing the million and half casualties from the Civil War. The background shows the pioneers moving west. The tornado and a raging prairie fire are fitting symbols of the destruction of the coming Civil War.

John Brown came to Kansas in the fall of 1854. Although he never made Lawrence his home, he visited the town on many occasions during the late 1850's, and he reportedly was appointed a captain in the Lawrence militia. Brown was not elevated to martyrdom in Kansas until after he left the territory and became a national figure at Harper's Ferry in 1859. As part of a plan for an uprising among slaves, he led a raid on an arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia). He was hanged for treason.