1939, John Steuart Curry, John Brown -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
In this mid-20th-century work, Curry reprised the subject of his John Brown mural in the Kansas State Capitol. Before the radical abolitionist's infamous 1859 raid, trial, and execution Virginia (the subject that inspired Hovenden's late-19th-century depiction on view nearby), Brown was known for his violent response to the extension of slavery into Kansas Territory. Curry depicted the freedom fighter in a dramatic landscape besieged by a tornado- symbolic of the Bleeding Kansas crisis-with an ambiguous African American figure at his side. Brown's crazed expression suggests the messianic fervor and wrath that fueled his opposition to human bondage through armed rebellion.
1939, John Steuart Curry, John Brown -- Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York)
In this mid-20th-century work, Curry reprised the subject of his John Brown mural in the Kansas State Capitol. Before the radical abolitionist's infamous 1859 raid, trial, and execution Virginia (the subject that inspired Hovenden's late-19th-century depiction on view nearby), Brown was known for his violent response to the extension of slavery into Kansas Territory. Curry depicted the freedom fighter in a dramatic landscape besieged by a tornado- symbolic of the Bleeding Kansas crisis-with an ambiguous African American figure at his side. Brown's crazed expression suggests the messianic fervor and wrath that fueled his opposition to human bondage through armed rebellion.