John Brown
John Steuart Curry, American, 1897 - 1946
1939
Lithograph on wove paper
Edition of 250
Image: 14 3/4 × 10 3/4 in. (37.4 × 27.3 cm)
Sheet: 18 9/16 × 13 3/8 in. (47.1 × 34 cm)
Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth: Purchased through the Miriam H. and S. Sidney Stoneman Acquisition Fund
2014.87
Publisher
Associated American Artists, New York
Geography
Place Made: United States, North America
Period
20th century
Object Name
Research Area
Not on view
Inscriptions
Signed and dated, in stone, lower right: JSC 1939; signed, in graphite, bottom right margin: John Steuart Curry
Label
This print shows an impassioned John Brown (1800–1859), the White American abolitionist who believed that only violent insurrection could end slavery. A Black man in the lower left references this cause. Brown worked with Black abolitionists to encourage African Americans to physically fight against their enslavement. In the background, a tornado and prairie fire evoke Brown’s intense energy as they loom over the pioneer wagons that threatened to carry slavery across the country. The artist has described them as “fitting symbols of the destruction of the coming Civil War.” In the lower right corner, Brown’s sword contrasts with a sunflower, the Kansas state flower. Brown led raids and battles against pro-slavery forces in Kansas during the period of violence known as “Bleeding Kansas” (1854–61) before his most famous raid, on the federal armory in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, in 1859, where he was captured and subsequently hanged for treason.
From the 2026 exhibition Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, curated by Amelia Kahl (Barbara C. & Harvey P. Hood 1918 Senior Curator of Academic Programming) and Alisa Swindell (Associate Curator of Photography)
Course History
Art History 40.02, The American Century, Mary Coffey, Spring 2025
Art History 40.02, The American Century, Mary Coffey, Spring 2025
Exhibition History
Inhabiting Historical Time: Slavery and Its Afterlives, Jaffe and Hall Galleries, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, December 20, 2025 - July 11, 2026.
Provenance
Allinson Gallery, Inc., Storrs, Connecticut; sold to present collection, 2014.
Catalogue Raisonne
Cole 34
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