John Brown, 1939, oil on canvas, 69" x 45".  © John Steuart Curry. Framed by Gill & Lagodich for the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Custom-made replica, Early American molding frame, first-quarter-19th-century, beveled wood profile with worn ebonized patina and gilded flat liner. Molding width: 6-1/2” "Throughout the 1930s, Kansas-native Curry was closely associated with Benton as a member of the artistic movement known as Regionalism. John Brown reprises the subject of Curry's mural in the rotunda of the Kansas State Capitol. One of the most controversial figures in nineteenth-century American history, Brown opposed the extension of slavery in the 1850s into the Kansas Territory. Curry depicted Brown larger-than-life in an open, stark landscape besieged by a tornado—a meteorological symbol of the conflict—with a slave at his side. The abolitionist's crazed expression and animated hair and beard suggest the messianic fervor that fueled his opposition to human bondage." Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1950 (50.94.1) —Metropolitan Museum permanent collection label.