Skip to main contentDescription
Ishmael Bush, illustration study
Portfolio/SeriesThe Prairie, James Fenimore Cooper (Limited Editions Club, 1940)
Artist
John Steuart Curry
(United States, 1897 - 1946)
Dateca. 1940
MediumSepia and brown inks and graphite on paper prepared for transfer with red chalk
DimensionsSHEET: 8 x 6 1/4 in. (203.2 x 158.8 mm)
Object TypeDrawings
Credit LineKSU, Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art, bequest of Kathleen G. Curry
Object number2002.928
On View
Not on view• Originally published in 1827, The Prairie presents the final years of the trapper character Natty Bumppo in the period of white expansion west of the Mississippi River into what is today the Great Plains region. It is the fifth novel in what is collectively known as the Leatherstocking Tales.
• Cooper expressed disdain for the prairie as an environment, referring to it as “bleak and solitary.” Curry by contrast demonstrated an appreciation of its beauty in his illustrations for Cooper’s volume. The artist used a specific place in Kansas, Barber County, as inspiration for the mesas and grasslands depicted in some drawings.
• Cooper expressed disdain for the prairie as an environment, referring to it as “bleak and solitary.” Curry by contrast demonstrated an appreciation of its beauty in his illustrations for Cooper’s volume. The artist used a specific place in Kansas, Barber County, as inspiration for the mesas and grasslands depicted in some drawings.
Exhibitions
Bibliography
John Steuart Curry
ca. 1944
2002.1109
