John Steuart Curry (1897-1946), American painter, born in Dunavant, Kansas. He studied at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Art Students League of New York City, and in Paris. After an initial career as a magazine illustrator, Curry worked with notable success as both an easel and mural painter. His murals include decorations for the buildings of the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior, in Washington, D.C., and dramatic scenes of Kansas landscape and history for the state capitol in Topeka, Kansas. His oil paintings are realistic depictions, primarily of rural midwestern scenes. With the American artists Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood, whose work also dealt with rural life, Curry contributed to the regionalist school of American painting. He was artist in residence at the University of Wisconsin from 1936 until his death. Among his works are Spring Shower (1931) and Wisconsin Landscape (1938-1939), both in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; and Baptism in Kansas (1928), The Flying Codonas (1932), painted during his travels with a circus, The Ne'er-Do-Well (1929), and The Stockman (1929), all in the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City.