John Brown

Curry depicts John Brown in a cruciform pose, his visage echoing Michelangelo's sculpture of Moses. Beecher Bible in one outstretched hand, the actual Bible in the other, Curry describes the panel “The Tragic Prelude” from which this lithograph is derived as "the fratricidal fury that first flamed in the plains of Kansas, the tragic prelude to the last bloody feud of English-speaking people." Beyond Brown, a tornado rips through the prairie that represents both his reputation as the "Cyclone of Kansas," and the turmoil of the era.