Baptism in Kansas
John Steuart Curry, 1928
Image not available: work still under copyright
Baptism in Kansas is an oil on canvas painted by John Steuart Curry in August 1928. He drew on a scene he had witnessed in 1915, when the creeks had dried up and the water tank was the only workable place for a baptism. The canvas shows a full immersion inside the tank. Overhead, a raven and a dove recall the birds Noah released from the Ark, linking a rural ceremony to a biblical story of renewal. The work was first shown at the Eleventh Biennial Exhibition of Contemporary American Oil Paintings at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. In 1930 Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney bought it, and it has belonged to the Whitney Museum of American Art since the museum opened in 1931. The painting brought Curry national fame and is regarded as one of the most iconic works of American Regionalism. The critic Thomas Craven praised it for its sincerity and spiritual seriousness, free of satire or mockery.
- Painter
- John Steuart Curry
- Date
- 1928
- Medium
- oil paint, canvas
- Dimensions
- 102 × 128 cm
- Museum
- Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City
- Depicts
- immersion baptism