page_title: Tragic Prelude
section_title: Curry's description
hierarchical_section_title: Tragic Prelude / Curry's description
caption_attribution_description: Secretary Arne Duncan meets with Governor Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) at the Capitol Building in Topeka, Kan., Sept. 18, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)
context_page_description: Tragic Prelude is a mural painted by Kansan John Steuart Curry for the Kansas State Capitol building in Topeka, Kansas. It is located on the east side of the second floor rotunda. On the north wall it depicts abolitionist Kansan John Brown with a Bible in one hand, on which the Greek letters alpha and omega of Apocalypse 1:8 can be seen. In his other hand he holds a rifle or "Beecher's Bible"l He is in front of Union and Confederate soldiers, living and dead, with a whirlwind and a prairie fire approaching. Emigrants with covered wagons travel from east to west.
  The "tragic prelude" is the Bleeding Kansas period of 1854–1860, prelude to or dress rehearsal for the Civil War, which period John Brown was at the center of, preventing Kansas from being made a slave state. The term "tragic prelude" for this period of Kansas history is attributed by Curry to his champion, the newspaper editor William Allen White
  However, the mural has other figures in addition to Brown, as it turns a corner and continues on another wall, making it difficult to photograph in its entirety. The three figures are rarely discussed as part of the work.
context_section_description: Centered on the north wall (31’ x 11’6”, 9.4m x 3.5m) is the gigantic figure of John Brown. In his outstretched left hand the word of God and in the right a “Beecher's Bible." Beside him facing each other are the contending free soil and pro-slavery forces. At their feet, two figures symbolic of the million and a half dead of the North and South. In this group is expressed the fratricidal fury that first flamed on the plains of Kansas, the Tragic Prelude to the last bloody feud of the English-speaking people. Back of this group are the pioneers and their wagons on the endless trek to the West, and back of all the tornado and the raging prairie fire, fitting symbols of the destruction of the coming Civil War.
  In a newspaper interview of 1939, he explained that "I wanted to paint him as a fanatic, for John Brown was a fanatic. He had the wild zeal of the extremist, the fanatic for his cause—and we had the Civil War, with its untold misery." Later, he wrote in a letter: "I think he is the prototype of a great many Kansans. Someone described a Kansan as one who went about wreaking good on humanity. This might be the kernel of my conception."
caption: Kansas Governor Sam Brownback (left) and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, 2012
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