John Steuart Curry (1897-1946)

The present work was published as a fold-out color illustration in the 1940 edition of James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie, a novel which follows a family moving across the Midwest to look for a homestead during the time of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. The present work depicts a scene in which the family has been surrounded by a prairie fire set by the Tetons, a local Native American tribe: "Huge columns of smoke were rolling up from the plain, and thickening in gloomy masses around the horizon. The red glow, which gleamed upon their enormous folds, now lighting their volumes with the glare of the conflagration, and now flashing to another point, as the flame beneath glided ahead, leaving all behind enveloped in awful darkness, and proclaiming louder than words the character of the imminent and approaching danger." (The Prairie, Menasha, Wisconsin, 1940, p. 255)

Please note that this lot includes a copy of the 1940 edition of The Prairie.