Ajax

Date: 1936-37
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/2001/2001.95_1a.jpg?itok=ioTAPraj width="426" height="320" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/ajax-71405"]] || Title: **Ajax**

Artist: **John Steuart Curry** Born: Dunavant, Kansas 1897 Died: Madison, Wisconsin 1946

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 36 1/4 x 48 1/4 in. (92 x 122.5 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Peter and Paula Lunder

Accession: 2001.95 || Curry created this painting of green pastures and fat cattle to reassure Americans worn down by the Dust Bowl years. A prize bull fills the canvas, grazing contentedly in meadows that fall away on all sides. Cowbirds light daintily on his back, feeding on the insects that would otherwise torment him. This image slyly evokes the myth of Ajax, the Trojan hero who went mad and slew all of his army’s cattle, thinking they were his enemies. Curry's Ajax stands between the viewer and the herd, his one wary eye suggesting that the cows might get their revenge.
 * Exhibition Label: **


 * Suggested Questions: **
 * Where in the United States is this bull?
 * How would you describe the area surrounding him?
 * What is significant about the year this was painted? Did the plains still look like this then?
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">How does the depiction of Ajax differ from that of the depiction of the aurochs in Walton Ford's //Tur//? Why might Curry and Ford choose to paint their bulls in the ways that they did?

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 * Resources: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">SAAM Collections Page <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Art of Horn Weighting
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Links: **