Picturing the American story: John Steuart Curry’s limited editions club illustrations and the Regionalist vision in American literature

This dissertation examines the late-career illustrative works of American Regionalist painter John Steuart Curry (1897–1946), focusing specifically on his commissions for the Limited Editions Club, a subscription book company, between 1940 and 1946. While Curry is most often celebrated for his painted depictions of the American Midwest, his contributions to book illustration, particularly during the final decade of his career, have received comparatively little scholarly attention. By analyzing four major Limited Editions Club commissions—The Prairie (1940), The Literary Works of Abraham Lincoln (1942), The Red Badge of Courage (1944), and John Brown’s Body (1948)—this study aims to resolve a significant void in art historical scholarship, situating these illustrations within the interwoven cultural, political, and social discourses of mid-twentieth-century America. Employing an interdisciplinary approach that integrates art historical analysis, studies in American history and literature, as well as semiotics, this research explores how Curry’s illustrations engage with the ideals of American Exceptionalism and issues of race, class, and national identity. The dissertation contends that Curry’s images, created in tandem with canonical works of American poetry and prose, function as both aesthetic objects and culturally coded artifacts reflective of the social anxieties and nationalist imperatives of the 1930s and 1940s. Semiotic theory, particularly the frameworks developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, Roland Barthes, and Mieke Bal, alongside Erwin Panofsky’s associated concepts of iconography and iconology, is employed to analyze the layered meanings embedded in Curry’s illustrations and to investigate how these images convey narrative meaning alongside the written word. Primary source materials—including correspondence between Curry and Limited Editions Club founder George Macy housed in the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, original editions of the aforementioned illustrated books, and preparatory works from Kansas State University’s Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art—are utilized to contextualize Curry’s artistic choices and the various forces shaping his commissions. In illuminating the complex interplay between image, text, and context, this dissertation not only contributes to the scholarly understanding of John Steuart Curry’s illustrative oeuvre but also expands the methodological possibilities for studying book illustration within the disciplines of art history and the humanities.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Art History (UMKC)

Grantor

University of Missouri-Kansas City

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Bittel, Erica Sue

Advisors dc:contributor.advisor

• Dunbar, Burton L. (Burton Lewis), 1942-
• Powell, Larson, 1960-

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/10355/110229

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:mospace.umsystem.edu:10355/110229