Ajax

A huge bull lowers its head into a green pasture while two tiny birds occupy the space above its back. John Steuart Curry’s Ajax gives an ordinary grazing animal the scale and presence of a monumental portrait. The contrast between its massive body, the birds and the distant herd makes the subject both imposing and quietly playful.

The Smithsonian American Art Museum dates the oil painting to 1936–37. It measures 92 by 122.5 centimetres and entered the collection as a gift from Peter and Paula Lunder, accession 2001.95. A related lithograph predates this canvas, showing that Curry developed the bull’s image across different works and media. ^[1]

A bull that fills the landscape

The animal’s body stretches across most of the picture. Its high back stands against the sky, while its head reaches down toward the lower edge. This arrangement makes the bull dominate both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the scene. There is room for a landscape around it, but very little doubt about where attention belongs.

Its reddish-brown coat forms a broad area of warmth against the cooler pasture and pale blue sky. White markings beneath the body and across the face interrupt that mass. The legs remain visible enough to establish its stance, while the rounded flank and shoulders give the torso a weight far greater than that of the distant animals.

The low horizon reinforces this effect. Much of the bull rises above the line where land meets sky, so the body appears to belong partly to each. The pasture places it in a working agricultural environment; the open sky gives its silhouette the clarity of an emblem.

The painting’s size makes this treatment more than a small animal vignette. A canvas approximately four feet wide allows the bull to command substantial wall space. Curry gives a farm animal the kind of concentrated attention that a commanding human figure might receive in a portrait.

Weight, lowered head and grazing movement

The lowered head brings the animal close to the viewer. Its pale forehead and muzzle are large enough to compete with the broad brown torso. The horns frame the face, while the visible eye adds a point of alertness within an otherwise downward-directed movement.

The angle of the neck is important to the impression of weight. It carries the body’s mass toward the ground rather than lifting the head into a conventional heroic pose. The bull remains impressive while doing something ordinary. Strength is made visible through grazing, planted feet and bodily volume.

The ground beneath it is darker than the pasture farther away. This shadowed foreground helps anchor the legs and muzzle, while the lighter distance opens behind them. The animal seems close enough to interrupt the viewer’s access to the wider field, even though the eye can still move around its outline.

The small herd at the left supplies another measure of size. Those animals occupy the same general kind of setting, but their reduced scale makes the central bull seem extraordinary. The contrast turns physical proximity into pictorial importance: the nearer animal becomes the subject through which the rest of the pasture is understood.

Cowbirds and the comparison of scales

The birds make the bull’s bulk especially apparent. One sits on its back, while the other lifts its wings just above it. Their small bodies remain clearly distinguishable against the light cloud. The huge animal provides them with a place to perch without losing its own unhurried presence.

The Smithsonian identifies them as cowbirds and describes their feeding on insects around the bull. That account introduces a practical relationship between the animals, alongside the visual contrast in their sizes. The birds belong to the same inhabited pasture, even though their movements are very different from those of the grazing bull. ^[1]

Their positions also direct attention toward the upper contour. Following the body from the lowered head up the neck leads to the back and the two small interruptions above it. The birds keep that large outline from becoming entirely static. They add a quick, delicate rhythm to a composition otherwise dominated by weight.

The difference can make the picture humorous without turning the bull into a caricature. Something so substantial appears undisturbed by such small companions. The painting allows the viewer to notice that disproportion while continuing to take the animal’s physical presence seriously.

Clouds, pasture and the farm setting

The land rolls away behind the bull in green and yellow bands. Its openness gives the central body room to stand out, while the distant herd keeps the scene connected with agricultural life. The setting offers context without introducing a busy narrative that could compete with the animal.

Large white clouds rise behind the back and shoulders. Their pale masses repeat something of the body’s rounded shape, but their lighter colour and broken edges produce a very different effect. Solid flesh and open sky meet along a strong contour.

The foreground remains more varied. Plants, shadows and patches of colour surround the head and feet, giving the bull an immediate environment rather than an empty platform. These nearer details lead into the larger, simpler shapes beyond them. The picture combines close attention to one animal with a broad sense of open country.

The title and the museum’s mythological reading

The Smithsonian connects the title with Ajax of the Trojan War, whose madness led him to attack cattle after mistaking them for enemies. Its interpretation imagines a reversal of that story: the bull stands between the viewer and the herd, with an eye that might suggest the animals could take their revenge. ^[1]

This reading introduces an undercurrent of danger into the pastoral scene. The lowered head and alert eye can then appear more complicated than signs of contented feeding. The myth makes the title a prompt to look again at an animal that might initially seem entirely reassuring.

The museum also reads the green pasture and well-fed cattle as a response to Americans’ exhaustion during the Dust Bowl years. Those are curatorial interpretations of the image’s wider meaning. They can illuminate its mixture of abundance, strength and unease without being presented as a surviving statement of Curry’s precise intention.

An earlier image in lithography

The Amon Carter Museum of American Art owns a lithograph titled Ajax , accession 1983.32, dated 1931 and printed in 1932. Its bull lowers its head toward the right, reversing the general orientation seen in the later oil painting. The birds remain above the back, while smaller cattle appear in the background at the right. ^[9]

The print uses strong dark areas and lighter passages to give the body volume. Its pale face stands out against the darker torso, and the cloud forms provide a light background around the upper silhouette. The shared motif is recognizable, but the medium and orientation make it a separate pictorial encounter.

Below the image, the reproduced Carter impression retains the pencilled title and Curry’s signature with the year 1932. These marks place the composition within the physical life of a print. The dark animal and pale sky occupy a bounded image area, while the writing sits outside it, giving the viewer another way to encounter the work as an object rather than only as a scene.

The Carter’s catalogue also contains an unresolved discrepancy: its edition field gives twenty-five, while the inscription transcription records fifty. Both statements belong to the record and should be distinguished. Neither number describes the Smithsonian oil painting, and neither is a reason to assume that every work titled Ajax has the same production history. ^[9]

The National Gallery of Art holds another lithograph under the title, dated 1932, accession 1991.116.28. Its record identifies black printing on Rives BFK paper. These early print records matter because the lithograph cannot simply be described as a reproduction made after the Smithsonian’s 1936–37 canvas. ^[10]

Comparing the works reveals a sustained interest in the subject. Curry returned to the relationship between the large bull, the birds and the open pasture, while allowing their presentation to change. Recognizing that continuity does not require treating the separate prints and oil as one object with interchangeable dates.

Animals across Curry’s work

Ajax belongs beside other works in which Curry gives animals substantial pictorial attention. His 1932 Circus Elephants places them within a travelling spectacle, an environment distinct from the open pasture. The National Gallery’s account connects that painting with his journey alongside the circus. ^[11]

The comparison shows how much the setting contributes to an animal subject. In Ajax , the low horizon, green land and small herd make the bull part of an agricultural world. Its huge body carries the picture’s force, but the birds and title keep that force from becoming a single uncomplicated message. The result can sustain admiration, amusement and uncertainty within one apparently simple scene.