Hogs Killing a Snake

Hogs rush towards a twisting snake beneath a spreading tree. Their bodies enter from several directions, crowding the encounter into a small space. John Steuart Curry makes the animals' heavy forms and the snake's narrow coils part of one turbulent movement. There is little room for the viewer to stand outside the action.

The Art Institute of Chicago dates Hogs Killing a Snake to about 1930. It is an oil painting on canvas, accession 1947.392. ^[1] Earlier treatments of the subject survive in a separate Syracuse watercolour and an archive photograph of a composition described as a first sketch.

An animal encounter at close range

The foreground hogs are large enough to extend beyond the picture's edges. Their partial bodies make the scene feel crowded before the eye reaches the snake. A dark animal at the lower right presses into the viewer's space, while another turns inward from the opposite side. The frame seems to cut through a moving group rather than contain a neatly separated set of animals.

Behind them, a red-brown hog approaches from the right. Its extended legs give the encounter a further direction of movement. Curry combines animals already at the centre with others still entering it, suggesting that the action continues beyond the instant represented. Different distances remain legible through overlap, even though the bodies occupy most of the available space.

The broad tree trunk provides a comparatively stable centre. Its branches spread across the upper picture, enclosing the animals beneath a canopy. Small patches of red fruit and glimpses of brighter ground introduce quieter details around the confrontation. Their presence makes the scene recognizably rural while the close viewpoint concentrates attention on the struggle.

Colour reinforces these spatial relationships. The warm orange of the large central hog catches attention beside the darker heads in front of it. Beyond the animals, cooler greens help establish the shaded setting beneath the tree. Light areas of ground appear between the bodies, giving brief openings within the crowded group. The pale snake remains particularly conspicuous against the dark trunk and surrounding animals. Following these changes of light and colour helps disentangle the encounter: Curry keeps individual forms readable even while bringing them into close contact and allowing their movements to overlap.

The group and the snake

The snake stands out through its pale, patterned body and repeated curves. Its shape is much narrower than the hogs' heads and torsos, but its position gives it exceptional visual importance. Several directions of attention converge around it. The animals' mouths, snouts and turned heads organize a group whose movement might otherwise seem chaotic.

Curry uses the difference between kinds of body to sharpen the encounter. The hogs supply weight and broad surfaces; the snake supplies a more tightly twisting line. Those contrasting forms remain distinct even where they overlap. The picture's energy depends on their relationship, rather than on a simple accumulation of rushing animals.

The title identifies the struggle's outcome, while the composition dwells on its unfolding action. The raised snake, opened mouths and changing positions keep the scene active. The viewer encounters an unstable arrangement, with bodies still turning and approaching. This gives the painting a compressed sense of time: the group is brought together at a particularly charged moment.

Bristles and the scratched paint surface

The Art Institute describes short, abrupt brushwork and scratching into the paint to suggest the hogs' bristling hair. ^[1] These marks connect the handling of the surface with the subject's roughness. The animals are represented through both rounded volumes and a more agitated texture.

That combination helps explain why the painting feels forceful at different viewing distances. Seen as a whole, the overlapping bodies create a strong pattern of movement. Closer attention introduces the smaller marks that distinguish hair, skin and surrounding vegetation. The museum's account identifies scratching as a deliberate pictorial device; it does not specify a particular implement or establish a general method for all of Curry's paintings.

The oil painting and the earlier watercolour

Syracuse University Art Museum owns Hogs Killing a Rattlesnake , a watercolour dated 1925, object 1964.006. Its current record gives dimensions of 20 by 27 inches and credits the gift of Mr. Harry and Maria Wickey. ^[10] This is a separate work from the later Chicago oil.

The university's 1975 Varieties of American Realism catalogue lists the watercolour as entry 17, using the earlier number SU 64.06 and measurements of 20¼ by 27¼ inches. ^[11] Those historical measurements should remain attached to that catalogue. They neither replace the current Syracuse record nor describe the dimensions of the Chicago canvas.

The shared subject shows Curry returning to an animal encounter over several years. It does not make the two works interchangeable. Their dates, media, dimensions and collection histories identify different objects, each requiring its own caption and interpretation.

An early composition in an archive photograph

UW–Madison Libraries preserves a black-and-white photograph catalogued as Hogs killing a rattlesnake , dated approximately 1925, local identifier S16236. The library describes the depicted work as a first sketch. ^[12] The photograph shows a looser composition with conspicuous areas of light paper, a large hog entering from the right and small animals below the central encounter.

The image offers a useful comparison with the dense arrangement of the oil painting. Lines and washes remain relatively open around the animals, making individual gestures easy to follow. The Chicago work brings larger foreground bodies closer to the picture's edges. Recognizing these differences does not require identifying the photographed sheet as the Syracuse watercolour: the archive record does not establish that identity or specify the original work's medium.

Ownership and exhibition history

The Art Institute traces the oil from Curry to Associated American Artists and then to the museum in 1947. Its exhibition history lists a 1931 Ferargil show and a 1943–44 appearance in the Museum of Modern Art's Romantic Painting in America . ^[1] These records place the painting within Curry's lifetime exhibition career before its museum acquisition.

Beside Ajax , Hogs Killing a Snake demonstrates another way of giving farm animals substantial pictorial presence. The bull's broad body occupies an open pasture; the hogs form a crowded, converging group. In each, scale, gesture and the relationship between large and small creatures make an animal subject sustain far more than incidental landscape detail.