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Pioneers in Kansas by Ward Lockwood
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography
Pioneers in Kansas
Photo CreditCarol M. Highsmith Photography

Pioneers in Kansas

Artist
YearBetween 1934 -1943
Classification painting
Medium oil on canvas
Dimensionsimage/canvas: 55 x 125 1/2 in. (139.7 x 318.8 cm)
Credits Commissioned through the Section of Fine Arts, 1934 - 1943
Fine Arts Collection
U.S. General Services Administration
Location
CollectionArt in Federal Courthouses
  • Pioneers in Kansas is composed of five vignettes associated with westward settlement.  The individual scenes are woven together with landscape elements of the rugged Great Plains.  A stagecoach loaded with passengers and luggage marks the center of the composition with other images radiating around it. A Pony Express rider and an American Indian shoot at one another on the left side of the painting. A vulture flies above the rider symbolizing imminent danger and death. In the center foreground a hardened frontiersman, clad in buckskins and a coonskin cap, loads his shotgun as he crouches down behind a rock outcropping. A well-dressed pioneer couple stands on the right side of the painting: the man looks into the distance while the woman reads a letter. A black steam engine emerges behind the couple, symbolizing continued western expansion.