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"In 1940, John Steuart Curry painted a scene of Herbert Hoover directing relief efforts after the Mississippi River flood of 1927 as part of a series of paintings depicting modern American history commissioned by Life magazine. In this in-depth case study, Charles Eldredge examines the story of the artist and his painting as well as the American cultural and political era in which it was made." "Exploring the painting, politics, and patronage behind Hoover and the Flood, Eldredge asks several provocative questions. Why was Curry, an artist associated with his native Kansas, depicting a subject from the Mississippi Delta? As a painter of nineteenth-century or contemporary agrarian scenes, what prompted Curry to choose a specific historical event rather than a more generalized statement of American life? What visual sources inspired his treatment of that motif?"--BOOK JACKET.