by Artist (97)
Black Belt Prairie c. 1775, Montgomery County, Alabama
2009
Object Type:
Painting
Dimensions:
24 x 32 in. (61 x 81 cm)
Medium and Support:
Oil on canvas
Accession Number:
2025.0001
Credit Line:
Gift of Dr. Claiborne Van Cortlandt Glover III and Dr. Susan Guttman
Currently On View
Artist and natural historian, Philip Juras, studies the transformation of Southern geography since the 18th century. This painting captures an earlier Alabama landscape which has now largely disappeared. His work reimagines the “Black Belt,” an arc of fertile land stretching through west Alabama into Mississippi. In the 19th century, this region became a center for cotton cultivation. Before settlement, however, it was covered in expansive prairies, grasslands, like the one shown here. Like endangered species, landscapes can become rare or even extinct. Today, only small remnants of these prairies remain, as most have been converted into farmland or overtaken by towns and cities. This painting serves as a visual reminder of the natural beauty that once defined much of Alabama’s terrain and the environmental changes that have reshaped it.
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