Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 –
June 9, 2000) is among the best-known 20th century
African American painters, a distinction shared with
Romare Bearden.
Though he referred to his style as "dynamic cubism," he also said his primary influence were the shapes and colors of Harlem.
Lawrence
was only in his twenties when his Migration
Series made him nationally famous. The series
depicted the epic Great Migration of African Americans
from the rural South to the urban North. It was featured
Fortune Magazine in 1941.
The series was the subject of a solo show at the Downtown Gallery in Manhattan in 1941, making Lawrence the first black artist represented by a major commerical art gallery.
Lawrence married fellow artist, painter, Gwendolyn Knight in 1941. They remained married until his death in 2000.
The NAACP honored Lawrence as an artist, teacher, and humanitarian and awarded him the Spingarn Medal in 1970. In 1974 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York held a major retrospective of his work, and in 1983 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
When Lawrence died on June 9, 2000, the New York Times called him "One of America's leading modern figurative painters" and "among the most impassioned visual chroniclers of the African-American experience."
Lawrence
Paints History
Throughouthis lengthy artistic career, Lawrence concentrated on depicting the history and struggles of African Americans and important periods in history.
The
artist was twenty-one years old when his series
of paintings of the Haitian general Toussaint
L’Ouverture were shown in an exhibit at
the Baltimore Museum of Art. This impressive work
was followed by a series of paintings of the lives
of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as well
as a series of pieces about the abolitionist John
Brown.
Lawrence was only twenty-three when he completed the sixty-panel set of narrative paintings entitled "Migration of the Negro," now called "The Migration Series." Interest in the series was so intense, The Phillips Collection in Washington D.C. and New York's Museum of Modern Art agreed to divide the series.
Harriet Tubman by Jacob
Lawrence
Lawrence spent months
on the Migration
Series. He distilled the subject into
captions and preliminary drawings and prepared 60 boards
with the help of his wife, artist Gwendolyn Knight.
He created the paintings
in tempera, a water-based paint that dries rapidly.
To keep the colors consistent, Lawrence applied one
hue at a time to every painting where it was to appear,
requiring him to plan all 60 paintings in detail at
once.
Migration
Series, Panel 1. 1941 caption:
During the World War, there was a great migration North
by Southern Negroes.
Print
No. 13, from The Legend of John Brown; 1977
Print No. 17
from The Legend of John Brown; 1978
The
Early Years
Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He moved with his sister and brother to New York City at 13. His mother enrolled him in classes at an arts and crafts settlement house in Harlem. An art teacher there noticed great potential in Lawrence.
He dropped out of school at 16 and went to work at a laundry and a printing plant. More importantly, Lawrence attended classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, taught by the African American artist, Charles Alston. Alston urged him to also attend the Harlem Community Art Center, led by the sculptor Augusta Savage. Savage secured Lawrence a scholarship to the American Artists School and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration. There, he was able to study and work with such notable Harlem Renaissance artists as Charles Alston and Henry Bannarn in the Alston-Bannarn workshop.
Lawrence married painter Gwendolyn Knight, who had also been a student of Savage's, on July 24, 1941. While in Harlem, he also met Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Claude McKay and became steeped in black history and culture.
The Shoemaker,
Jacob Lawrence, 1945, gouache on paper
The
Seamstress, Jacob Lawrence,
1946, gouache on paper
Lawrence
serves in USCG and settles in Seattle
In October 1943 - during the Second World War - he enlisted in the U. S. Coast Guard and served with the first racially integrated crew on the USCGC Sea Cloud, under Carlton Skinner. He painted and sketched while in the Coast Guard.
In 1962, the couple visited Nigeria for a exhibition
of the Migration Series.
That trip inspired Lawrence and his wife to sell their
house in Brooklyn, and return to Nigeria in 1964.
They stayed there from April to November, while he
painted his "Nigerian" series.
In 1970 Lawrence settled in Seattle, Washington and became an art professor at the University of Washington. Some of his works are now displayed there. The piece in the main lobby of Meany Hall, entitled "Theatre," was commissioned by the University for the hall in 1985.
The artist also did a series of five paintings on the westward journey of African American pioneer, George Washington Bush. These paintings are now in the collection of the State of Washington History Museum.
He illustrated an adaptation of Aesop's Fables for
the University of Washington Press in 1997.
Lawrence taught at several schools, and continued
to paint until a few weeks before his death in June
2000, at the age of eighty-two. His last public work,
the mosaic mural New York in Transit, was installed
in October 2001 in the Times Square subway station
in New York City. His wife died several years later
in 2005.
In addition to his many other awards, Lawrence received Washington State's highest honor, The Washington Medal of Merit in 1988. He was awarded the U.S. National Medal of Arts in 1990.
From the Nigerian Series
........
Street in Mbari, Jacob Lawrence, 1964, gouache on paper
Lawrence collections include The White House
His work is in the permanent
collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney
Museum, the Phillips Collection, and the Brooklyn
Museum. In May 2007, the White House Historical Association
purchased Lawrence's The Builders (1947)
for $2.5 million at auction. The painting now hangs
in the White House Green Room.
The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation was formally established before his death. Today, it maintains a searchable archive of nearly 1,000 images of their work.
The Seattle Art Museum offers the Gwendolyn Knight and Jacob Lawrence Fellowship, a $10,000 award to "individuals whose original work reflects the Lawrences' concern for artistic excellence, education, mentorship and scholarship within the cultural contexts and value systems that informed their work and the work of other artists of color."
