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Dear Joan of Art, I'm looking for information on Jacob Lawrence. Specifically, how did he become an artist?Dear Virtual Visitor,
Got A Question? Ask Joan of Art!
Dear Joan of Art, I'm looking for information on Jacob Lawrence. Specifically, how did he become an artist?Dear Virtual Visitor,
Thanks for sending your question about artist Jacob Lawrence. We were very sad to learn that this great American artist recently passed away on June 9 at the age of 82. The following information on Jacob Lawrence comes from Free Within Ourselves by Regenia Perry (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1992):
The most widely acclaimed African-American artist of this century, and one of only several whose works are included in standard survey books on American art, Jacob Lawrence has enjoyed a successful career for more than fifty years. Lawrence's paintings portray the lives and struggles of African Americans, and have found wide audiences due to their abstract, colorful style and universality of subject matter.…
Lawrence was born on September 17, 1917, in Atlantic City, New Jersey.… Lawrence's parents separated when he was seven, and in 1924 his mother moved her children first to Philadelphia and then to Harlem when Jacob was twelve years old. He enrolled in Public School 89 located at 135th Street and Lenox Avenue, and at the Utopia Children's Center, a settlement house that provided an after-school program in arts and crafts for Harlem children.…
Shortly after he began attending classes at Utopia Children's Center, Lawrence developed an interest in drawing simple geometric patterns and making diorama-type paintings from corrugated cardboard boxes. Following his graduation from P.S. 89, Lawrence enrolled in Commerce High School on West 65th Street and painted intermittently on his own.… Lawrence dropped out of high school before his junior year to find odd jobs to help support his family. He enrolled in the Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal jobs program, and was sent to upstate New York.… When Lawrence returned to Harlem he became associated with the Harlem Community Art Center directed by sculptor Augusta Savage, and began painting his earliest Harlem scenes.…
Lawrence's best-known series is The Migration of the Negro, executed in 1940 and 1941. The panels portray the migration of over a million African Americans from the South to industrial cities in the North between 1910 and 1940.… In November 1941 Lawrence's Migration series was exhibited at the prestigious Downtown Gallery in New York. This show received wide acclaim, and at the age of twenty-four Lawrence became the first African-American artist to be represented by a downtown "mainstream" gallery.… During the late 1940s Lawrence was the most celebrated African-American painter in America.
Pictured top: Photograph of Jacob Lawrence, 1917–2000. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection
Pictured bottom: Jacob Lawrence, Firewood #55, 1942, gouache, ink, and watercolor on paper, 22 3/4 x 31 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the U.S. Information Agency.