Jacob Lawrence
Dynamic cubist painter of African-American history and life
Carl Van Vechten · via Wikipedia: Jacob Lawrence · Public domain
At age 16, Lawrence dropped out of school and worked in a laundromat and a printing plant.[1] Savage secured a scholarship for Lawrence to the American Artists School and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration.[1] Lawrence married painter Gwendolyn Knight on July 24, 1941.[2] In October 1943, Lawrence was drafted into the United States Coast Guard and served on the first racially integrated crew of the USCGC Sea Cloud.[3]
Lawrence came into the world on September 7, 1917, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, a destination his parents had moved to from the rural South.[4] At the Harlem Art Workshop, Lawrence took classes from Charles Alston, who recommended he go to the Harlem Community Art Center, where Augusta Savage was the director.[1] Lawrence taught at Black Mountain College, the New School for Social Research, the Art Students League, Pratt Institute, and the Skowhegan School; he was a visiting artist at the University of Washington in 1970 and a professor there from 1971 to 1986.[5][6]
Quick Facts
- Born
- 7 September 1917
- Birthplace
- Atlantic City, New Jersey, United States
- Died
- 9 June 2000
- Place of death
- Seattle, Washington, United States
- Spouse
- Gwendolyn Knight (1941)
- Field
- Paintings portraying African-American life
- Training
- Harlem Community Art Center
Facts from the source article.
What the cited sources add
The Whitney Museum's account notes that Lawrence received his earliest art instruction from Charles Alston at Utopia Children's House, a community daycare center.[7] Alston used Arthur Wesley Dow's textbook "Composition" to teach nonrepresentational drawing and encouraged Lawrence to invent his own pictorial language.[7] The Birmingham Museum of Art states that Lawrence painted his Struggle series to show how women and people of color helped shape the founding of the nation.[8] The Phillips Collection notes that Lawrence began research for his Struggle series in 1949 at the New York Public Library.[9]
The Phillips Collection adds that Lawrence started painting the Struggle series in May 1954, just as the Supreme Court ruled to end racial segregation in public schools.[9] The Phillips Collection states that after their 1958 exhibition, the Struggle panels were acquired by a private collector who gradually sold them to individual collectors.[9]
References
- Wikipedia, "Jacob Lawrence" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Jacob Lawrence: Exploring Stories: Early Childhood", Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jacob Lawrence" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Exploring Stories: Picturing Narratives", Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jacob Lawrence" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Jacob Lawrence, USCG biography" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jacob Lawrence" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Jacob Lawrence - Bio", Phillips Collection (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jacob Lawrence" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Jacob Lawrence", John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation; Cremin, "American Education, the Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980", Harper & Row, 1988, p. 638 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Jacob Lawrence" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Eldredge, "Tales from the Easel: American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, Circa 1800-1950", University of Georgia Press, 2004, p. 148; "Jacob Lawrence Is Named Professor of Art at Pratt", The New York Times, November 14, 1970; Gates, "The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country", Simon & Schuster, 2002, p. 176; Cotter, "Jacob Lawrence Is Dead at 82; Vivid Painter Who Chronicled Odyssey of Black Americans", The New York Times, June 10, 2000; About James Claussen , Website of James Claussen. Ret en.wikipedia.org
- "Jacob Lawrence: Exploring Stories: Early Childhood", Whitney Museum of American Art, 2002. facts only, no text reused. whitney.org
- "Jacob Lawrence", Birmingham Museum of Art, 2020-02-13. facts only, no text reused. artsbma.org
- "Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle The Phillips Collection", www.phillipscollection.org, 2021-09-26. facts only, no text reused. phillipscollection.org
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Jacob Lawrence (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
More in Artists & Composers
Elsewhere in Historical Figures
Spotted an error? Know more?
Reader corrections go straight into our review queue. Suggest an edit · How this site is sourced