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Preview
Laying Claim
In the nineteenth century, African American artists distinguished themselves as fine artists, excelling in painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking, and photography. Various social and economic advancements contributed to this development, such as the end of slavery and the increase in patronage for American art.
Nineteenth-century African American artists generally avoided creating works that emphasized their race, focusing instead on subjects that dominated the art of their time: portraiture, landscape, literacy themes, still life, and scenes of everyday life. Their skills were typically measured by their ability to emulate art by European and European American artists.
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Edward Mitchell
Bannister, The Old Homestead, 1895, oil on canvas. Walter
O. Evans Collection.
Bannister lived in Rhode Island. He used
the surrounding countryside as subject and inspiration for his art,
such as this delicately rendered painting of livestock and weathered
buildings nestled among the trees. |
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Edward Mitchell
Bannister, Landscape, 1897, oil on canvas. Walter O. Evans
Collection.
The invention
of portable oil paint tubes allowed artists to paint outdoors, rather
than in a studio. Some of the first to do this were the artists who
painted in the forest region around the town of Barbizon, in France.
Bannister had seen and studied their paintings in Boston museums and
carried on the tradition of outdoor painting in America.^ top |
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Robert Scott Duncanson,
Man Fishing, 1848, oil on canvas. Walter O. Evans Collection.
Duncanson was a constant traveler. While
in Michigan’s upper peninsula to depict a newly opened copper
mine, he painted this image of a man fishing. There are a few small
details to notice: The man’s foot dips into the water and it
appears distorted, the way objects are actually seen through light
and water. Also, many viewers have noticed a mysterious figure of
a woman with crossed arms incorporated in the tree bark behind him.^ top |
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Robert Scott Duncanson,
American Landscape, 1862, oil on canvas. Walter O. Evans
Collection.
Duncanson portrays a calm, idyllic landscape
in which cattle and man coexist with nature. Duncanson worked in a
style of landscape painting that was developed by a group of artists
called the Hudson River School. For these artists, magnificent panoramas
were meant to record nature as an unspoiled frontier that would soon
be lost to developed settlements.For some African Americans, such landscapes could be an optimistic statement of emancipation and a hope for independence and self-determination. The majority of Duncanson’s pre-1865 paintings may hold this double-coded meaning. ^ top |
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Mary Edmonia Lewis,
The Wooing of Hiawatha, 1866, white marble. Walter O. Evans
Collection.
Lewis was
Native American as well as African American, and the then-popular
love poem The Song of Hiawatha (1855), by Henry Wadsworth
Longfellow, had particular significance for her.This sculpture illustrates a chapter of the poem called “The Wooing of Hiawatha.” It shows Hiawatha’s beloved Minnehaha and her father, known as the Old Arrow Maker. The deer in front of them is a gift from Hiawatha. ^ top |
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Charles Ethan Porter,
Lilacs, ca. 1890, oil on canvas. Walter O. Evans Collection.
Like the
impressionist painters, whose work he saw in Paris, Porter was acutely
sensitive to effects of light. Notice the murky stems, seen through
the barely transparent vase. Also the leaves darken in color, as they
are farther away from the source of light to the left. The edge of
the table against the wall is visible on the left, but fades away
to the right of the vase.Porter was well versed in both the traditional and impressionistic art styles of the era, as he had studied painting in London and Paris and graduated from the New York Academy of Design. ^ top |
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Nelson A. Primus,
Fortune Teller, 1898, oil on board. Walter O. Evans Collection.
Here, a Chinese
fortune teller sits at a folding table in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
The dark background, unfamiliar clothing, and calligraphy make this
image both exotic and mysterious.Although chinoiserie (Chinese-style design) was becoming popular in America and Europe at the beginning of the 1900s, many Americans did not welcome the presence of Chinese people into their world. Primus moved from Boston to San Francisco in 1895. There, he painted the Chinese merchants, shopkeepers, and traders who had moved to California before the gold rush. ^ top |
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Henry Ossawa Tanner,
Florida, 1894, oil on canvas. Walter O. Evans Collection.
In this painting of an orange grove, Tanner
captures the colors produced by sunlight filtering through clouds.
He knew that the shadows of the foreground would only be there for
a moment and wanted to capture that exact instant on canvas.Although he was an American expatriate living in Paris, Tanner returned to America to attend the African Methodist Episcopal convention where his father was a bishop for the church. While in America, he painted Florida. ^ top |
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Image Caption: Charles White, We Have Been Believers, ca. 1940, charcoal on paper. Walter O. Evans Collection. 1949 © The Charles White Archives. (left)