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Jacob Lawrence
1917–2000 · 83 years Tier II
The foster child who painted the Great Migration at 23
His parents had come north out of the rural South, which turned out to be his subject. They divorced in 1924 and his mother put him and his two younger siblings into foster care in Philadelphia. He rejoined her in Harlem at 13, and she signed him up for after-school classes at a settlement house called Utopia Children's House. From there it was the Harlem Art Workshop under Charles Alston, then the Harlem Community Art Center, where the sculptor Augusta Savage found him a scholarship to the American Artists School and a paid place on the WPA. He called Depression Harlem hard, bright and brittle, and said the colors his mother's generation put in their apartments were why he could think in terms of Matisse.
He worked in series. The first was 41 paintings of Toussaint Louverture, done at 21 and hung at the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass followed. Then the 60 panels of the Migration Series, made across 1940 and 1941 in tempera on hardboard, which he built by mixing one color and carrying it across all 60 boards before moving to the next, so the whole set would hold a single key. The Downtown Gallery showed it, making him the first African American artist a New York gallery represented, and Fortune printed a selection in 1941. He was 23. The Phillips Collection and the Museum of Modern Art bought the series jointly and split it, odd numbers to Washington and even numbers to New York, which is why seeing all 60 at once takes an exhibition.
Two bodies of his work went missing, one of them for good. Drafted into the Coast Guard in October 1943, he served aboard the USCGC Sea Cloud with the first racially integrated crew in the service and painted 48 pictures of the war. MoMA showed eight of them in 1944, the Coast Guard sent them out on tour, and in the confusion of demobilization all 48 disappeared. Five years later he checked himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens with depression and stayed 11 months, painting the patients around him. And no museum would buy Struggle, his 30-panel history of the early republic, in the political weather of the mid-1950s. A private collector bought it and broke it up for resale. Three panels are still missing. Three others surfaced only in 2017, 2020 and 2021.
He painted until a few weeks before the end and died of lung cancer in Seattle on June 9, 2000, at 82, after 16 years as a University of Washington professor. Gwendolyn Knight, his wife since 1941, outlived him by five years, and in 1999 the two of them set up the foundation that now holds both estates. His last commission, a Murano glass mosaic called New York in Transit, went into the Times Square subway station in October 2001. The White House Historical Association paid 2.5 million dollars for The Builders in 2007, and it has hung in the Green Room since 2009. In 2021 the Peabody Essex Museum finally got the Struggle panels back into one room.
Lifespan
Jacob Lawrence's life against the full span of the corpus.
Notable works
-
The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture
artwork
41 paintings made at 21 and shown at the Baltimore Museum of Art 1938 -
The Migration Series
artwork
60 tempera panels, divided odd and even between the Phillips Collection and MoMA 1941 -
Struggle: From the History of the American People
artwork
30 panels, each titled with a quotation. Three are still missing. 1956 -
Harriet and the Promised Land
book
A children's book built from his Tubman paintings 1968 -
Exploration
artwork
A 40-foot porcelain-on-steel mural at Howard University 1980 -
New York in Transit
artwork
A Murano glass mosaic installed in the Times Square station after his death 2001
Life in brief
with age at each point- September 7, 1917 aged 0 Born at Atlantic City to parents who had left the rural South
- 1924 aged ~7 His parents divorce and he is placed in foster care in Philadelphia
- 1930 aged ~13 Rejoins his mother in Harlem at 13 and starts classes at Utopia Children's House
- July 24, 1941 aged 23 Marries the painter Gwendolyn Knight
- 1941 aged ~24 Finishes the Migration Series and Fortune prints a selection He was 23, and the first African American artist a New York gallery represented.
- October 1943 aged 26 Drafted into the Coast Guard and posted to the USCGC Sea Cloud All 48 paintings he made in service were lost during demobilization.
- 1949 aged ~32 Checks himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens and stays 11 months He painted the Hospital Series there.
- 1971 aged ~54 Becomes professor of art at the University of Washington
- June 9, 2000 aged 82 Dies of lung cancer in Seattle at 82
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