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Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", an art form popularized in Europe which drew great inspiration from West African and Meso-American art. For his compositions, Lawrence found inspiration in everyday life in Harlem.[1] He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught and spent 16 years as a professor at the University of Washington.

Key Information

Lawrence is among the best known twentieth-century African-American painters, known for his modernist illustrations of everyday life as well as narratives of African-American history and historical figures. At the age of 23 he gained national recognition with his 60-panel The Migration Series, which depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. The series was purchased jointly by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Lawrence's works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Northwest Art. His 1947 painting The Builders hangs in the White House.

Biography

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Early years

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Douglass argued against poor Negroes leaving the South

Jacob Lawrence was born September 7, 1917, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his parents had migrated from the rural south. They divorced in 1924.[2] His mother put him and his two younger siblings into foster care in Philadelphia. When he was 13, he and his siblings moved to New York City, where he reconnected with his mother in Harlem. Lawrence was introduced to art shortly after that when their mother enrolled him in after-school classes at an arts and crafts settlement house in Harlem, called Utopia Children's Center, in an effort to keep him busy. The young Lawrence often drew patterns with crayons. In the beginning, he copied the patterns of his mother's carpets.

Lawrence teaching school children at the Abraham Lincoln School

After dropping out of school at 16, Lawrence worked in a laundromat and a printing plant. He continued with art, attending classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, taught by the noted African-American artist Charles Alston. Alston urged him to attend the Harlem Community Art Center, led by the sculptor Augusta Savage. Savage secured a scholarship to the American Artists School for Lawrence and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration, established during the Great Depression by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lawrence continued his studies as well, working with Alston and Henry Bannarn, another Harlem Renaissance artist, in the Alston-Bannarn workshop. He also studied at Harlem Art Workshop in New York in 1937. Harlem provided crucial training for the majority of Black artists in the United States. Lawrence was one of the first artists trained in and by the African-American community in Harlem.[3] Throughout his lengthy artistic career, Lawrence concentrated on exploring the history and struggles of African Americans.

The "hard, bright, brittle" aspects of Harlem during the Great Depression inspired Lawrence as much as the colors, shapes, and patterns inside the homes of its residents. "Even in my mother's home," Lawrence told historian Paul Karlstrom, "people of my mother's generation would decorate their homes in all sorts of color... so you'd think in terms of Matisse."[4] He used water-based media throughout his career. Lawrence started to gain some notice for his dramatic and lively portrayals of both contemporary scenes of African-American urban life as well as historical events, all of which he depicted in crisp shapes, bright, clear colors, dynamic patterns, and through revealing posture and gestures.[2]

Career

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Toussaint at Ennery, 1989

At the very start of his career he developed the approach that made his reputation and remained his touchstone: creating series of paintings that told a story or, less often, depicted many aspects of a subject. His first were biographical accounts of key figures of the African diaspora. He was just 21 years old when his series of 41 paintings of the Haitian general Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the revolution of the slaves that eventually gained independence, was shown in an exhibit of African-American artists at the Baltimore Museum of Art. This was followed by a series of paintings of the lives of Harriet Tubman (1938–39) and Frederick Douglass (1939–40). His early work involved general depictions of everyday life in Harlem and also a major series dedicated to African-American history (1940–1941).

His teacher Charles Alston assesses Lawrence's work in an essay for an exhibition at the Harlem YMCA 1938:[5]

Having thus far miraculously escaped the imprint of academic ideas and current vogues in art,... he has followed a course of development dictated by his own inner motivations... Working in the very limited medium of flat tempera he achieved a richness and brilliance of color harmonies both remarkable and exciting... Lawrence symbolizes more than anyone I know, the vitality, the seriousness and promise of a new and socially conscious generation of Negro artists.

On July 24, 1941, Lawrence married the painter Gwendolyn Knight, also a student of Savage. She helped prepare the gesso panels for his paintings and contributed to the captions for the paintings in his multi-painting works.[6]

The Migration Series

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Lawrence completed the 60-panel set of narrative paintings entitled The Migration of the Negro or And the Migrants Kept Coming,[7] now called the Migration Series, in 1940–41. The series portrayed the Great Migration, when hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved from the rural South to the urban North after World War I. Because he was working in tempera, which dries rapidly, he planned all the paintings in advance and then applied a single color wherever he was using it across all the scenes to maintain tonal consistency. Only then did he proceed to the next color. The series was exhibited at the Downtown Gallery in Greenwich Village, which made him the first African-American artist represented by a New York gallery. This brought him national recognition.[8] Selections from this series were featured in a 1941 issue of Fortune. The entire series was purchased jointly and divided by the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., which holds the odd-numbered paintings, and New York's Museum of Modern Art, which holds the even-numbered.

Another biographical series of twenty-two panels devoted to the abolitionist John Brown followed in 1941–42. When these pairings became too fragile to display, Lawrence, working on commission, recreated the paintings as a portfolio of silkscreen prints in 1977.[9]

In 1943, Howard Devree, wrote for The New York Times, that Lawrence in his next series of thirty images had "even more successfully concentrated his attention on the many-sided life of his people in Harlem". He called the set "an amazing social document" and wrote:[10]

Lawrence's color is fittingly vivid for his interpretations. A strong semi-abstract approach aids him in arriving at his basic or archetypal statements. Confronting this work one feels as if vouchsafed an extraordinary elemental experience. Lawrence has grown in his use of rhythm as well as in sheer design and fluency.

World War II

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In October 1943, during the Second World War, Lawrence was drafted into the United States Coast Guard and served as a public affairs specialist with the first racially integrated crew on the USCGC Sea Cloud, under Carlton Skinner.[11] He continued to paint and sketch while in the Coast Guard, documenting the experience of war around the world. He produced 48 paintings during this time, all of which have been lost. He achieved the rank of petty officer third class.

Lost works

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In October and November 1944, MoMA exhibited all 60 migration panels plus 8 of the paintings Lawrence created aboard the Sea Cloud. He posed, still in his uniform, in front of a sign that read: "Jacob Lawrence, The Migration Series and Works Created in the US Coast Guard". The Coast Guard sent the eight paintings to exhibits around the United States. In the disorder and personnel changes that came with demobilization at the end of the war they went missing.

Post-war

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In 1945, he was awarded a fellowship in the fine arts by the Guggenheim Foundation.[12] In 1946, Josef Albers recruited Lawrence to join the faculty of the summer art program at Black Mountain College.[13]

Returning to New York, Lawrence continued to paint but grew depressed; in 1949, he checked himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he remained for eleven months. Painting there, he produced his Hospital Series: works that were uncharacteristic of him in their focus of his subjects' emotional states as inpatients.

Between 1954 and 1956 Lawrence produced a 30-panel series called "Struggle: From the History of the American People" that depicted historical scenes from 1775 to 1817. The series, originally planned to include sixty panels, ranges from references to current events like the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings and relatively obscure or neglected aspects of American history, like a woman, Margaret Cochran Corbin, in combat or the wall built by unseen enslaved Blacks that protected the American forces at the Battle of New Orleans.[14] Rather than traditional titles, Lawrence labeled each panel with a quote. He titled a panel depicting Patrick Henry's famous speech with the less well-known passage: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery." A panel depicting an African American slave revolt is titled with the words of a man who sued for emancipation from slavery in 1773: "We have no property! We have no wives! No children! We have no city! No country!"[15] The fraught politics of the mid-1950s prevented the series from finding a museum purchaser, and the panels had been sold to a private collector who re-sold them as individual works.[16] Three panels (Panels 14, 20 and 29) are lost, and three others were only located in 2017, 2020, and 2021.[17] In 2021 the Peabody Essex Museum organized an exhibition all 30 of the panels including the newly discovered ones and reproductions of the works too fragile to travel or whose location is unknown.[18]

The Brooklyn Museum of Art mounted a retrospective exhibition of Lawrence's work in 1960.[19] In 1969, he was among 200 Black artists in a premier show sponsored by the Philadelphia School District and the Pennsylvania Civic Center Museum. The show featured some of the top names in the country, including Ellen Powell Tiberino, Horace Pippin, Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, Barbara Bullock, Jacob Lawrence, Benny Andrews, Roland Ayers, Romare Bearden, Avel de Knight, Barkley Hendricks, Paul Keene, Raymond Saunders, Louis B. Sloan, Ed Wilson, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Joshua Johnson.[20]

Publications

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Lawrence illustrated several works for children. Harriet and the Promised Land appeared in 1968 and used the series of paintings that told the story of Harriet Tubman.[21] It was listed as one of the year's best illustrated books by The New York Times and praised by the Boston Globe: "The author's artistic talents, sensitivity and insight into the black experience have resulted in a book that actually creates, within the reader, a spiritual experience." Two similar volumes based on his John Brown and Great Migration series followed.[22] Lawrence created illustrations for a selection of 18 of Aesop's Fables for Windmill Press in 1970, and the University of Washington Press published the full set of 23 tales in 1998.[23]

Teaching and late works

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Lawrence taught at several schools after his first stint teaching at Black Mountain College, including the New School for Social Research, the Art Students League, Pratt Institute,[24][25] and the Skowhegan School.[26] He became a visiting artist at the University of Washington in 1970 and was professor of art there from 1971 to 1986.[19] He was graduate advisor there to lithographer and abstract painter James Claussen.[27]

Shortly after moving to Washington state, Lawrence 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.[28]

He undertook several major commissions in this part of his career. In 1980, he completed Exploration, a 40-foot-long mural made of porcelain on steel, comprising a dozen panels devoted to academic endeavor. It was installed in Howard University's Blackburn Center. The Washington Post described it as "enormously sophisticated yet wholly unpretentious " and said:[29]

The colors are completely flat, but because the porcelain is layered, and because Lawrence here and there paints in strong black shadows, his mural has the look of a rich relief. It is full of visual rhymes. The small scene of John Henry, the steel drivin' man, in the final panel is echoed by an image of a sculptor in the art scene: He is hammering another spike, for quite different reasons, into a block of stone. This is not art that one tires of, for it is not the sort of work one can read at once.

Lawrence produced another series in 1983, eight screen prints called the Hiroshima Series. Commissioned to provide full-page illustrations for a new edition of a work of his choice, Lawrence chose John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946). He depicted in abstract visual language several survivors at the moment of the bombing in the midst of physical and emotional destruction.[7][30]

Lawrence's painting Theater was commissioned by the University of Washington in 1985 and installed in the main lobby of the Meany Hall for the Performing Arts.[31]

In the early 1990s Lawrence was commissioned to paint the Events in the Life of Harold Washington mural in Chicago's Harold Washington Library.

Last years and death

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The Whitney Museum of American Art produced an exhibition of Lawrence's entire career in 1974, as did the Seattle Art Museum in 1986.[19]

In 1999, he and his wife established the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation for the creation, presentation and study of American art, with a particular emphasis on work by African-American artists.[19] It represents their estates[32] and maintains a searchable archive of nearly a thousand images of their work.[33]

Lawrence continued to paint until a few weeks before his death from lung cancer on June 9, 2000, at the age of 82.[19]

Personal life

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Lawrence's wife, Gwendolyn Knight, outlived him and died in 2005 at the age of 91.[34]

Awards and honors

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The eighteen institutions that awarded Lawrence honorary degrees include Harvard University, Yale University, Howard University, Amherst College, and New York University.[19]

Legacy

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The New York Times described him as "one of America's leading modern figurative painters" and "among the most impassioned visual chroniclers of the African-American experience."[19] Shortly before his death he stated: "...for me, a painting should have three things: universality, clarity and strength. Clarity and strength so that it may be aesthetically good. Universality so that it may be understood by all men."[38]

A retrospective exhibition of Lawrence's work, planned before his death, opened at the Phillips Collection in May 2001 and travelled to the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Detroit Institute of Fine Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.[39] The exhibit was meant to coincide with the publication of Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935-1999), A Catalogue Raisonne.[40] His last commissioned public work, the mosaic mural New York in Transit made of Murano glass was installed in October 2001 in the Times Square subway station in New York City.[41][42]

In 2005, Dixie Café, a 1948 brush-and-ink drawing by Lawrence, was selected to suggest The Civil Rights Act of 1964 in a U.S. postage stamp panel commemorating milestones of the Civil Rights Movement. The stamp sheet was called To Form A More Perfect Union.[43]

In May 2007, the White House Historical Association purchased Lawrence's The Builders (1947) at auction for $2.5 million. The painting has hung in the White House Green Room since 2009.[44][45]

From 14 September 2013–13 April 2014, the Walters Art Museum exhibited Jacob Lawrence’s Genesis Series created in 1990.

From 8 October 2016–8 January 2017, The Phillips Collection exhibited People on the Move: Beauty and Struggle in Jacob Lawrence’s Migration Series.  The exhibit presented The Phillips Collection odd-numbered panels with the Museum of Modern Art’s even-numbered panels to display all 60 panels of The Migration Series.[46]

From 7 January–30 April 2017 The Phillips Collection exhibited The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, 15 silkscreen prints Lawrence created between 1986 and 1997, distilled from his 41 paintings of L’Ouverture he created at the start of his career.  To create these prints Lawrence worked with master printmaker Lou Stovall.[47]

In 2020, the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts organized Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle from Lawrence’s Struggle: From the History of the American People series created between 1954–1956.  It was the first museum exhibition of the paintings and first time the works were shown together since 1958.  It included panels found in 2020 and 2021 and reproductions of the works too fragile to travel or whose location is unknown (Panel 14, Panel 20, and Panel 29).  The exhibit was accompanied by works from contemporary artists Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas.  Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle was exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum January 18–August 9, 2020[18]; the Metropolitan Museum of Art August 29–November 1, 2020[48][49]; the Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, Alabama, November 20, 2020–February 07, 2021[50]; the Seattle Art Museum March 5–May 23, 2021[51]; and The Phillips Collection June 26–September 19, 2021[52]. The catalog was edited by Elizabeth Hutton Turner and Austen Barron Baily ISBN 978-0-295-74704-0

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 with 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."[53] The Jacob Lawrence Gallery at the University of Washington School of Art + Art History + Design offers an annual Jacob Lawrence Legacy Residency.[54]

His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the British Museum,[55] the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum,[56] the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art[57] and Reynolda House Museum of American Art, the Art Institute Chicago, the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, the Savannah College of Art and Design Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Birmingham Museum of Art,[58] the Indianapolis Museum of Art,[59] the University of Michigan Museum of Art,[60] the North Carolina Museum of Art,[61] the Princeton University Art Museum,[62] the Musei Vaticani,[63] the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering,[64] the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,[65] the Saint Louis Art Museum,[66] the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts,[67] the Studio Museum in Harlem,[68] the Philadelphia Museum of Art,[69] the Portland Art Museum,[70] the Hudson River Museum,[71] and The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

See also

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References

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[edit]
Revisions and contributorsEdit on WikipediaRead on Wikipedia

Jacob Lawrence

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from Grokipedia
Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter noted for his modernist depictions of African American life and historical figures through serialized narrative paintings. His work often employed flat colors, dynamic patterns, and concise captions to convey social and historical themes, such as the struggles of migration and . Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to Southern migrant parents, Lawrence relocated to Harlem in 1930, where he immersed himself in the vibrant artistic community influenced by the Harlem Renaissance. He received early training at the Harlem Art Workshop under Augusta Savage and later at the American Artists School, developing a style rooted in social realism that documented everyday hardships and triumphs of Black Americans. Lawrence's breakthrough came with The Migration Series (1940–1941), a 60-panel work illustrating the mass movement of African Americans from the South to Northern cities, which gained national acclaim and was acquired by major institutions like the Museum of Modern Art in 1942, marking him as the first Black artist to achieve such recognition amid segregation. Other seminal series included portrayals of Toussaint L'Ouverture's , Harriet Tubman's efforts, and Frederick Douglass's abolitionist legacy, emphasizing resilience against oppression through vivid, episodic storytelling. In 1941, he became the first African American artist represented by a New York commercial gallery, the Downtown Gallery, expanding his influence. Lawrence later taught at institutions including and the , where he held a position from 1971 until retirement, mentoring generations while continuing to produce works in various media; he received the in 1990 for his contributions.

Early Life

Childhood and Family Influences

Jacob Lawrence was born Jacob Armstead Lawrence on September 7, 1917, in , to parents Jacob and Rosa Lee Lawrence, who had migrated northward from the rural South—his mother from , and the family origins tied to and regions—as part of the early waves of the Great Migration seeking economic opportunities beyond Jim Crow restrictions. By 1919, the family relocated to Easton, Pennsylvania, a hub for steel and coal industries where Lawrence's father pursued work, but economic instability persisted amid the post-World War I landscape. In 1924, when Lawrence was seven, his parents separated, prompting his mother to move the children—Lawrence and his two siblings, including sister Geraldine—to , where she placed them in foster care while seeking employment to support the family. Rosa Lee then ventured alone to , New York, in 1927, drawn by prospects in the burgeoning Black urban community during a period of widespread family disruptions and poverty for Southern migrants. Demonstrating resilience, Rosa Lee saved to reunite the family in by 1930, when Lawrence was thirteen, settling at 142 West 143rd Street amid the economic hardships of the , which exacerbated challenges for working-class Black households like theirs, reliant on precarious labor in service and domestic sectors. These repeated migrations and separations instilled in Lawrence an early awareness of familial perseverance, community interdependence, and the harsh realities of urban adaptation for displaced Southern families, shaping his observations of labor struggles and social bonds without formal structure.

Introduction to Art and Harlem Environment

Jacob Lawrence arrived in around 1929 at the age of twelve, joining his mother in the neighborhood that served as a hub for during the late and . Exposed to the dynamic street life, including bustling sidewalks, community gatherings, and the rhythms of urban existence amid the , Lawrence drew inspiration from the everyday scenes of 's residents navigating economic hardship and cultural vibrancy. This environment, shaped by the aftermath of the Great Migration, provided raw material for his emerging artistic interests, reflecting the resilience and collective experiences of Black Americans in the city. At the Utopia Children's Center, an after-school program in , Lawrence received his initial encouragement in art through informal activities led by instructor . Beginning around age twelve, he engaged in self-directed , experimenting with simple geometric patterns and constructing diorama-like scenes using readily available materials such as corrugated cardboard boxes. These early efforts were self-motivated, stemming from his observations of the neighborhood's patterns in fabrics, wallpapers, and , rather than structured lessons, fostering a personal approach to representation before more formal workshops. The , including prominent local figures like sculptor who established art spaces in the area by 1931, further stimulated Lawrence's curiosity about artistic expression. Churches, street vendors, and social interactions offered vivid subjects that captured the essence of Black urban life, influencing his thematic focus on community narratives without yet delving into professional techniques or historical series. This period laid the groundwork for Lawrence's use of surrounding realities as artistic fodder, emphasizing direct engagement with his environment over external training.

Artistic Development

Training and Early Influences

Lawrence received his initial structured art training in the early 1930s through after-school programs and workshops in , including classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, which operated under the auspices of the (WPA) starting around 1934 at the 135th Street Branch of the . There, he honed basic techniques in a collaborative environment that emphasized practical skill-building amid the economic constraints of the . He further developed under the guidance of and Henry Bannarn in their shared studio workspace, known as the Alston-Bannarn workshop, which relocated to 306 West 141st Street after the initial WPA phase and functioned as a guild-like hub for emerging s. , a formally trained with a background from , served as Lawrence's primary mentor from his teenage years, providing encouragement and technical instruction while fostering a supportive atmosphere for experimentation. This mentorship extended to exposure to diverse influences, including African sculptures collected by Alston and the modernist styles of European painters such as and , which Lawrence encountered through reproductions and discussions in the studio. Complementing his studio practice, Lawrence immersed himself in historical research at the 135th Street Library—later the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture—where he accessed rare books, clippings, and documents on African American figures and events, shaping his methodical approach to selecting and interpreting biographical subjects for artistic exploration. This self-directed scholarship, conducted over extended periods, emphasized factual grounding drawn from primary sources, bridging his technical training with a commitment to narrative-driven representation.

Breakthrough with Historical Series

In 1937, at the age of twenty, Jacob Lawrence began his first major narrative series, The Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture, consisting of 41 tempera panels depicting the Haitian revolutionary's role in establishing the first Black republic in the Western Hemisphere. Lawrence accompanied each panel with concise captions, drawing from historical research to create a serialized format that rendered complex events in an accessible, sequential story akin to illustrated chronicles. This approach marked an innovation in form, prioritizing rhythmic visual storytelling through flattened perspectives, bold colors, and patterned compositions over isolated portraits, enabling viewers to grasp historical causality through progression rather than static scenes. Lawrence followed this with the series in 1939, comprising 32 panels that traced the abolitionist's life from enslavement to advocacy, and the series around 1939–1940, which highlighted the conductor's Underground Railroad efforts in similarly captioned panels. These works extended the serialized method, using narrative cycles to democratize Black history for broad audiences, including working-class communities in , by integrating textual summaries with modernist abstraction. The Toussaint L'Ouverture series received early professional acclaim when exhibited in full at the in 1939 as part of the Contemporary Negro Art show, occupying an entire gallery and drawing significant attention for its vivid depiction of anti-colonial struggle. This exposure, organized by the Baltimore Museum alongside other emerging African American artists, signified institutional recognition of Lawrence's technique in blending historical rigor with innovative panel sequencing.

Major Works and Career Milestones

The Migration Series

Lawrence completed The Migration Series, a cycle of 60 paintings on measuring 12 by 18 inches each, between 1940 and 1941. He began researching the subject in 1939 at the 135th Street Library in , drawing from historical accounts of the Great Migration—the movement of over 1.6 million from the rural South to northern cities between 1910 and 1930, with a primary focus on the 1916–1930 phase spurred by labor demands. Lawrence took extensive notes from texts documenting migration causes and compiled captions for each panel to narrate the story sequentially, emphasizing factual events over personal interpretation. The series depicts push factors in the South, such as the infestation that destroyed cotton crops starting around 1915, exacerbating poverty and debts for Black farmers, alongside and discriminatory laws. Pull factors included industrial job opportunities in northern factories, where labor shortages from the war created openings; for instance, panel captions reference doubled food prices in the South due to wartime exports contrasted with wage labor prospects in cities like and . These elements align with data showing a surge in Black urban populations: Chicago's Black residents grew from 44,000 in 1910 to over 234,000 by 1930, driven by verifiable economic incentives rather than abstract ideals. Following its debut exhibition at New York's Downtown Gallery in 1941, the series gained critical attention, with 26 panels reproduced in the November 1941 issue of Fortune magazine. In 1942, amid acclaim for its documentary precision, The Museum of Modern Art acquired the even-numbered panels, while The Phillips Collection purchased the odd-numbered ones, marking the first joint acquisition of a major work by an African American artist by prominent institutions and ensuring the series' preservation as a unified narrative despite physical separation. This event underscored Lawrence's emergence as a chronicler of empirical historical forces shaping demographic shifts. In October 1943, Jacob Lawrence was drafted into the , which was then operating under the during . Initially assigned as a Steward's Mate in a racially segregated unit at , he performed menial duties typical for Black servicemen, including cooking and cleaning, amid pervasive discrimination. His artistic talent was soon recognized by superiors, leading to his reassignment as a combat artist aboard the USS , a weather patrol ship with an integrated crew that included prominent Black figures like Captain Hugh Block and Lieutenant Richard Austin. Lawrence served until his discharge in 1945, documenting daily operations such as deck scrubbing, patrols, and lookout duties, which exposed him to the harsh realities of naval life and interracial dynamics at sea. During his service, Lawrence produced the War Series, a collection of watercolors and gouaches capturing the regimentation, camaraderie, and displacement of routine, with a focus on sailors' essential yet often unacknowledged roles in ship maintenance and operations. Works like Lookout from the Gun Platform and Holystoning depict the physical labor and vigilance required aboard ship, emphasizing the contributions of African American personnel in supporting wartime efforts despite systemic barriers. These paintings shifted his thematic emphasis toward immediate personal experience and institutional inequities within the military, contrasting his pre-war historical narratives by foregrounding contemporary racial hierarchies in service. The series highlighted overlooked aspects of Black involvement in the war, such as the integrated yet tense environment on , where Lawrence observed both cooperation and underlying racism that contributed to psychological strain among Black crew members. Exhibited shortly after his discharge at the Institute of Modern Art in in March 1945, the works drew attention to these themes, portraying not frontline combat but the vital, behind-the-scenes labor that sustained naval operations. This output marked a direct link between his military duties and artistic production, using vivid, flattened forms to convey the monotony and resilience of service life.

Other Key Series and Themes

In the mid-1950s, Lawrence produced Struggle: From the History of the American People, a series of 30 tempera panels completed between 1954 and 1956, which examined conflicts and contributions during the and early republic from 1770 to 1817. The panels incorporated diverse historical actors, including abolitionist John Brown and lesser-known figures among women and people of color who influenced national founding, using angular forms and vibrant colors to convey clashing forces and collective agency in nation-building. Lawrence described the work's intent as depicting "the struggles of a people to create a nation," amid the era's McCarthyism and emerging civil rights tensions. From the 1970s onward, Lawrence explored the Builders theme in multiple paintings and prints, portraying manual laborers—such as carpenters, masons, and welders—as symbols of constructive resilience and communal progress, often in abstracted compositions highlighting physical exertion and urban environments. Works like Builders No. 1 (1972, watercolor and ) and later iterations, including a 1998 series of twelve paintings, extended this motif into the 1980s and 1990s, reflecting Lawrence's view of ordinary workers as foundational to societal advancement. These pieces emphasized determination and skill over adversity, aligning with his broader depictions of human endeavor in series like Struggle. Lawrence revisited Haitian revolutionary history in the 1980s through serigraph prints adapting his earlier Toussaint L'Ouverture series, producing sets from 1986 to 1997 that chronicled the life of Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743–1803), the former enslaved leader who orchestrated Haiti's independence from French rule in 1804, establishing the first independent Black republic. Comprising 15 screenprints in one portfolio, these works traced L'Ouverture's rise from enslavement to military command and capture, using bold narratives to underscore strategic leadership and emancipation's causal chains rather than defeat. This iteration built on his 1937–1938 original of 41 panels, maintaining a focus on revolutionary agency amid global anti-colonial contexts. Across these cycles, Lawrence's thematic scope extended beyond specific migrations or wars to portray Black and working-class figures as proactive drivers of historical outcomes, prioritizing resilience, , and transformative action in narratives of .

Lost Works and Rediscoveries

During his U.S. service from 1943 to 1945, Jacob Lawrence produced approximately 48 paintings documenting daily life, regimentation, and racial dynamics aboard the USS Sea Cloud, the first racially integrated U.S. warship. Nearly all of these works were lost or destroyed after the war, with only sketches and photographic records surviving in archives such as those from a 1944 exhibition. One extant piece from this period, War Series: Reported Missing (1945), depicts the regimentation and displacement experienced by servicemen and is held by the of American Art. Several panels from Lawrence's Struggle... From the History of the American People series (1954–1956), a 30-panel on American democratic tensions, were unlocated for decades due to the artist's practice of retaining works in personal or private holdings. Panel No. 16, illustrating of 1786–1787 as an uprising of indebted farmers, was rediscovered in October 2020 when a visitor recognized it hanging unrecognized in a New York neighbor's apartment; it joined the exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle after authentication. Similarly, Panel No. 19 from the same series resurfaced in early 2018 and was auctioned at Swann Galleries on April 5, 2018, highlighting the challenges of tracking artist-retained materials dispersed through sales or inheritance. A second Struggle panel was identified in March 2021 by a nurse in who, prompted by news of the Panel 16 find, realized a work in her possession matched descriptions of a missing piece; it depicts themes of American strife and was verified through archival comparison. These recoveries underscore the vulnerability of mid-20th-century artworks held outside institutional collections, often reliant on public appeals and photographic archives for identification rather than systematic inventories. No rediscoveries have been documented for the Migration Series (1940–1941), which remains largely intact across the Museum of Modern Art and Phillips Collection.

Later Career

Post-War Productions and Publications

Following his discharge from military service in 1945, Lawrence received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete the War Series, after which he pursued commissions for larger-scale paintings amenable to public and institutional settings. In 1947, Fortune magazine commissioned ten works illustrating post-war conditions in the American South, emphasizing economic hardships and social dynamics among African Americans; these were reproduced with accompanying text in the magazine's August 1948 issue. This project marked an expansion in format and thematic focus on contemporary regional issues, distinct from his earlier historical narratives. Lawrence extended his narrative style into illustrated publications, providing gouache illustrations for Langston Hughes's poetry collection One-Way Ticket in 1949, which evoked urban migration and resilience through paired visual-poetic storytelling. By the 1960s, he adapted historical themes for younger audiences, authoring rhythmic verse and creating tempera illustrations for the children's book Harriet and the Promised Land (1968), which chronicled Harriet Tubman's Underground Railroad efforts in 15 panels of bold, flattened forms and vivid hues. These works disseminated his signature approach via accessible formats, influencing educational materials on African American history. In interviews and statements, Lawrence characterized his method as "dynamic cubism," highlighting angular compositions, rhythmic patterns, and saturated colors inspired by Harlem's and daily life rather than European precedents, as a means to convey collective struggle and vitality. This self-description underscored his emphasis on visual energy to narrate social realities, evident in reproductions across magazines, books, and exhibition catalogs that amplified his output beyond canvas.

Teaching Roles and Institutional Impact

Lawrence began his formal teaching career with a summer appointment at in in 1947, invited by painter to instruct students in an experimental, interdisciplinary environment. This role marked an early instance of his integration into avant-garde academic circles, where his focus on narrative painting and social themes influenced the college's emphasis on collaborative arts education. From 1955 to 1970, Lawrence served on the faculty of in , New York, initially teaching design and before his promotion to full professor in 1970, a position he held until departing for the West Coast. In 1971, he joined the in as a full professor of art, where he taught painting and mentored students until his retirement in 1983, continuing part-time as professor emeritus shortly thereafter. These appointments, secured amid widespread in higher education and , exemplified Lawrence's transcendence of institutional barriers through demonstrated artistic excellence, as he became one of the first African American painters to hold tenured professorships at predominantly white institutions. In his teaching, Lawrence prioritized mentorship of emerging artists, particularly those from underrepresented backgrounds, advocating a disciplined approach rooted in historical research and structured narrative over spontaneous expressive abstraction. He encouraged students to ground their work in factual inquiry and thematic rigor, mirroring his own method of compiling extensive notes and sources for series like The Migration Series. This philosophy contributed to his lasting institutional impact, fostering generations of artists committed to socially engaged, and helping to diversify art department faculties and curricula during a period of gradual desegregation.

Final Years and Death

In 1999, Lawrence completed works such as the serigraph Play, demonstrating his ongoing artistic productivity in Seattle. Despite advancing age and health challenges, he maintained a studio practice, experimenting with form and composition in his paintings. Lawrence suffered a stroke in 2000, which resulted in aphasia that impaired his speech. He continued painting until a few weeks prior to his death, focusing on commissions and personal explorations amid these limitations. On June 9, 2000, Lawrence died at his home in at the age of 82, following a battle with . His widow, artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, managed his estate through the Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, which preserves and promotes his oeuvre.

Personal Life

Marriage and Relationships

Lawrence first encountered Gwendolyn Knight, a fellow artist, in 1934 at the Art Workshop under the instruction of . The two artists married in 1941 after several years of acquaintance, embarking on a trip to New Orleans shortly thereafter. Their union endured for 59 years, marked by mutual support until Lawrence's death in 2000, with Knight surviving him until 2005; the couple had no children. Knight contributed significantly to the stewardship of Lawrence's artistic legacy, including efforts to safeguard and document his oeuvre amid relocations and life's transitions. In 1971, the pair jointly moved from New York to , Washington, following Lawrence's appointment to a tenured professorship at the , where they established their later home base. This relocation underscored their shared commitment to adapting to new environments while maintaining personal and professional stability. Biographical accounts reveal scant details on prior or extramarital relationships for either Lawrence or Knight, reflecting a deliberate emphasis on in their public personas amid the demands of artistic and . Their partnership remained the central documented personal bond, characterized by interdependence without evident public discord.

Health Challenges

In July 1949, Jacob Lawrence voluntarily committed himself to Hillside Hospital, a psychiatric facility in , New York, seeking treatment for severe depression precipitated by professional stress, exhaustion, and self-doubt following his service and early career pressures. He remained hospitalized for approximately nine months, during which clinical intervention addressed his acute symptoms. Contemporary medical correspondence suggested an initial suspicion of , though primary accounts emphasize depression as the core , with effective management enabling Lawrence's sustained productivity thereafter. No evidence indicates recurrent institutionalization or debilitating long-term impairment; biographical records document his resilience, as he navigated subsequent decades without reported psychiatric crises derailing his professional trajectory. In his final years, Lawrence contended with age-related mobility limitations, occasionally requiring a , alongside terminal diagnosed in 1997, from which he succumbed on June 9, 2000.

Artistic Style and Techniques

Methods and Materials

Lawrence primarily utilized casein , an opaque, water-soluble paint derived from milk protein, valued for its quick-drying properties that facilitated rapid execution across multiple panels. This medium, applied in flat, unmodulated fields of bold color, produced vibrant yet matte finishes suitable for his narrative clarity, often on , , or gessoed supports to maintain affordability during his early career amid limited resources. , a similar opaque watercolor variant, supplemented tempera in later works for its portability and , particularly in smaller formats or prints. His production process emphasized for stylistic consistency: after researching historical events and drafting concise captions—typically 5-10 words per panel derived from sources—he sketched compositions across all panels in a series before . Panels were then painted en masse, layer by layer, starting with foundational hues like black or ivory and progressing through colors such as blue and red, ensuring uniform application without blending to preserve geometric forms and visual rhythm. This methodical layering, often dragging paint with brushes for crisp edges, minimized inconsistencies in multi-panel works like the 1940-1941 Migration Series, comprising 60 panels each approximately 12 by 18 inches. Over time, Lawrence adapted techniques to larger commissions, scaling from portable small-format panels to site-specific murals using similar tempera bases but on reinforced surfaces like Masonite for durability, as seen in WPA-era projects. By the 1960s, he incorporated acrylics for murals and screenprinting processes, leveraging silkscreens with underlays to replicate tempera's flatness in editions, though retaining preparatory sketches and caption integration for narrative cohesion. These evolutions prioritized practical while upholding the core opacity and speed of his foundational materials.

Narrative Approach and Visual Innovations

Lawrence employed a sequential, episodic structure in his multi-panel series to convey historical narratives, tracing causal chains from origins to consequences. In The Migration Series (1940–1941), comprising 60 panels, he depicted the exodus of over 1.5 million from the rural South to northern cities between 1916 and 1930, beginning with precipitating factors such as lynchings, floods, and the infestation that destroyed cotton crops, progressing through the arduous journeys via trains and steamships, and culminating in the social dislocations and community formations in urban centers like . Each panel included a concise caption drawn from Lawrence's research in historical texts, functioning as textual anchors to reinforce the progression and underscore cause-and-effect dynamics, such as how labor demands in northern factories during accelerated the northward flow. This method echoed epic storytelling traditions while adapting them to visual form, prioritizing collective movement over isolated events. To evoke the inexorable momentum of historical processes, Lawrence integrated repetition of motifs, patterns, and compositional elements across panels, simulating rhythmic progression and interconnected causality. In The Migration Series, recurring symbols like trains, ladders, chains, and silhouetted figures in motion created a that mirrored the mass scale and chain reactions of migration, where individual hardships compounded into broader societal shifts. Similarly, in series on figures like or Toussaint L'Ouverture, repeated angular forms and directional lines propelled the viewer through sequences of struggle and resistance, emphasizing how personal agency catalyzed group transformations rather than static biographies. This technique avoided linear chronology in favor of thematic echoes, heightening the sense of inevitability in historical causality without relying on photographic fidelity. Lawrence's visual innovations centered on what he termed "dynamic ," a synthesis of flattened geometric forms, bold color contrasts, and overlapping planes derived from European but infused with influences from African sculpture's stylized masks and Mexican muralists' monumental narratives for greater accessibility and universality. Rejecting photorealism's emphasis on detail, he employed abstracted, generalized figures to distill truths, critiquing hyper-personalized representation in favor of archetypes that embodied communal experiences and broader social forces. This approach, with its vibrant palettes and dynamic compositions, rendered historical events as timeless patterns rather than anecdotal snapshots, enabling viewers to grasp essential causal structures through simplified yet expressive visuals.

Reception and Critical Assessment

Awards and Honors

In 1942, Lawrence became the first African American artist to have works enter the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, with the acquisition of thirteen panels from his Migration Series by MoMA and the remaining twenty-six by the Phillips Memorial Gallery (now The Phillips Collection). Lawrence received a in 1946, which supported the creation of his War Series, a fourteen-panel depiction of African American soldiers' experiences in . In 1970, he was awarded the NAACP's for his contributions to depicting through art. Lawrence earned the Washington State Governor's Arts and Heritage Award in 1984, recognizing his impact as a resident artist and educator. He received the NAACP's Annual Great Black Artists Award in 1988. In 1990, President presented Lawrence with the , the highest honor for artistic achievement conferred by the U.S. government. Throughout his career, Lawrence was granted eighteen honorary degrees from universities, including and .

Contemporary and Later Critiques

Lawrence's Migration Series (1940–1941) earned contemporary praise for rendering the Great Migration's historical events in a visually democratic manner, transforming complex socio-economic shifts into a accessible beyond elite audiences through its episodic structure and bold, flattened forms. Art critics highlighted how the series' captions, drawn from historical research, positioned it as a form of pictorial that elevated everyday experiences to the level of national chronicle. This approach was seen as innovative in countering mainstream omissions of agency in American history, with panels depicting both Southern oppressions—like and —and Northern disillusionments, such as labor exploitation. Critiques, however, emerged regarding the series' stylized simplicity, which employed broad color blocks and reduced figures to essentialized silhouettes, potentially flattening multifaceted historical causality into schematic vignettes that prioritized emotional impact over granular detail. Some observers noted this aesthetic—self-described by Lawrence as suited to "strong" subjects—could render depictions as childlike or primitivized, contrasting with the perceived sophistication of white contemporaries' abstractions and risking an under-nuanced portrayal of events. For instance, while the series addressed Northern housing barriers through generalized overcrowding imagery, it omitted explicit references to restrictive covenants, legal tools enforcing segregation that critically shaped migrants' urban realities, thereby selectively framing without full causal specificity. Post-1960s reassessments, amid the shift from Civil Rights integrationism to Black Power's emphasis on and militant , interrogated Lawrence's harmonious, multi-racial historical integrations—evident in series like Struggle: From the History of the American People (1955–1956)—as potentially misaligned with demands for uncompromised or iconographic power symbols. Scholars observed that his focus on collective adversity and redemptive struggle, while resonant in earlier eras, underemphasized triumphant entrepreneurial formations in Northern Black enclaves, such as business districts that emerged despite barriers, favoring instead a persistent motif of heroic over socioeconomic ascent. This selectivity, rooted in Lawrence's research into push factors like devastation and judicial bias, was critiqued for sidelining migrants' agency in pull-driven economic opportunism, contributing to a arc that amplified victimhood dynamics at the expense of self-interested mobility.

Achievements Versus Limitations

Lawrence's Migration Series (1940–1941), comprising 60 tempera panels depicting the exodus of over 1.6 million African Americans from the rural South to northern cities between 1910 and 1940, marked a pioneering integration of Black historical narratives into mainstream American art, gaining acclaim for its vivid portrayal of collective struggle and resilience. This achievement extended to his Toussaint L'Ouverture Series (1937), which elevated Haitian revolutionary history through serialized storytelling, distinguishing him as one of the earliest African American artists to secure institutional validation, including representation by a New York gallery in 1941 at age 24. His emphasis on accessible, episodic formats—drawing from Harlem Renaissance influences—enhanced public engagement, as evidenced by the series' role in community education and its reproduction in Fortune magazine, broadening reach beyond elite audiences. However, Lawrence's adherence to casein tempera on paper or cardboard imposed constraints on durability and scale relative to contemporaries like , whose collages and oils allowed for layered textures and larger compositions resilient to environmental factors; tempera's fast-drying nature precluded extensive reworking, potentially limiting iterative depth in execution. Formalist critiques highlighted weaknesses in abstract sophistication, arguing that his "dynamic cubism"—with flattened forms and bold color blocks—prioritized illustrative narrative over nuanced spatial or tonal exploration, reducing complexity in favor of social messaging. Bearden's improvisational jazz-like structures, by contrast, integrated for greater formal experimentation, underscoring Lawrence's relative restraint in medium versatility. Empirical metrics of influence, such as the Migration Series' domestic exhibitions at institutions like MoMA and the Phillips Collection, affirm strong U.S. impact through over 30 major showings by 2000, yet reveal gaps in pre-2000s international exposure, with limited overseas circulation compared to Bearden's broader global collages; Lawrence's works, often small-scale (typically 12–18 inches), constrained monumental installations abroad until post-millennial reassessments. His strengths in galvanizing public discourse on racial history thus coexisted with artistic trade-offs in technical permanence and cosmopolitan reach, reflecting causal trade-offs between thematic immediacy and formal endurance.

Legacy and Ongoing Influence

Cultural and Artistic Impact

Lawrence's narrative series, such as the 1941 Migration Series, established a model for social realist painters by combining historical documentation with modernist abstraction, influencing subsequent artists to depict African American experiences through sequential storytelling rather than isolated scenes. This approach elevated the narrative series as a respected genre in American art, drawing from influences like Mexican muralists but adapting them to emphasize Black resilience and migration, which resonated in post-World War II visual histories. His works have been integrated into American history curricula, particularly for illustrating the Great Migration and figures like and , providing empirical visual evidence of Black contributions to U.S. narratives that traditional texts often overlooked. This educational adoption underscores his role in fostering causal understanding of social movements, with series like the Toussaint L'Ouverture paintings (–) serving as precedents for thematic depth in public school resources on resistance and liberation. Lawrence's serialized format prefigured elements of graphic novels and public murals by prioritizing accessible, episodic narratives that blend text-like captions with bold, geometric visuals, impacting community-based art projects that chronicle collective histories. For instance, his influence is evident in murals depicting everyday Black life, extending the social realist tradition into urban public spaces without relying on monumental scale. Posthumously, tributes from peers like Jack Levine highlighted Lawrence's enduring stylistic innovation, while surging market values—such as the 2018 auction of The Businessmen (1947) for $6.1 million—demonstrate his canonization among top African American artists, reflecting institutional recognition of his cultural permeation beyond niche audiences.

Recent Exhibitions and Scholarly Reassessments

In 2020, the presented "Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle," reuniting 27 of the 30 panels from the artist's "Struggle: From the History of the American People" series (1954–1956) for the first time in over 60 years, with the exhibition running from August 29 to November 1. The display highlighted Lawrence's narrative of American history through figures exerting agency amid conflict, including the discovery of two long-missing panels during the exhibition's preparation, one depicting an 18th-century farmers' uprising. The debuted Lawrence's "Nigeria" series (1964–1965) in the exhibition "Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club" from November 2022 to February 2023, marking the first public reunion of its 10 panels since their creation during the artist's Fulbright-funded stay in . This show paired the works—depicting Nigerian markets, communities, and spiritual practices—with African modernist , underscoring Lawrence's cross-cultural influences. In , KAdE hosted the first retrospective overview of Lawrence's oeuvre from September 27, 2025, to January 4, 2026, featuring key series to emphasize his modernist synthesis of narrative and abstraction. Scholarly attention post-2000 has shifted toward Lawrence's depictions of individual agency and resilience, as evidenced in analyses of the "Struggle" series, which reinterprets U.S. history by centering overlooked in events like the and Civil War, rather than collective victimhood. These exhibitions have prompted neutral reevaluations of his work as a of proactive historical engagement, supported by archival rediscoveries that reveal Lawrence's research-driven . Digitization initiatives, including the full scanning of Lawrence's papers by the Archives of American Art in 2007 and online platforms for series like "The Migration Series," have broadened scholarly access to preparatory materials and variants, facilitating empirical studies of his iterative techniques. Conservation efforts, such as the 2024 treatment of the "Life of Toussaint L'Ouverture" series at the Amistad Research Center, have preserved paintings vulnerable to flaking, enabling sustained analysis. Concurrently, values have surged, with works averaging over $5 million in recent sales and records like $6.1 million for "The Businessmen" (1946) in 2018 reflecting heightened market recognition of his historical specificity.

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  125. https://www.kunsthalkade.nl/en/exhibitions/jacob-lawrence/
  126. https://ccaha.org/news/amistad-research-centers-life-toussaint-louverture-jacob-lawrence
  127. https://www.artsy.net/artist/jacob-lawrence/auction-results
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