Join Castle Hill for an evening learning about the work and life of Jacob Lawrence. This event will take place on the back deck of the barn at Edgewood Farm.
Artist Jacob Lawrence with panels 26 and 27 from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954-56. Copyright Robert W. Kelley/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
Jacob Lawrence, (born September 7, 1917, Atlantic City, New Jersey, U.S.—died June 9, 2000, Seattle, Washington), was an American painter of the 20th century whose works, frequently done in series using tempera or gouache on paper or cardboard, portray scenes of Black life and history with vivid stylized realism.
Lawrence was the son of Southern migrants. After his parents separated, he and his siblings were put into foster care, and after three years they moved to the Harlem section of New York City to live with their mother. Lawrence attended free art classes at Utopia Children’s House, where he showed a talent for creating lively decorative masks, a motif that would later figure strongly in his narrative painting. At the Harlem Art Workshop (sponsored by the Works Progress Administration [WPA]) in 1932, he studied under Charles H. Alston. Through Alston, he met artists and writers associated with the Harlem Renaissance, including Augusta Savage, Aaron Douglas, Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright.
The abstract figures and flat primary colours that would become the hallmarks of Lawrence’s style are already evident in his early works, which document life in Harlem. In the late 1930s he began several series of small-scale tempera paintings on Black history, including 41 works on the life of Toussaint L’Ouverture (1938), leader of the Haitian independence movement; 32 pieces on Frederick Douglass (1939); and 31 paintings on Harriet Tubman (1940). - britannica.com
Jacob Lawrence, We crossed the river at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton… the night was excessively severe…which the men bore without the least murmur… - Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776, Panel 10, 1954, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954 - 56, egg tempera on hardboard. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 2003.414. Copyright The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Jacob Lawrence…is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? — Patrick Henry, 1775, Panel 1, 1955, from Struggle: From the History of the American People, 1954 - 56. Egg tempera on hardboard. Collection of Harvey and Harvey-Ann Ross. Copyright Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo by Bob Packert/PEM.
Lydia Gordon is a specialist in modern and contemporary art. At the Peabody Essex Museum, she is the coordinating curator for the nationally touring and critically acclaimed exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle (2020-2021).
Harvey Ross is the collector of the majority of the panels from Lawrence’s Struggle series and has studied the works for the past twenty-five years.
