Editing Jacob Lawrence (section)

=== Career ===
[[File:Toussaint at Ennery 1989.jpeg|right|thumb|''[[Toussaint Louverture|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 Louverture|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:<ref>{{cite book | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=BMiFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36 | page = 36 | title = Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence | first = Patricia | last = Hills | publisher = University of California Press | date = 2019 | isbn = 9780520305502 | access-date = August 26, 2020 | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093349/https://books.google.com/books?id=BMiFDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA36 | url-status = live }}</ref>
{{Blockquote|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.<ref>{{cite web | access-date = August 25, 2020 | title = Exploring Stories: Picturing Narratives | url-status= live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180323231350/http://whitney.org/www/jacoblawrence/meet/picturing_narratives.html | archive-date= March 23, 2018 | url = https://whitney.org/www/jacoblawrence/meet/picturing_narratives.html | website= Whitney Museum of American Art | date= 2002}}</ref>

==== ''The Migration Series'' ====
Lawrence completed the 60-panel set of narrative paintings entitled ''The Migration of the Negro'' or ''And the Migrants Kept Coming'',<ref name=umich>{{cite web | url = https://exchange.umma.umich.edu/resources/24681 | title = Jacob Lawrence, ''Hiroshima Series'' | website = [[University of Michigan Museum of Art]] | access-date = 30 October 2020 }}</ref> now called the ''[[Migration Series]]'', in 1940–41. The series portrayed the [[Great Migration (African American)|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 [[Edith Halpert|Downtown Gallery]] in Greenwich Village, which made him the first African-American artist represented by a New York gallery. This brought him national recognition.<ref>{{cite web | url = http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/migration-series |title= Migration Series | access-date = August 18, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20140613045134/http://www.phillipscollection.org/collection/migration-series |archive-date=June 13, 2014 |publisher = Phillips Collection}}</ref> Selections from this series were featured in a 1941 issue of ''[[Fortune (magazine)|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 [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionist]] [[John Brown (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.<ref name=smith>{{cite web | access-date = August 26, 2020 | url = https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/jacob-lawrence-john-brown | website = Smithsonian American Art Museum | title = Oh Freedom! Jacob Lawrence | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093349/https://americanart.si.edu/education/oh-freedom/jacob-lawrence-john-brown | url-status = live }}</ref>

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:<ref>{{cite news | work = The New York Times | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/05/16/issue.html | date = May 16, 1943 | access-date = August 25, 2020 | title = From a Reviewer's Notebook | first = Howard | last = Devree | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093350/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1943/05/16/issue.html | url-status = live }}</ref>
{{Blockquote|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 ====
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 (WPG-284)|USCGC ''Sea Cloud'']], under [[Carlton Skinner]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.uscg.mil/history/FAQS/Jacob_Lawrence.html|title=Jacob Lawrence, USCG biography|access-date=March 3, 2008|archive-date=October 6, 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141006151625/http://www.uscg.mil/history/FAQS/Jacob_Lawrence.html|url-status=live}}</ref> 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====
In October and November 1944, [[Museum of Modern Art|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 ====
In 1945, he was awarded a fellowship in the fine arts by the [[John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation|Guggenheim Foundation]].<ref name=gug/>
In 1946, [[Josef Albers]] recruited Lawrence to join the faculty of the summer art program at [[Black Mountain College]].<ref>{{cite book | page= 638 | title = American Education, the Metropolitan Experience, 1876-1980 | first = Lawrence | last = Cremin | author-link = Lawrence Cremin | date = 1988 | publisher = Harper & Row}}</ref>

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]].<ref>{{cite news | date= September 17, 2020|last1=Elujoba |first1=Yinka |title=Jacob Lawrence, Peering Through History's Cracks |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/17/arts/design/jacob-lawrence-metropolitan-museum.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=22 October 2020}}</ref> Rather than traditional titles, Lawrence labeled each panel with a quote. He titled a panel depicting Patrick Henry's [[Give me liberty or give me death!|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!"<ref>{{cite news | access-date = October 22, 2020 | url = https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-jacob-lawrence-painted-radical-history-struggle-180974072/ | work = Smithsonian Magazine | date= January 28, 2020 | first = Brigit | last= Katz | title = How Jacob Lawrence Painted a Radical History of the American Struggle }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Sheets |first1=Hilarie M. |title=Jacob Lawrence Painting, Missing for Decades, Is Found by Met Visitor | date= October 21, 2020 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/design/jacob-lawrence-painting-found.html |work=The New York Times |access-date=22 October 2020}}</ref> Three panels (Panels 14, 20 and 29) are lost, and three others were only located in 2017, 2020, and 2021.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/01/arts/design/jacob-lawrence-painting-resurfaces.html|title=Lightning Strikes Twice: Another Lost Jacob Lawrence Surfaces|first=Hilarie M.|last=Sheets|newspaper=The New York Times|date=March 1, 2021}}</ref>

The [[Brooklyn Museum of Art]] mounted a retrospective exhibition of Lawrence's work in 1960.<ref name=nytobit/> 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 L. Hendricks|Barkley Hendricks]], Paul Keene, [[Raymond Saunders (artist)|Raymond Saunders]], [[Louis B. Sloan]], [[Ed Wilson (artist)|Ed Wilson]], [[Henry Ossawa Tanner]] and [[Joshua Johnson (painter)|Joshua Johnson]].<ref>{{Cite news |last=Donohoe |first=Victoria |date=1969-12-14 |title=Impressive Exhibit by Afro-Americans |work=Philadelphia Inquirer |agency=via newspapers.com. |url=https://www.newspapers.com/image/169131720/ |access-date=2023-01-13}}</ref>

==== Publications ====
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.<ref>{{cite news | work = [[The New York Times]] | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/11/17/317683372.html | date = November 17, 1968 | access-date = August 17, 2020 | first = Hilton | last = Kramer | title = For Young Readers | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093350/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1968/11/17/317683372.html | url-status = live }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news | work = The New York Times | access-date = August 17, 2020 | url = https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1994/02/13/059048.html | date = February 13, 1994 | title = Children's Books; Black History | first = Connie | last = Porter | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093351/https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1994/02/13/059048.html | url-status = live }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news | work =The New York Times | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1998/03/15/books/children-s-books-bookshelf-891088.html | access-date = August 17, 2020 | date = March 15, 1998 | title = Children's Books; Bookshelf }}</ref>

==== Teaching and late works ====
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]],<ref>{{cite book | page = 148 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Ite8ZY4qRggC&pg=PA148 | title = Tales from the Easel: American Narrative Paintings from Southeastern Museums, Circa 1800-1950 | date = 2004 | publisher = University of Georgia Press | first = Charles C. | last = Eldredge |isbn = 9780820325699| access-date = August 26, 2020 | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093403/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ite8ZY4qRggC&pg=PA148 | url-status = live }}</ref><ref>{{cite news | access-date = August 18, 2020 | work =The New York Times | date = November 14, 1970 | url = https://www.nytimes.com/1970/11/14/archives/jacob-lawrence-is-named-professor-of-art-at-pratt.html | title = Jacob Lawrence Is Named Professor of Art at Pratt | archive-date = September 28, 2020 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093417/https://www.nytimes.com/1970/11/14/archives/jacob-lawrence-is-named-professor-of-art-at-pratt.html | url-status = live }}</ref> and the [[Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture|Skowhegan School]].<ref>{{cite book | page= 176 | url= https://books.google.com/books?id=Ih5ePspKSeAC&pg=PA176 | title= The African-American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Country | date= 2002 | publisher= Simon & Schuster | first1= Henry Louis Jr. | last1= Gates | first2= Cornel | last2= West |isbn = 9780684864150| access-date= August 26, 2020 | archive-date= September 28, 2020 | archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20200928093416/https://books.google.com/books?id=Ih5ePspKSeAC&pg=PA176 | url-status= live }}</ref> He became a visiting artist at the University of Washington in 1970 and was professor of art there from 1971 to 1986.<ref name=nytobit/> He was graduate advisor there to lithographer and abstract painter [[James Claussen]].<ref>[http://www.jamesclaussen.com/about-james-claussen.html About James Claussen] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200801234534/http://www.jamesclaussen.com/about-james-claussen.html |date=August 1, 2020 }}, Website of James Claussen. Retrieved January 6, 2020.</ref>

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]].<ref>Program for ''Making a Life | Creating a World'', [[Northwest African American Museum]], 2008.</ref>

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:<ref>{{cite news | newspaper = Washington Post | access-date = August 18, 2020 | url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1980/12/04/the-artists-universe/c8c1cdee-c998-4ada-8ee3-b96642d82f03/ | title = The Artist's Universe | date = December 4, 1980 | first = Paul | last = Richard }}</ref>
{{Blockquote| 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.<ref name=umich/><ref>{{cite web | access-date = October 30, 2020 | website = Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts | url = https://www.pafa.org/museum/exhibitions/jacob-lawrences-hiroshima | title = Jacob Lawrence's Hiroshima| date = May 3, 2019 }}</ref>

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]].<ref>{{cite web | access-date = August 17, 2020 | url = https://meanycenter.org/visit/venues/meany-hall-performing-arts | website = Meany Center for the Performing Arts, University of Washington | title = Meany Hall for the Performing Arts | date = August 19, 2013 | archive-date = August 20, 2018 | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20180820083009/https://meanycenter.org/visit/venues/meany-hall-performing-arts | url-status = live }}</ref>

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