#LauraWheelerWaring.
The Study of a Student, (1940)s,

Painted at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, this portrait captures American artist Laura Wheeler Waring’s passion for dignified Black representation. The sitter’s name is unrecorded, but Waring refuses anonymity of type with the a fashionable cap, jewelry, and tailored layers that announce a modern woman who chooses how to be seen. A poised young Black woman sits three-quarter length against a gray-green wall brushed with lively diagonals. Her medium-brown skin is modeled by cool, even light. Her mouth carries a quiet vermilion and her eyes half-lidded are observant. A mint-green cap frames her slicked-back hair and echoes polished studs in her ears and a chunky bead necklace. She wears a sheer white blouse over a dark dress with "blooming" gauzy sleeves at the shoulders that catch pearly highlights, while the black bodice anchors the composition like a strong vertical. Her left forearm crosses the knee. A gold ring glinting, her right hand drops toward the seat’s edge. Broad, confident strokes leave ridges of paint visible, especially in the background’s leaf-like marks. The pose, slightly angled and unapologetically frontal, asserts self-possession rather than flirtation. No props or narrative setting disctracts us from the young woman's style, presence. Waring trained at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and, supported by the Harmon Foundation, studied in Paris in the 1920s, absorbing Impressionist color and a direct, modern brush. She spent her career teaching at Cheyney (the nation’s oldest HBCU), where she mentored young artists while exhibiting widely; commissions and exhibitions brought her portraits of writers, educators, and community leaders to national attention. In the early 1930s, she refined a language that fused academic draftsmanship with painterly economy which we see here in confident edges, restrained palette, and psychological immediacy.

"Girl in a Green Cap" by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1930 - Howard University Gallery of Art (Washington, DC) #WomenInArt #LauraWheelerWaring #art #artText #Waring #BlackModernism #AfricanAmericanArt #WomenArtists #AmericanArt #HowardUniversity #WomanArtist #HarlemRenaissance

In 1927, artist Laura Wheeler Waring painted beauty through a new lens — one that celebrated dignity, pride, and possibility. (more)

🎨 Laura Wheeler Waring (1887–1948)
Portrait of a Girl in Pink, 1927

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'Alice Dunbar Nelson'
de Laura Wheeler Waring

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Alma Woodsey Thomas was an African-American artist and art teacher who lived and worked in Washington, D.C., and is now recognized as a major American painter of the 20th century. She is the first African-American woman to be included in the White House's permanent art collection. Thomas is best known for the "exuberant", colorful, abstract paintings that she created after she retired from a 35-year career teaching art at Washington's Shaw Junior High School. In this portrait, fellow American artist Laura Wheeler Waring depicts Thomas in a deep red long-sleeved, buttoned dress, seated in a comfortable white chair with her arms folded across her abdomen, against a backdrop of a dark green background. Her gold bracelets, earrings, and collar clasp on the dress provide golden refinement. She is dignified and composed with her gaze directed slightly off to our right. A dark green backdrop creates a strong contrast with her deep crimson dress, drawing attention to her. The lighting suggests a soft, diffused light source, falling evenly on her features and dress, creating subtle highlights and shadows. Thomas was the first graduate of Howard University's art department, and maintained connections to that university through her life. She achieved success as an African-American female artist despite the segregation and prejudice of her time. Likewise, Waring was an African American artist and educator, most renowned for her realistic portraits, landscapes, still-life, and well-known African American portraitures she made during the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the few African American artists in France, a turning point of her career and profession where she attained widespread attention, exhibited in Paris, won awards, and spent the next 30 years teaching art at Cheyney University in Pennsylvania. She passed away, at 60, less than a year after completing this elegant painting of Thomas who passed away in 1978 at the age of 86.

Portrait of a Lady (Alma Thomas) by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1947 - Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists #WomensArt #art #AlmaThomas #LauraWheelerWaring #SAAM #Smithsonian #AfricanAmericanArtist #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackArtist #bskyart

Happy Birthday to Harlem Renaissance artist Laura Wheeler Waring (May 26, 1887-Feb 3, 1948). Her drawing for the April 1926 cover of The Crisis, a periodical founded by W.E.B. Du Bois, won honorable mention in a 1925 art and literature contest.
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A portrait of a brown-skinned woman, seated sideways in an open-backed chair wearing a gold clip-on or post earring and a green dress with a yellow flower at the waist. Behind her is a pale blue wall with a floral still life painting at the top left of the artwork. The woman's left arm wraps around the chair top, which she grips with her left hand. Her right forearm and hand rest in her lap.

Jessie Redmon Fauset, 1945, by #LauraWheelerWaring (American, 1887-1948), who was born #otd, May 26. Held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum, www.si.edu/object/jessi... #womenartists #artherstory

Learn much more about the artist at the @vharrisprojects website, www.vharriswrites.com/blog

This portrait is perhaps American artist Laura Wheeler Waring's most acclaimed work. The sitter is laundress Anna ("Annie") Washington Derry. One of five children, Derry was the daughter of George and Nancy Washington who moved their family from Maryland to Stroudsburg, in the Pocono Mountains of eastern Pennsylvania. Monroe was home to a small free Black community who had arrived via the Underground Railroad used by enslaved African Americans to escape into free states. Given that the majority of Waring's sitters were middle/upper-class patrons, the fact that Derry was of working-class origins makes this portrait unique in her oeuvre. Derry was in fact something of a community matriarch who was fondly addressed locally as "Annie". Waring communicates Derry's dignity and inner resolve through the simple, brown-beige tones of her dress, her expressive face, her folded arms and hands, and through the inclusion of text: "Anna Washington Derry, Anno Domini". The fact that Waring paints her full name coupled with the Latin inscription "Anno Domini" (in the year of the lord), connotes the esteem in which Waring held her humble and devout sitter. While her treatment of Derry might have been considered rather "traditional" by modern standards, her style proved better suited to the tastes of emerging Black portrait painters. The portrait was unveiled in 1926 at a select exhibition for Black Philadelphian professionals. However, as art historian Amanda Lampel notes, "Although Derry's portrait did not sell that day, the Philadelphia Tribune, the oldest continuously published African American newspaper in the United States, called it remarkable". The following year, Waring exhibited Derry's portrait at New York's Harmon Foundation where it received the "First Award in Fine Art - Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes". It later exhibited at Les Galeries du Luxembourg in Paris and across the United States.

Anna Washington Derry by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1927 - Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington DC) #womeninart #SAAM #art #womensart #artwork #womanartist #femaleartist #LauraWheelerWaring #AfricanAmericanArt #1920s #SmithsonianAmericanArtMuseum #AfricanAmericanArtist

This beautiful work was painted in 1940 by American artist Laura Wheeler Waring, a prominent portraitist who created a series titled "Portraits of Outstanding American Citizens of Negro Origin." The talented painter depicts an unidentified mature dark-skinned woman, draped in an orange and white polka-dotted shawl or robe, with a matching headwrap. The close-up portrait focuses entirely on the subject giving her a striking and memorable presence. She is positioned in a half profile view, her gaze directed to her right. The positioning of the woman and the rich details of the fabric dominate the visual space. She has a calm weathered expression that, to me, conveys dignity mixed with unknown inner thoughts. Her headwrap is a vibrant orange with a repeating polka dot pattern. A small flower earring and thin beaded red necklace accent her beauty and gravitas. The details in her expression and the folds of the garment are rendered with a wonderful sense of depth and volume. Waring's figurative style with a focus on capturing form, texture, and detail is seen through visible brushstrokes and with the rich vibrant colors within a generally warm palette. The artist's skill with lighting that originates from the front and slightly off to one side, casting subtle shadows, adds dimension, highlights the folds of the woman's attire, and illuminates the face and form with a diffused softness. Waring was a prominent African American painter and educator, known for her portraits of distinguished African Americans, particularly during the Harlem Renaissance, and for her work as an arts educator. After studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1907 to 1914, she received a scholarship in 1914, allowing her to study in France. In 1924, she returned to Paris and enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére, where she began her life-long love of portraiture. Her work was featured in the first all-Black exhibition in America held in 1928 by the Harmon Foundation.

Woman Wearing Orange Scarf by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1940 - The Kinsey African American Art & History Collection #womeninart #art #oilpainting #LauraWheelerWaring #Waring #Wheeler #WomenPaintingWomen #womensart #womanartist #AfricanAmericanArtist #femaleartist #fineart

#LauraWheelerWaring.

The Study of a Student, (1940)s,

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One of the outstanding voices of the twentieth century, contralto Marian Anderson was declared (by Arturo Toscanini) was a voice that came along "once in a hundred years." Like many African American artists of the time, she first achieved success in Europe. Impresario Sol Hurok convinced her to return to America, and a triumphant 1935 concert secured her reputation. American artist Laura Wheeler Waring first saw Anderson on stage on April 16, 1916, during one of her European concert tours. Waring's great desire to have Anderson sit for her became a reality when in 1944 she spent the summer painting Anderson's regal figure at her farm. Anderson's pose reflects the calm and graceful stance of a seasoned singer patiently waiting for the applause to die down before bursting forth into song. Behind Anderson is a window framing a landscape with three crosses, symbolizing the death of Christ on Calvary. In 1939, Marion became embroiled in a historic event when the Daughters of the American Revolution banned her appearance at its Constitution Hall because she was black. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt intervened and facilitated Anderson’s Easter Sunday outdoor concert at the Lincoln Memorial—an event witnessed by 75,000 and broadcast to a radio audience of millions. In 1955. Anderson was invited to appear at the Metropolitan Opera (in Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera), becoming the first African American to sing an important role with that company. By the time Anderson retired in the mid-1960s, she was regarded as a national treasure. In 1978, she received a Kennedy Center Honors award. "A great artist, a great woman and a great citizen. Her incomparable talent, her beauty, and magnificent dignity have endeared her to the music loving world. When she sings it's not only the voice of her race one hears but the voice of America." -Cornelia Otis Skinner

Marian Anderson by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1944 - National Portrait Gallery (Washington, DC) #womeninart #art #artwork #portrait #womensart #fineart #LauraWheelerWaring #oilpainting #AfricanAmericanArtist #NationalPortraitGallery #AfricanAmericanArt #portraitofawoman

Alice Dunbar Nelson appears in full figure wearing a shimmering golden-yellow dress with large frilly shoulder sleeves, as well as black, elbow-length demi-gloves, sleek black high-heeled shoes, and a large yellow hat with colorful flowers. She sits on a chair in a room whose walls and floors are painted with the same multi-colored, ethereal, and luminous quality as the dress. This vibrant use of contrasting strokes of color, reminiscent of Degas, is typical of Waring's portraits of more affluent Black individuals. Dunbar Nelson was one of the first generation of free Blacks born in the South, and was university educated. She and her first husband, poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, were important symbolic figures within the Harlem Renaissance. Waring's portrait of Dunbar Nelson served to challenge racial stereotypes by presenting her Black sitter in a manner generally reserved for white members of the upper classes. Waring achieved this, not just in terms of her delicate use of color and light, but also in the sitter's dignified, confident, and self-possessed pose and expression. A vast network of friendships was established among prominent African American women in the wake of the black women’s club movement, which grew in visibility with the founding of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896. Individuals such as Laura Wheeler Waring and Alice Dunbar-Nelson came together from a variety of backgrounds to combat negative stereotypes and fight for basic rights. Waring, an established artist who had studied in France between the two world wars, painted Dunbar-Nelson’s portrait in Philadelphia the year she married Walter E. Waring, a Lincoln University professor. The portrait exudes the confidence and self-possession of two accomplished intellectual women whose friendship helped advance the rights of both women and African Americans.

Alice Dunbar Nelson by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / 1927 - National Portrait Gallery (Washington, D.C.) #womeninart #womenartist #art #portrait #portraitofawoman #NationalPortraitGallery #poc #oilpainting #womensart #LauraWheelerWaring #AfricanAmericanArtist #AfricanAmericanArt

More than meets the eye in this Harlem Renaissance painting due to its carefully chosen composition and objects conveying some of Waring’s varied personal, artistic, and activist interests—like the yellow backdrop that covers all but a fragment of a watercolor, possibly inspired by Waring’s travels in the south of France. The artist's careful attention to the pomegranate points to the fruit’s symbolism as an emblem of prosperity, fertility, and sensuality in Greek myths and biblical and ancient Egyptian texts which made it popular for painters and authors during this era. Waring was primarily recognized as an illustrator, like her covers for NAACP’s Crisis magazine, but her paintings are growing in popularity and recognition as the spotlight on long-underappreciated African American women artists shines brighter. The unnamed young Black woman in the portrait is captured in a moment of somber stillness. She calmly sits in a chair as she casually rests her left elbow on a small table with a red bowl of persimmons and pomegranates next to an empty white vase; however, her gaze directly at us with large focused eyes evokes a sense of unspoken appeal. Her short cropped hair is fashionable and parted in the center, but our attention is drawn via her rosy cheeks and beautiful dark skin to her gaze. Her black dress with puffy shoulders and giant white lace collar are refined, but not flashy ... so that our attention is on, as the title says, a "Girl with Pomegranate."

Girl with Pomegranate by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1940 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #art #fineart #portrait #oilpainting #metny #LauraWheelerWaring #womensart #portraitofawoman #portraitofagirl #womanartist #africanamericanartist #africanamericanart

Laura Wheeler Waring Master Study Monday Studio Oil Painting Live Paint YouTube video by Diane Dobson Barton Art

Final result of today’s Master Study Monday. Laura Wheeler Waring. Oil on paper.

www.youtube.com/live/FEjBVq3... #blackhistorymonth #womenshistory #laurawheelerwaring #Art #oilpainting

#Art by #LauraWheelerWaring, a prominent Black American female artist, early 20th century.
Influenced by Manet, Corot, and Cézanne. A most significant portrait painters of the #HarlemRenaissance, a movement in African American literary, artistic, and cultural history from 1918 to the late 1930s

Waring’s portrayals of Black women across the social spectrum often transcended class norms and disrupted prevalent stereotypes. Here, her beautiful young sitter is presented in profile as an icon of the Jazz Age, with the sleek, bobbed coiffure and elegant pink drop-waisted flapper dress—exquisitely detailed and with nuanced tonal variations—that are emblematic of the period. A pink bouquet of flowers draping her left should enhances the youth and beauty of the young woman. The artist’s skillful portraits of Black figures drew praise from an initially skeptical Alain Locke, who acknowledged the modernity of her choice of subject. Waring won first prize in the Harmon Foundation’s 1927 exhibition, solidifying her stature as the foremost Black female portrait painter working at the heart of the New Negro movement. Waring was born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1887. The fourth child of six born to Reverend Robert Foster and Mary Wheeler, Laura was unusual in some respects because she had the advantage of superior education and middle and upper-class associations.

Girl in Pink Dress by Laura Wheeler Waring (American) - Oil on canvas / c. 1927 - Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) #womeninart #womanartist #art #womanpainter #artwork #americanartist #poc #painting #oilpainting #blackwoman #americanbeauty #harlemrenaissance #jazzage #waring #LauraWheelerWaring

2) You'll find books about #GeorgiaOKeeffe #LouiseBourgeois #MaryCassatt #LauraWheelerWaring #BeatrixPotter #EdmoniaLewis #FaithRinggold #FlorineStettheimer #AlmaThomas #AugustaSavage #MaudLewis #RuthAsawa #LeonoraCarrington #FridaKahlo #YayoiKusama #RosaBonheur #AlmaThomas & more!

A group portrait painted in oil of four Black children, 3 boys and 1 girl, maybe about 8-10 years old. The boys wear suits and two of them wear ties; the girl wears a pink blouse or dress (it is difficult to tell which because the children are depicted only from about the waist up). The boy in the center is seated; the boy to his left might be seated, but the boy behind and the girl appear to be standing.

Four Friends, c. 1940s, by #LauraWheelerWaring (American, 1887-1948), who was born #otd, May 26. Held by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts / PAFA, www.pafa.org/museum/colle... #womenartists #artherstory
 
Learn much more about the artist at the VHarris Writes Blog, www.vharriswrites.com/blog