Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin Painted by Two Women Artists.
SCARCE COMPLETE
[Art] Waring, Laura Wheeler and Betsey Graves Reyneau. Portraits of Outstanding Americans of
Negro Origin Painted by Two Women Artists. New York: Harmon Foundation, [ca. 1940].
Folio; 24 portraits on 23 10” x 12” single matte-finish photographic sheets in printed folio envelope; a packet of 9 glossy photos of the various paintings with the Harmon Foundation stamp on the rear loosely inserted.
First edition of this portfolio of highlight portraits by one African-American artist (Waring) and one white (Reyneau) commissioned by the Harmon Foundation for a single exhibition:
24 portraits on 23 10” x 12” single matte-finish photographic sheets in printed folio envelope (a portrait sheet of both of the artists, and 22 sheets of portraits of prominent African-Americans), with a packet of nine additional photographs loosely inserted.
Subjects include W.E.B. Du Bois, Marian Anderson, Jessie Fauset, Alain Locke, James Weldon Johnson, Mary McLeod Bethune, Helen A. Whiting, George Washington Carver, Jane M. Bolin, and others.
Waring was one of the most prominent artists who was supported by the Harmon Foundation, which was paramount in promoting black artists during and after the Harlem Renaissance. Reyneau was raised in Detroit, and as a young woman attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A suffragette; in 1917 she became the first woman to be arrested and imprisoned for protesting Woodrow Wilson’s stance on women’s voting rights. While living in Europe in the 1930s, Reyneau opened her home to numerous Jews seeking refuge from the reign of Nazi terror.
While OCLC locates 17 copies with 21 portraits on 20 leaves (including the painters), they locate only a single single record with 24 portraits on 23 leaves as ours does (at the Seattle Public Library), none mentions the extra images.
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