1901-1979 Beauford Delaney struggled with poverty, mental illness, and obscurity throughout his career as a painter. Since his death, museum retrospectives have reestablished Delaney as one of America’s most vital expressionist painters. A Promising Young Artist Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on December 30, 1901. His father, Samuel, was a Methodist minister. His mother,
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1892-1962 Augusta Savage battled discrimination and financial hardships as an acclaimed sculptor and teacher, and went on to become a key mentor and supporter of numerous black artists who followed in her footsteps. An Independent Woman Savage was born Augusta Christine Fells on February 29, 1892, in Green Cove Springs, Florida. As one of 13
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1905-1998  Loïs Mailou Jones was an illustrator, fine artist, and educator who achieved distinction by fusing African and Caribbean influences with American abstraction and modernism. Her artwork is displayed by important museums throughout the world. Intellectual Encouragement Jones was born on November 3, 1905, in Boston, Massachusetts. She was the younger of two children of
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1901-1970  William Henry Johnson combined European Modernist aesthetics with southern folk tales and legends to create fine art paintings that startled audiences throughout Europe and the United States. From South Carolina to the South of France Johnson was born in Florence, South Carolina, in 1901. His parents, Henry Johnson and Alice Smoot, were both laborers.
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1877-1968  Meta Fuller was one of America’s first prominent women sculptors. Her artwork portrays the black experience with deep emotion through the use of figures experiencing both profound suffering and radiant joy. An Apprenticeship in Paris Fuller was born in a middle-class neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on June 9, 1877. Her parents, William and Emma
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1821?-1872  Robert Scott Duncanson was an African American artist noted for his landscapes, murals, and portraits. Touted at one point as the “best landscape painter in the West,” he was the first black artist to receive international recognition for his self-taught works. An Ambitious Artist Duncanson was born sometime in 1821 in Seneca County, in
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1859-1937 Henry Ossawa Tanner was the preeminent black artist of the 19th century, and the first African American painter to be recognized internationally as a master in the Naturalist traditions of American art. He found his true vision, and recognition, only after journeying to Paris to live and work, and ultimately to the Holy Land
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1785 – 1851  John James Audubon channeled a passionate interest in birds and their environment into a new way of depicting wildlife, and became one the of the great artists of the 19th century in the process. His audacious work, depicting every North American bird species, exemplified the new country’s pioneer spirit, and his name
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