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Romare Bearden, The Family, c. 1941
gouache with ink and graphite on brown paper
From the Earle Hyman Collection in memory of Rolf Sirnes, promised gift to the National Gallery of Art
© Romare Bearden Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, N.Y.

Bearden's genre scenes from the early 1940s such as The Family permit interpretations that range from the secular to the religious. Forms comprising the man, woman, child, and other details of the composition reveal that Bearden already was concerned with abstraction over literal description.

Copyright © National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.