Charles Ethan Porter, Still Life with Apples, 1886, oil on canvas, Gift of Lisa Unger Baskin, in honor of Emma Nogrady Kaplan and Sidney Kaplan, 2013.131.1

Black Artists

Explore works by Black artists through more than two centuries.

Browse the works of artists from 19th century painters Joshua Johnson and Robert Seldon Duncanson—to modern and contemporary artists Romare Bearden, Jacob Lawrence, Kerry James Marshall, Charles White, Gordon Parks, Alma Thomas, Kara Walker, and more.

Selected works

  • A scene with a person holding a cornucopia is set against a night sky on this wood block. The person has peachy-brown skin and long silvery hair. A piece of drapery, also silver, flows around the hips as the person holds a cornucopia angled down and to the left. Blue and green material pours or hangs out of the horn. The person is contained within a silver oval frame. Fifteen green teardrop- or sperm-shaped orbs approach the oval to the left and fourteen approach from the right. Everything described so far is shown in low relief on the wood block. A translucent star is pinned or nailed to the panel near the top left corner and a translucent, crescent moon to the top right. To either side of the person are textured triangular shapes. The form to the left is green and points up, like a mountain, and the form to the right is blue and points in, like a cresting wave. Both have ragged edges and appear to be carved and affixed with nails, the heads of which are visible. Two translucent rectangles, possibly the same material as the star and moon, lie side-by-side between the green and blue forms on the bottom edge of the block.
  • Painted and drawn with areas of flat, vibrant colors, we look slightly down onto a bustling street market in this stylized, horizontal scene. It is created almost entirely with shades of sky and royal blue, buttercup and harvest yellow, caramel and ash brown, and spearmint green with only a few touches of brick and crimson red. The people all have black-colored skin with their features outlined in white. They sit, stand, gather, or walk along stalls lining the street that extends away from us. Some wear caps, headdresses, or are bareheaded. They wear wraps or togas that mostly leave arms bare. Some carry goods on their heads, sit and eat, hold children and babies, or reach for wares. One person holds a white chicken and another leads a couple of goats along the street. The inverted, narrow V of the street meets the shallow V of the rooflines of the buildings or awnings of the stalls just above the center of the composition. The upside-down triangular filling the distant area between the rooflines has a dark yellow ground where densely packed tables, carts, buildings, people, and several chickens are tiny in scale. A strip of blue along the top edge of the painting suggests the sky above. The artist signed and dated the work in graphite in the lower right corner, “Jacob Lawrence 64.”
  • Printed with black against cream-white paper, a woman pointing to our right nearly fills this vertical linocut. Her body is angled slightly to our right, and she looks off in that direction with hooded eyes. She has wide cheekbones, a thin upper lip, full lower lip, and her mouth is closed over a pointed chin. Her head is covered in a patterned cloth, and she wears a knee-length coat over a long skirt. A knapsack hangs across her torso, and she braces the barrel of a rifle with her right hand, to our left, as she points with the other hand. Two people with short, dark hair stand behind her and to our right. The front person wears pants, square-toed shoes, and a jacket over a shirt. Bracelet-like objects on his wrists could be broken shackles. The other person touches that man’s arm. A fourth person digs in the background to the left. The ground, trees, hills, and sky are dense flicks, slivers, and strokes. The artist signed the sheet in the bottom right corner under the image, “Elizabeth Catlett.”
  • Three pale-skinned, blue-eyed children wearing green suits stand in a row facing us in this horizontal portrait painting. They all have round faces and full, pink cheeks. The tallest child is to the right, and he has shoulder-length cinnamon-brown hair. The other two come up to his shoulder and have blond hair. The tallest puts one arm on the far shoulder of the middle child, and the two smaller children hold hands. Each wears a pine-green, one-piece outfit with pewter-gray buttons, a wide, ivory-white collar lined with ruffles, and black, shin-high boots. The boy on our left holds a branch of dark red cherries. The middle child holds a pink rose, and the tallest a basket filled with pink roses. A black dog holding a gray and mauve-pink bird in its mouth stands in profile facing our left in the lower right corner of the canvas. The room around them has a tan-colored floor and gray walls. The room opens onto an alcove to our right with a rectangular window. A slender tree is along the left edge of the opening and a few pale, pink-tinged gray mountains line the bottom edge. Clear blue sky fills the rest of the window.
  • Several pieces of fruit, a bunch of green grapes, a stem of raisins, and several types of nuts in their shells are piled on a putty-brown tabletop or ledge with rounded corners against a dark background in this horizontal still life painting. The food is brightly lit from the front, and we look slightly down onto the table. There are two round red apples and two pieces of small yellow fruit, perhaps quinces, flanking a golden yellow pear at the back center. The bunch of grapes drapes over the fruit to our right and the raisins lie between the apples. Thirteen walnuts, peanuts, almonds, hazelnuts, and perhaps a brazil nut are scattered in a loose band in front of the fruit. The surface on which the still life sits becomes swallowed in shadow behind the fruit, and blends into the dark brown background. The artist signed and dated the work in dark paint in the lower right corner, almost lost in shadow under the ledge: “R.S. Duncanson 1848.”
  • A city skyline is silhouetted in plum purple against a vivid peach and butter-yellow sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The brilliant sky is reflected in the water below, where a boat is moored along a riverbank. The scene is loosely painted with visible brushstrokes throughout. A wedge-shaped piece of olive green could be land or a dock in the lower right corner of the composition. A few people standing near the boat tied to a pier there are loosely painted with strokes of dark green and gray. A shallowly arched bridge marches across the river in the middle distance. Two towers and a few rounded buildings of the skyline beyond are outlined against the twilight sky. The artist’s signature is partially legible in the lower left corner: “F.F. Gut H.O.T.” It was also dated “July 10, 1902” but only the y of “July” is visible.
  • The spruce-green silhouette of a broad-shouldered man standing among palm fronds looks up at a faint red star against a field of green circles radiating out from the horizon in this abstracted vertical painting. The scene is made with mostly flat areas of color to create silhouettes in shades of slate and indigo blue, lemon-lime and pea green, plum purple, and brick red. To our right of center, the man faces our left in profile. His eye is a slit and he has tight curly hair. The position of his feet, standing on a coffin-shaped, brick-red box, indicate his back is to us. He stands with legs apart and his arms by his sides. Terracotta-orange shackles around his wrists are linked with a black chain. A woman to our left, perhaps kneeling, holds her similarly shackled hands up overhead. A line of shackled people with their heads bowed move away from this pair, toward wavy lines indicating water in the distance. The water is pine green near the shore and lightens, in distinct bands, to asparagus green on the horizon. On our left, two, tall pea-green ships sail close to each other at the horizon, both titled at an angle to our right. Concentric circles radiate out from the horizon next to the ships to span the entire painting, subtly altering the color of the silhouettes it encounters. To our left, a buttercup-yellow beam shines from the red star in the sky across the canvas, overlapping the man’s face. Spruce-blue palm trees grow to our right while plum-purple palm fronds and leaves in smoke gray and blood red frame the painting along the left corners and edge. The artist signed the painting in the lower right, in black, “AARON DOUGLAS.”
  • Painted with small areas of mostly flat color, this horizontal painting shows three brown-skinned people in the room of a home with pale gray walls and wood floors. To our right, a woman wears slate-gray skirt, a white apron and shawl, and a red headscarf with black and white polka dots. She sits in a black wooden chair facing our right in profile, smoking a pipe. A steaming kettle and bright green coffee pot sit on a black wood stove behind and to the right of the woman, with firewood stacked to the right. A clock or timer and an oil lamp sit on a red shelf above the stove and the woman’s head. Beneath her feet is one of three rectangular area rugs with a pattern of green, black, white, and red stripes. A window at the center of the back wall of the room is mostly covered by a dark green curtain. The panes along the bottom are black and lined with white, suggesting snow or frost. A bucket and pewter-colored, shallow bowl sit on a bench on the second striped rug under the window. To our left, a small person standing on the third patterned rug wears short black pants, stockings, and suspenders over a white shirt. That person turns away from us and rests elbows near a lit candle on a table with a red and gray checkered tablecloth. The third person, possibly a young girl, sits on a blanket or a fourth rug patterned with yellow, red, black, and green triangles. That young girl wears a gray dress and black shoes. She cradles a baby doll, and a white dog, perhaps a stuffed animal, sits next to her. A few cracks in the wall near the window expose horizontal bands, perhaps narrow wooden boards under damaged plaster. The artist signed the work with black letters in the lower right corner: “H. PiPPiN.”
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  • A dark-skinned girl stands on a dock holding a fish wider than her hips down in front of her with both hands, one ankle crossed over the other in this black and white photograph. Her body faces us, but she looks up and off to our right. A dark cloth covers her hair and shoulders over a knee-length dress. She wears loafer-style shoes. She stands in front of an upturned rowboat with a severed swordfish head laid on the flat stern, to our right. The long sword-like upper lip angles into the lower right corner of the photograph, and the fish’s large eye is a gaping hole. Buildings on a spit of land that comes about halfway up the composition enclose the body of water in the distance. The contrast of the girl’s dark head covering against the white sky creates an optical effect, making the cloth seem to glow.
  • A dark-skinned girl stands on a dock holding a fish wider than her hips down in front of her with both hands, one ankle crossed over the other in this black and white photograph. Her body faces us, but she looks up and off to our right. A dark cloth covers her hair and shoulders over a knee-length dress. She wears loafer-style shoes. She stands in front of an upturned rowboat with a severed swordfish head laid on the flat stern, to our right. The long sword-like upper lip angles into the lower right corner of the photograph, and the fish’s large eye is a gaping hole. Buildings on a spit of land that comes about halfway up the composition enclose the body of water in the distance. The contrast of the girl’s dark head covering against the white sky creates an optical effect, making the cloth seem to glow.
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