Aaron Douglas (May 26, 1899 – February 2, 1979) was an American painter, illustrator, and visual arts educator. He was a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance.
Early life
Aaron Douglas was born and raised in Topeka, Kansas, on May 26, 1899, to Aaron Douglas Sr, a baker from Tennessee, and Elizabeth Douglas, a homemaker and amateur artist from Alabama. His passion for art derived from admiring his mother's drawings.
After high school, Douglas moved to Detroit, Michigan, and held various jobs, including working as a plasterer and molding sand for automobile radiators at the Cadillac factory. During this time, he attended free classes at the Detroit Museum of Art. Douglas travelled further eastward, through East St. Louis to Dunkirk in upstate New York, working at the Essex Glass factory to earn money for college. He went on to attend college at the University of Nebraska in 1918.
After graduating, Douglas worked as a waiter for the Union Pacific Railroad until 1923, when he secured a job teaching visual arts at Lincoln High School in Kansas City, Missouri, staying there until 1925. During his time in Kansas City, he exchanged letters with Alta Sawyer, his future wife, about his plans beyond teaching in a high-school setting. He wanted to take his art career to Paris, France, as many of his aspiring artist peers did. Douglas was included in Alain Locke's 1925 anthology The New Negro as Reiss's pupil. Douglas also illustrated for Charles S. Johnson, then-editor at Opportunity, the official publication of the National Urban League. In 1927, Douglas was asked to create the first of his murals at Club Ebony, which highlighted Harlem nightlife.
1928–31
In 1928, Douglas received a one-year Barnes Foundation Fellowship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where Albert C. Barnes, philanthropist and founder of the Barnes Foundation, supported him in studying the collection of Modernist paintings and African art. While in Nashville, he was commissioned by the Sherman Hotel in Chicago, Illinois, to paint a mural series. In addition, he was commissioned by Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina, to create a mural with Harriet Tubman as its primary figure.
During the height of his commissioned work as a muralist, Douglas served as president of the Harlem Artists Guild in 1935, an organization designed to create a network of young artists in New York City to provide support, inspiration, and to help out young artists during the Harlem Renaissance.
1937–66
In 1937, the Rosenwald Foundation awarded Douglas a travel fellowship to go to the American South and visit primarily Black universities, including Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, and Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1938, he again received a travel fellowship from the Rosenwald Foundation to go to the Dominican Republic and Haiti to develop a series of watercolors depicting the life of these Caribbean islands.
In 2016, with the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture, an archive of artworks created by or having to do with Aaron Douglas became available on their website. Users can access the full references of these pieces of art to determine the creation date, subject of the art, and its current residence.
Style
thumb|Lagos, Nigeria (1956)
Aaron Douglas developed two art styles during his career: first as a traditional portraitist, then as a muralist and illustrator.
- Let My People Go, circa 1935–39
- The Judgment Day, created in 1939
- Mural series commissioned in 1934 by the Works Progress Administration.
- Illustrations included in selected editions of Countee Cullen's Caroling Dusk and Alain Locke's The New Negro.
- Study for "Aspects of Negro Life: From Slavery Through Reconstruction", Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD
References
External links
- Aaron Douglas: Depression Era Murals from American Studies at the University of Virginia
- Aaron Douglas Collection at the Special Collections and Archives at Fisk University.
- Aaron Douglas Papers at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library.
- Aaron Douglas: Teacher Resource published by the Spencer Museum of Art, at the University of Kansas.
- Missouri Remembers: Artists in Missouri through 1951