Summer Street Scene in Harlem
1948
20 1/16 x 24 1/8 in. (51 x 61.2 cm)
Jacob Lawrence
United States
(Atlantic City, NJ, 1917 - 2000, Seattle, WA)
Object Type:
Painting
Medium and Support:
Tempera on gesso panel
Credit Line:
Marion Stratton Gould Fund
Accession Number:
1991.5
Location: Currently on view
Jacob Lawrence put his own stylistic innovations on the flattened surfaces, distorted shapes, and bold colors of modernism. Here his vibrant palette and energetic composition express the joy and vitality of a summer in Harlem. Children play with their soap box and approach a shaved ice vendor; adults gather in conversation. Lawrence moved to Harlem with his family at the age of twelve, and he was greatly influenced by the creative community flourishing there.
Lawrence chronicled the lives, accomplishments, and challenges experienced by Black communities in the United States. His best-known series, The Migration of the Negro (1941), depicted the mass movement of Black people who relocated from the American South to the North, Midwest, and West in search of economic and social mobility. Lawrence’s parents themselves moved to the North in this exodus known as the Great Migration, which took place from the 1910s through the 1970s.
[Gallery label text, 2024]