"Known in the mid-nineteenth century as the best landscape painter in the West, Robert S. Duncanson fell into obscurity for nearly a century after his death. In this first full-length biography, Joseph Ketner restores the artist to his place in the history of American art. He explores Duncanson's role as an African-American artist in American society and reveals his lasting contribution to American landscape painting." "Duncanson came of age in a time of turmoil. Living and working in Cincinnati, he felt the white backlash against increasing abolitionist sentiment that prompted riots and murders in the city's black district. Even as a "freeman of color," Duncanson faced the specter of slavery daily in the markets, at the docks, and across the Ohio River from his home." "Duncanson persevered. With no professional training, he taught himself to paint by copying prints and portraits and sketching from nature. He began his career as a house-painter and decorator, eventually graduating to the work that would make him famous in his time, landscape painting." "As his skill with a paintbrush grew, Duncanson developed into a sensitive painter of the picturesque and pastoral qualities that he found in the land. These works established him as the primary painter in the Ohio River valley during the 1850s and 1860s and contributed to the foundation of the Cincinnati landscape tradition. While employing the mainstream aesthetics of American landscape painting that would propel him to international recognition, he also imbued his landscapes with a veiled significance that was understood by the African-American community. His dream of an America free of racial oppression found expression in romantic landscapes of an exotic paradise. Even as he made his way in the previously all-white art world, he claimed the American landscape as part of the African-American experience." "Duncanson's success in the mainstream art world marked the emergence of the African-American artist from a people predominantly relegated to laborers and artisans, many of whom are discussed here. Like Phyllis Wheatley and Frederick Douglass, Robert Duncanson overcame racial oppression to give expression to African-American cultural identity. With more than 130 samples of the work of Duncanson and other African-American artists, including 20 color plates, The Emergence of the AfricanAmerican Artist is a major contribution to the history of art in America."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

A landmark work of art history: lavishly illustrated and extraordinary for its thoroughness, A History of African-American Artists -- conceived, researched, and written by the great American artist Romare Bearden with journalist Harry Henderson, who completed the work after Bearden's death in 1988 -- gives a conspectus of African-American art from the late eighteenth century to the present. It examines the lives and careers of more than fifty signal African-American artists, and the relation of their work to prevailing artistic, social, and political trends both in America and throughout the world. Beginning with a radical reevaluation of the enigma of Joshua Johnston, a late eighteenth-century portrait painter widely assumed by historians to be one of the earliest known African-American artists, Bearden and Henderson go on to examine the careers of Robert S. Duncanson, Edward M. Bannister, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Aaron Douglas, Edmonia Lewis, Jacob Lawrence, Hale A. Woodruff, Augusta Savage, Charles H. Alston, Ellis Wilson, Archibald J. Motley, Jr., Horace Pippin, Alma W. Thomas, and many others. Illustrated with more than 420 black-and-white illustrations and 61 color reproductions -- including rediscovered classics, works no longer extant, and art never before seen in this country -- A History of African-American Artists is a stunning achievement.

Discusses African American folk art, decorative art, photography, and fine arts.

Creating Their Own Image marks the first comprehensive history of African-American women artists, from slavery to the present day. Using an analysis of stereotypes of Africans and African-Americans in western art and culture as a springboard, Lisa E. Farrington here richly details hundreds ofimportant works--many of which deliberately challenge these same identity myths, of the carnal Jezebel, the asexual Mammy, the imperious Matriarch--in crafting a portrait of artistic creativity unprecedented in its scope and ambition. In these lavishly illustrated pages, some of which feature imagesnever before published, we learn of the efforts of Elizabeth Keckley, fashion designer to Mary Todd Lincoln; the acclaimed sculptor Edmonia Lewis, internationally renowned for her neoclassical works in marble; and the artist Nancy Elizabeth Prophet and her innovative teaching techniques. We meetLaura Wheeler Waring who portrayed women of color as members of a socially elite class in stark contrast to the prevalent images of compliant maids, impoverished malcontents, and exotics "others" that proliferated in the inter-war period. We read of the painter Barbara Jones-Hogu's collaboration onthe famed Wall of Respect, even as we view a rare photograph of Hogu in the process of painting the mural. Farrington expertly guides us through the fertile period of the Harlem Renaissance and the "New Negro Movement," which produced an entirely new crop of artists who consciously imbued their workwith a social and political agenda, and through the tumultuous, explosive years of the civil rights movement. Drawing on revealing interviews with numerous contemporary artists, such as Betye Saar, Faith Ringgold, Nanette Carter, Camille Billops, Xenobia Bailey, and many others, the second half ofCreating Their Own Image probes more recent stylistic developments, such as abstraction, conceptualism, and post-modernism, never losing sight of the struggles and challenges that have consistently influenced this body of work. Weaving together an expansive collection of artists, styles, andperiods, Farrington argues that for centuries African-American women artists have created an alternative vision of how women of color can, are, and might be represented in American culture. From utilitarian objects such as quilts and baskets to a wide array of fine arts, Creating Their Own Imageserves up compelling evidence of the fundamental human need to convey one's life, one's emotions, one's experiences, on a canvas of one's own making.

Blending a vivid narrative with more than 150 images of artwork, Painter offers a history--from before slavery to today's hip-hop culture--written for a new generation.

Duncanson persevered. With no professional training, he taught himself to paint by copying prints and portraits and sketching from nature. He began his career as a house-painter and decorator, eventually graduating to the work that would make him famous in his time, landscape painting.