Jerry Goure

ICS-5
12 December 2013
Reading Summary - Lewis, Ch. 1
There is now a great deal of interest in African American art throughout the world. Contemporary

African American artists find themselves free to express themselves in ways their predecessors could not,

and are exploring their cultural heritage. The history of African American artists – from the first slave

craftsmen in 1619 up to the Civil War in 1865 – demonstrates that this was not always so.

African American slaves were forced to abandon much of their culture, but were able to maintain

some craft traditions. Slaves who were skilled artisans were valued in the new colonies, and many were

apprenticed to white craftsmen. Two types of “slave-craft items” survive from the colonial period: articles

designed for the slaves’ personal use and items made upon demand for whites. The folklore of most of the

items of the former type – pottery, shell beads, dolls, bone carvings, staffs, baskets, gravestones, etc. – has

been lost. The public items, however, were an important part of the economy, and considerably more

records exist regarding them.

Records of early professional African American artists are scanty. Scipio Moorhead was an

African painter in Massachusetts in the late 18th century; there are no surviving signed works by him,

though an engraving of the poet Phillis Wheatley may be attributable to him. The Reverend G. W.

Hobbs, the official artist of the Methodist Episcopal Church around the same time, painted the first

known portrait of an African American by an African American; the subject was Richard Allen, who

founded the Free African Society. Joshua Johnston was the first artist of African ancestry to gain public

recognition as a portrait painter; most of his portraits are of members of slaveholding families, but it is

believed he painted a number of African American subjects (one has been attributed to him). Julien

Hudson was a “free person of color” and the painter of the only known self-portrait by an African

American artist of the colonial period; he enjoyed a relatively privileged life due to his mixed ancestry.

By the 1850s and 1860s, free African American artists began to involve themselves in abolitionist

movements. Robert M. Douglass, Jr., educated as a Quaker, was one of the first of these, and he

eventually left for England and the West Indies. Patrick Henry Reason attended the African Free School

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 Jerry Goure

in New York and was apprenticed to a white craftsman; his work appeared in many publications

sponsored by anti-slavery groups, and he devoted much of his time to “eradicating injustices.”

David Bustill Bowser, essentially a part-time artist, gained praise for his marine paintings and is

credited with two portraits of Abraham Lincoln – one of which survives to this day in Philadelphia.

William Simpson was drawn to art even as a child, and is best known for two works depicting Bishop

Jermain Wesley Loguen – the Bishop of the African Methodist Episcopal Church and a participant in the

underground railroad – and his wife Caroline.

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