Jacob Lawrence - TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE

TOUSSAINT
L'OUVERTURE
Series
by
Jacob Lawrence

Portfolio Details


TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE Series 1986-1997 Jacob Lawrence with Master Printer Lou Stovall Signing TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE SERIES These prints are based on forty-one paintings from a series also entitled Toussaint L'Ouverture, which was completed in 1938 and is now in the Aaron Douglas Collection of the Amistad Research Center, New Orleans. The paintings were executed in tempera and measure 11 x 19 inches, significantly smaller in scale than the prints. Lawrence reworked many of the images during the process of translating them to silk screen. When an image has been significantly altered from the original, that fact is noted in the catalogue entry. The captions Lawrence provided for the paintings at the time of their execution accompany each of the following entries. Toussaint L 'Ouverture was a leader in the Haitian revolution. Born a slave, he rose to become commander in chief of the revolutionary army. In 1800 he coordinated the effort to draw up Haiti's first democratic constitution. However, in 1802, before the Republic was firmly established, Toussaint was arrested by Napoleon Bonaparte's troops and sent to Paris, where he was imprisoned. He died in prison the following year. In 1804 Haiti became the first black Western republic.

TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE
Series
- click on title to view enlargement -

The Birth of
Toussaint L'Ouverture
1987
32 x 22"

Edition 100

General Toussaint L'Ouverture
Edition Sold Out
1987
32 x 22"

Edition 100

The Capture
1987

32 x 22"

Edition 120

To Preserve Their Freedom 1988 32 x 22" Edition 99	Toussaint at Ennery 1989 32 x 22" Edition 99
The Coachmen 1987 32 x 22" Edition 99	The Dondon 1992 22 x 32" Edition 124

Contemplation 1993 32 x 22" Edition 120	St. Marc 1994 32 x 22" Edition 120
Strategy 1994 22 x 32" Edition 120	The March 1992 22 x 32" Edition 120
Flotilla 1996 22 x 32" Edition 120	Deception 1997 22 x 32" Edition 120
The Burning 1997 22 x 32" Edition 125	The Opener 1997 22 x 32" Edition 125

About
Jacob Lawrence

Since his first published print in 1963 Jacob Lawrence has produced a body of prints that is both highly dramatic and intensely personal. In his graphic work, as in his paintings, Lawrence has turned to the lessons of history and to his own experience. From depictions of civil rights confrontations to scenes of daily life, these images present a vision of a common struggle toward unity and equality, a universal struggle deeply seated in the depths of the human consciousness.

Lawrence was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1917 and passed his formative years in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. In the mid -
1930s he took art classes sponsored by the College Art Association and the WPA, at the Harlem Community Art Center and, following a two-year scholarship to the American Artists School worked in the easel division of the Federal Art Project. In 1941, Lawrence became the first African American artist included in the permanent collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where he had a one-man exhibition in 1944. He lived and worked in New York City, teaching at numerous schools and universities until 1971, when he accepted a full-time faculty appointment at the University of Washington in Seattle, from which he retired as professor emeritus in 1983.

Jacob Lawrence has received numerous awards and honors, including the National Medal of Arts (1990), the NAACP Annual Great Black Artists Award (1988), and the Spingarn Medal (1970). His work has been the subject of several major retrospectives that have traveled nationally, originating in 1986 at Seattle Art Museum, in 1974 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, and in 1960 at the Brooklyn Museum.

Links To More Information
About Jacob Lawrence

The High Museum,
Location of the current
Jacob Lawrence retrospective exhibition
"Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence"

To the life of Jacob Lawrence
The Phillips collection, Washington DC