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Untitled (Harlem Street Scene)

1958

American, 1917 - 2000

This and a related drawing (2023.20.1) of bustling city life reflect Jacob Lawrence’s keen powers of observation, great strength as a visual storyteller, and mastery of the high modernist devices of spatial flatness, gestural line, and all-over composition. Both drawings feature local denizens gathered on stoops and leaning on windowsills to witness an urban spectacle of blue-collar laborers and white-collar bourgeoisie, a police brigade, a priest, couples, mothers, and even a cat as they move cinematically across a shallow picture plane. Unlike the close-knit families and neighborhoods celebrated in Lawrence’s earlier Harlem scenes, these city streets teem with a disengaged population that is fragmented, insular, and alienated.

Ink on paper

Framed: 29 3/4 x 37 1/2 in.

Gift of Eve and Chap Alvord in honor of Norman and Constance Rice

2023.20.2

Provenance: Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, New York; [Five Towns Music and Arts Foundation, Woodmere, New York]; Judith Golden, New York; Ray Reider and Robert Golden, Riverdale, New York; [Gordon Woodside/John Braseth Gallery, Seattle, Washington]; purchased from gallery by Eve and Chap Alvord, Seattle, Washington, November 2021; gift to Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, 2023

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Jacob Lawrence: American Storyteller, June 28, 2024 - January 5, 2025.

Published ReferencesNesbett, Peter T. and Michelle DuBois. Jacob Lawrence: Paintings, Drawings, and Murals (1935‒1999), a Catalogue Raisonné. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, in association with Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project, 2000; p. 233, ill.

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