Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) was an African American artist who wove color, shape, history and sociology into emotionally powerful images. Born in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1917, Lawrence's family moved to Harlem in 1930 when the area still resonated with the colorful ambience and intellectual and artistic activity of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s. With a full-time job and concern for her children's welfare, Lawrence's mother enrolled him at Utopia House, an after-school center for children. It was here that Jacob Lawrence entered a painting class taught by Charles Alston, later a notable painter himself but then an arts education student at Teacher's College.

"They didn't tell me what to do, how to draw, or what to paint," Lawrence once remembered. "They gave me materials and ideas on how to experiment, and left me alone to create out of my imagination." At the age of fifteen, Lawrence attended the College Art Association classes held at the Harlem Art Workshop, where he studied with Charles Alston (1907-1972), the director. Lawrence showed so much promise that he continued his studies with the painter and sculptor Henry Bannarn (1910-1965) at the Works Progress Administration classes held in Harlem. For eighteen months, he participated in the WPA Federal Arts Project.

Lawrence was in his early twenties when he produced his first series on black history. The Toussaint L'Ouverture series was created in 1937-38, the Frederick Douglas series in 1938-39, and Harriet Tubman in 1940. Lawrence received almost overnight acclaim when his Migration of the Negro series was shown at New York's prestigious Downtown Gallery in 1941. With this exhibition, Lawrence became the first black artist to be represented by a New York gallery. He was only twenty-four years old. That same month, Fortune magazine reproduced twenty-six of the series' sixty panels in color accompanied by a lengthy article.

It was also in 1941 that Jacob Lawrence created the gouaches (opaque watercolors) of the John Brown series. John Brown (1800-1859) was the son of deeply religious, Calvinist parents who taught their children that slavery was a sin against God. Brown went on to become the most dedicated and famous abolitionist in American history, best known for the ill-fated attack he led on the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry, Virginia (now West Virginia.) His exploits were extolled by numerous artists and writers, all of whom contributed to the making of the John Brown legend. Lawrence's series of twenty-two gouaches, in the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts, is widely considered to be one of the most powerful depictions of the abolitionist's heroic, yet controversial life.

By the 1970s the twenty-two paintings were showing signs of serious deterioration. In an effort to preserve the work, the Detroit Institute of Art contracted with the silkscreen workshop of Ives-Sillman to produce limited-edition print portfolios, with Lawrence acting as artistic consultant. Though the principal reason for the project was the preservation of Lawrence's original imagery, the Legend of John Brown prints are not the result of an attempt to faithfully duplicate the images in the gouache paintings. No effort was made to match original colors or textures, and the silkscreen prints in this series thus exhibit a considerable degree of stylistic autonomy. The Tyler Museum of Art is presenting this series of twenty-two prints to the public.

Eight Studies for The Book of Genesis, executed in 1989-90, was inspired by events in Lawrence's youth. The artist stated: "I was baptized in the Abyssinian Baptist Church [in Harlem] in about 1932. There I attended church, I attended Sunday School, and I remember the ministers giving very passionate sermons pertaining to the Creation. This was over fifty years ago, and you know, these things stay with you even though you don't realize what an impact these experiences are making on you at the time. As I was doing the series I think that this was in the back of my mind, hearing the minister talk about these things." The Tyler Museum of Art is pleased to present six of these silkscreens along with The Legend of John Brown prints.