Selections from the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Selections from the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

THE MELVIN HOLMES COLLECTION OF AFRICAN AMERICAN ART has been produced by Tyler Fine Art and written by Thom Pegg with many thanks to Melvin Holmes’ two daughters SARANAH WALDEN & KENYA HOLMES for whom we owe much gratitude for allowing us the opportunity to share your father’s collection with the world.

Tyler Fine Art

407 Jackson Ave.

University City, MO

314.727.6249

www.tfa-exhibits.com

eople used to always ask my dad if my sister, Kenya, and I shared his interest in art. I am sure he would have loved to say “YES!” Unfortunately, we didn’t. He tried to expose us to his passion early on, but I could never understand why we needed to stand in front of a piece of art in a museum for an extended period of time just looking at it. I remember going to auctions, estate sales, museums, lea markets and antique stores galore searching for works of art, but those memories are always tinged with me being hungry and bored.

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the internet (once the internet came along), talking with his friends in the art world, and reading copious books about various artists. Some might also say he was lucky, but as Pasteur said, “fortune favors the prepared mind.”

For example, without having done his research, my dad wouldn’t have been able to recognize Grafton Tyler Brown’s piece in a box at an estate sale priced very low in order to just get rid of it. And, he wouldn’t have known that the “Dox Trash’s” erroneously advertised by a seller were really works by famed artist, Dox Thrash.

However, as I got older, I began to appreciate if not the art itself, his love for it. I can recall so many phone calls where my dad would be breathless with excitement over a potential ind or ecstatic because he had secured something he had been wanting for a long time. He would almost always use the refrain, “Now my collection is complete”. . . at least until a new piece became available and then he would be excited all over again at the prospect of adding it to his collection. Whenever my dad acquired a new piece, he would sit it by his bed so that he could just look at it for a while. He would then either send it off for restoration, if needed (lamenting the whole time it was out of his hands), or ind a place for it in the evershrinking real estate of his home.

The collection was a tremendous source of pride for my dad.

He enjoyed opening his home to showcase the works and would happily talk to anyone with an interest in art about his collection. The one thing he always wanted but, sadly, didn’t do before he passed, was to create a catalogue of his collection. It was his greatest dream to have a book that would forever memorialize something that he loved almost as much as his children. For that reason, Kenya and I are thrilled that we were able to inally make this dream of his come true.

Over the years, I helped him create labels to go next to all of the pieces in his collection the way they do in museums. The project helped me bridge the gap between appreciating his love of the art to appreciating the art myself. Learning a bit about the artists and knowing my dad preferred pieces that narrated the black experience in America drew me in.

It also made me proud to go to museums with friends and be able to point out artists and say, “my Dad has that artist’s work in his collection.”

Many people wonder how he was able to amass such an extensive collection containing over 350 pieces on a city employee’s salary. The secret is that my dad was an amazing detective and a scholar. He loved research, learning and reading. He had a wish list of artists and would set out trying to ind pieces by them any way he could - be it by putting an ad in the artist’s hometown paper, scouring

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

his is for you, Daddy!

Saranah Holmes Walden

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elvin Holmes was born in New Iberia, Louisiana on July 16, 1944. His father was a Bishop in the Pentecostal Church of God in Christ. When Melvin was two years old, his father had a vision and moved the congregation and his family to Monrovia, California, where, because of their impoverished state, they started out living in a tent city. Melvin was a voracious reader, like his mother, and also a high school athlete. He received a track scholarship to San Jose State College, and ran on the same team as Tommie Smith and John Carlos (well known for their black-gloved, black power salute at the Olympic games in Mexico City, 1968).

INTRODUCTION

Melvin moved to San Francisco from San Jose in 1967. In 1977, working as a civil servant, Melvin frequently took his lunch at the Civic Center plaza in San Francisco. One day he was passing by the Capricorn Asunder Gallery and saw an exhibit of Sargent Johnson’s work, along with a reading by beat poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. (September 21-25, 1977; San Francisco Arts Festival). Johnson’s work impacted him and when he happened across the artist’s work again at a gallery in 1990, he was moved to buy a sculpture on installment payments. That work, titled, The Cat , is still in the collection today. Melvin began his collection acquiring images of black people executed by artists who were either black or white, but quickly decided to focus on works done by exclusively black artists. He continued to acquire works

by Sargent Johnson, and the collection eventually included 32 examples, in a variety of mediums.

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At the time of his passing, Melvin had amassed more than 300 artworks, ranging in date from the mid-19th century to contemporary. The goal of this book is to not just present the artwork in the collection, but also offer a glimpse into the mind and passion of the collector. One would be hard-pressed to ind a collector who was more enthusiastic about the works he acquired and curious about the artists who created them. The ability to share in that enthusiasm by learning about the art, the artists, and the collector is what makes this project special.

Long before Melvin Holmes collected art, he collected Black memorabilia; he had an “addiction”, as he described it in an interview, for collecting objects which spoke to him

Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

in some way. Regardless of whether it was memorabilia or ine art, he was faced irst with the task of inding interesting items, and then making choices between which objects to buy and keep or which to just pass by. Oftentimes, collectors are not given the proper credit due for this: good collections are both personal, and also necessarily signiicant in a larger context. When you listened to Melvin speak about his collecting methodology, he was truly passionate, but equally, he insinuated a responsibility toward the artist for acknowledging and preserving a proper representation of a body of work. That is also seen in Melvin’s interest in collecting—when possible—“in depth”, as he put it. As a collector of an artist’s work, he attempted to procure a good representation, and if circumstances allowed for it (availability, cost, time, etc.), he tried to ind additional examples of any variation of style or subject the artist might have produced over his or her lifetime. One may see this in the body of work Melvin collected by William “Bill” Walker, a painter and muralist who was known as the architect of the Wall of Respect, an important public mural (no longer in existence), which became a rallying point of artists involved with the Civil Rights movement in Chicago in the 1970s. Melvin owned twenty works by Walker of various mediums and subjects, executed in the many different styles adopted over the artist’s lifetime. To present any one of these singularly would not adequately represent Walker’s work as a whole.

Melvin bought his second work by Sargent Johnson three years after he acquired The Cat. His love for the sculpture encouraged him to seek additional works by the artist, and simultaneously, he realized that with an equal investment of time, effort, and of course, capital, he could build a signiicant Sargent Johnson collection. He ran ads in newspapers looking for works by Johnson. One response he received came from another artist named Phyllis “Pele” De Lappe, who was living in Petaluma, California. De Lappe (1916-2007) was primarily a labor cartoonist and social activist. She had known many famous artists in her lifetime, including Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Sargent Johnson.

Melvin became friends with De Lappe, and bought Johnson’s sculpture, Mother and Child from her. De Lappe also aided Melvin in locating another sculpture that had

originally been exhibited in 1971, and was now with a family in Chicago. That is how he was able to acquire the bronze, Girl with Braids. Eventually, Melvin expanded his interest to include the many mediums in which Johnson worked—oil painting, enamel, terracotta, bronze, gouache, lithography, and stone.

After acquiring The Cat , Melvin located a rare copy of the exhibition catalog of the Sargent Johnson retrospective that was held at the Oakland Museum in 1971. His plan was to attempt to locate donors to the exhibit and see if they were interested in selling their work. That is how he met De Lappe, and eventually, the Poliakoff family in Chicago. The San Francisco Museum held another retrospective of Johnson’s work in 1998, Sargent Johnson, African American Modernist, and many of the works included were on loan from Melvin’s collection. In a short amount of time, but with considerable effort and, relatively speaking, a fair amount of capital, Melvin had indeed built a signiicant Sargent Johnson collection.

Initially, Melvin collected only igurative or narrative works by African American artists, and the majority of the collection today is made up of representational art. Melvin saw that type of art as “micro-narratives of the greater African American diaspora.” This is because he believed each piece told the story of the way the artist had lived and how he or she looked at the world during that respective period.

To many people, the notion of an artist or especially an art collector, brings to mind visions of a privileged individual, who enjoys the luxury of the creative process or the support of this lofty endeavor. In fact, many of the artists whose work Melvin collected struggled greatly to make a living and as African Americans, for the majority of the time, that struggle was magniied exponentially. Melvin, as a collector, had never lived a “privileged” life and as he put it, was forced to save and even leverage much of his earnings to acquire his art. He couldn’t simply go to any fancy gallery of his choice and buy whatever was trendy; he had to work for it—had to ind bargains resulting from his hours researching the artists.

Eventually, Melvin became less rigid in his collecting

parameters, and he began to acquire abstract art for his collection, including Thomas Sills’ Pleasant Hills, Robert Blackburn’s Yellow on Red, James Phillips, Visual Manifestations of Ashe (Life Force), and Daniel LaRue Johnson’s painting from his Emergence Series, as well as works by Sam Gilliam, Frank Wimberley, Hale Woodruff, and several Sargent Johnson enamels of abstract compositions.

A large part of Melvin’s “methodology of collecting” as he called it, was the research he did on the artists:

“You have to know the history of the artist, you have to be able to guess whether or not the work you are contemplating buying has merit and is important, and above everything else you have to be able to determine with reasonable certainty whether or not it is real.”

Melvin treasured books written on the subject of African American Art (and in 1990, there were considerably fewer than today). The irst book he owned on the subject was Two Centuries of Black American Art, by David Driskell, a catalog which accompanied an exhibition of the same name at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1976, which he found in a bookstore in Santa Cruz. While reading Two Centuries of Black American Art, he noticed that many of the works included in the exhibition were owned by individuals, not institutions, and that idea inspired him to collect. In fact, Melvin was eventually able to locate and acquire a work by Calvin Burnett, I’ve Been in Some Big Towns, which was actually illustrated in that very book. He then decided it was worthwhile to build a fairly extensive library.

Melvin acquired the majority of his collection between the years 1992-1995. He bought Charles White’s Open Gate and Henry O. Tanner’s The Good Shepherd in 1995. He eventually added three more works by White and another painting by Tanner to his collection.

“Early on, of course, I was aware of Tanner and his importance because the art establishment had accepted him as the premier African American artist of the nineteenth century. I let various dealers know that I was interested in his work, and

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in 1995 John Garzoli of Garzoli Gallery in San Rafael was chosen to sell about ten Tanners that came from the estate of relatives of Tanner’s wife. I bought one and tried to buy another but couldn’t come up with the money in time.”

Melvin shied away from works on paper initially because he viewed them as fragile and ephemeral, but as he grew as a collector and his experience broadened, he realized his aversion to them had cost him some valuable opportunities; he regretted having passed by works on paper by artists such as Jacob Lawrence. However, he was able to acquire some important examples by artists such as Nelson Stevens, Sam Gilliam, Minnie Evans, and others whose market had not yet become prohibitive.

The legacy of Melvin Holmes and the art he collected teach us about the values of inspiration, perseverance and generosity.

Melvin would describe it as a labor of love. Of course he knew how rewarding it was to him personally, but he may never have dreamt how valuable it would become to us all. We learn about people, places and events when we look at narrative art, and we sometimes learn about ourselves and our emotions, both spontaneously and contemplatively when we consider abstract art. Melvin Holmes, the man, and The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art—the collector and the collection— contribute equally in this wonderful lesson in life.

THOM PEGG

“(Melvin) was the consummate scholar, collector, researcher, and art detective. I witnessed his Frederick Douglass-like tenacity, his museum curator/art historian eye for beauty, his Sherlock Holmes inquisitiveness to get to the facts, and his ferocious Arthur Schomberg-like zeal for the history of African peoples...All of this was before the advent of the Internet so you can imagine the dogged determination he brought to his endeavours. I learned a great deal from Holmes both artistically and academically. He was an inspiring and great man!”

Carter Cue, Archivist and librarian, Winston-Salem State University, NC

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Melvin Holmes’ collection in the Museum of Africa

an Diaspora, San Francisco, CA as a part of the exhibition, Collected: Stories of Acquisition and Reclamation, October 7, 2011- March 4, 2012.

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he night life was fabulous. he corner saloons, back rooms jumped, you know, places like Hotcha and Mike's and little places that had back rooms. You'd go into Hotcha and Bobby Henderson was playing the piano, Billie Holliday was singing. You'd go across Lenox Avenue to the little bar across from Harlem Hospital and Art Tatum was playing the piano. Ethel Waters was here. he place just jumped. Dickie Well's place on 133rd Street. God, some of the names escape me. Tillie's Chicken Shack. Gladys Bentley's Place. And you sort of did a tour. In the evening you'd pop from place to place.

Charles Alston

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Charles Alston (1907-1977)

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Robert Pious (1908-1983)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Oliver Harrington (1912-1995)

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Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

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Selma Burke (1900-1995)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

William Artis (1914-1977)

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Edward Bannister (1828-1901)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

James Herring (1887-1969)

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Romare Bearden (1911-1988)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Romare Bearden (1911-1988)

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Rose Piper (1917-2005)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Ernie Barnes (1938-2009)

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Malvin Gray Johnson (1896-1934)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007)

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Nelson Stevens (b. 1938)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

James Phillips (b. 1945)

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Hayward Louis Oubre, Jr. (1916-2006)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Calvin Burnett (1921-2007)

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Albert Alexander Smith (1896-1940)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Nelson Primus (1842-1916)

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Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937)

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Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012)

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Claude Clark (1915-2001)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Rex Goreleigh (1902-1986)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

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Marion Perkins (1908-1961)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Gerald Jackson (b. 1936)

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Ramon Gabriel (1911-1960)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Joseph Kersey (1908-1982)

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Archibald Motley, Jr. was born in New Orleans, but moved as an infant to Chicago. He attended Englewood High School and then the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He exhibited at the Harmon Foundation in 1929 and 1931; the Art Institute of Chicago, 1932 and 1934; Howard University, 1937; American Negro Expo (Chicago, 1940); the South Side Community Art Center , 1940; and the Smithsonian Institution, 1933, among many other venues.

In Baseball in the Schoolyard, Motley cleverly addresses serious issues such as integration through a depiction of children playing America’s favorite pastime. The artist had returned from Paris in the early 1930s and began a series of works depicting the Black experience in Chicago.

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think this is an important painting. Its particularly American iconographies - the symbols of baseball, the lag give it a particular resonance for me. In the 1991 exhibition catalogue, he Art of Archibald Motley, Jr., it is listed as “whereabouts unknown.” his alone- that I found a work assumed to be lost- makes it that much more important to me.

Melvin Holmes

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Archibald Motley (1891-1981)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

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Sargent Johnson (1888-1967)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Sargent Johnson (1888-1967)

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Earlie Hudnall, Jr. (b. 1946)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Gordon Parks (1912-2006)

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olor lingers with us as we walk away from Richard Mayhew’s paintings. Although they recall changing colors captured ‘en plain air’, Mayhew is a studio painter. In he Spiritual Realm of Richard Mayhew, I wrote about how his works are not so much tied to the recognition of a place but to the MEMORY of that place. He told me in an interview in 2000 that his reverence for painting landscapes was honed as a teen on Long Island Sound, when he apprenticed with medical illustrator and landscape painter, James Willson Peale. But he spoke of his experiences on the sound with his father, a sign painter of Unkechaug, Shinnecock, and Black ancestry. He recalls on early morning ishing trips with his father and his brother, the ‘sound's somber look and mystique.’

Lizetta Lefalle-Collins, Color + Memory: A Visual Memoir; essay in The Art of Richard Mayhew, catalog to accompany the exhibition, Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco, CA, 2009

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Richard Mayhew (b. 1924)

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Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Ellis Wilson (1899-1977)

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Charles White (1918-1979)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Augusta Savage (1892-1962)

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Allan Freelon (1895-1960)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Aaron Douglas (1899-1979)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

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Hughie Lee Smith (1915-1999) 64

Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Henry Bozeman Jones (1889-1973) 65

Dox Thrash (1893-1965) 66

Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) 67

Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs (1917-2010) 68

Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Charles Dawson (1889-1981)

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John Wilson (b. 1922)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Frederick D. Jones, Jr. (1913-1996)

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Cleveland Bellow (1951-2009)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Robert Blackburn (1920-2003)

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Tom Feelings (1933-2003)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Minnie Evans (1892-1987)

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Bob Thompson (1912-1959)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Daniel LaRue Johnson (b. 1938)

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William Pajaud (1925-2015)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Thomas Sills (1914-2000)

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Ulysses S. Grant Tayes (1885-1972)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

William Carter (1909-1996)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

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Charles White (1918-1979) 84

Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Charles White (1918-1979) 85

Walter Williams (1920-1998)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Thelma Johnson Streat (1912-1959)

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Joe Overstreet (b. 1934)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Ruth Waddy (1909-2003)

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Bill Walker was born in 1927 in Birmingham, Alabama. An only child, he was initially raised by his grandmother in a desperately poor ghetto of “bleak little shacks” with outhouses known as Alley B. In 1938, he was sent north to Chicago to join his mother who worked as a seamstress and hairdresser. They lived in a variety of places in the Washington Park area and he eventually attended Englewood High School.

After graduating art school, Walker headed to Nashville and Memphis where he painted murals for a Baptist church, a local Elks club, and the Flamingo Club, a nightclub near Beale Street.

As an easel painter, Walker wasn’t limited to one style but this example is one that he excelled in.

Here, Walker deftly captures the city streets coming alive with kinetic movement - you can almost hear the horns honking, the crowds surging, and the reverberations of the night clubs.

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

William “Bill” Walker (1927-2011)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

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Herbert Gentry (1919-2003)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Hale Woodruff (1900-1980)

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Sam Gilliam (b. 1933)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Carroll Sockwell (1943-1992)

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Palmer Hayden (1890-1973)

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Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art

Benny Andrews (1930-2006)

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Charles Alston (1907-1977) Harlem at Night,1948 oil on canvas 28 x 36 inches signed and dated p.11

William Artis (1914-1977) Head of a Boy, c. 1930 terracotta 11-1/2 inches high artist’s plaque on base p. 19

Robert Pious (1908-1983) Poster for the American Negro Exposition, 1940 serigraph 21 x 30 inches signed p.12

Edward Bannister (1828-1901) Untitled (Pastoral Landscape), 1881 oil on board 4-3/4 x 8-1/2 inches signed and dated p. 20

Oliver Harrington (1912-1995) Statue of “Liberty”, 1942 pencil and crayon on paper 13 x 19-1/2 inches signed p. 13

James Herring (1887-1969) Museum Interior, c. 1925 oil on board 12 x 10 inches signed p. 21

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918) Grand Canyon and Falls, 1887 oil on canvas 30 x 20 inches signed and dated p.14

Romare Bearden (1911-1988) Mecklenburg Morning, 1978 mixed media collage on board 14 x 18 inches signed p. 22

Cascade Cliffs, Columbia River, 1885 oil on canvas 17 x 32 inches signed and dated p. 15

The Old Couple, 1978 mixed media collage on board 6 x 9 inches signed p. 23

Selma Burke (1900-1995) Monument to the Tuskegee Airmen, 1942 bronze 9-1/4 x 6 x 6 inches signed and dated p. 18

Rose Piper (1917-2005) Blues Singer, 1989 mixed media on paper 24-1/2 x 19 inches signed, dated, and titled Rose Piper and When you talk in your sleep make sho’ I ain’t awake are inscribed. p.24

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Ernie Barnes (1938-2009) Dance Hall, 1969 oil on board 24 x 36 inches signed p. 25 Malvin Gray Johnson (1896-1934) Over the Harlem Rooftops, 1928 oil on canvas 16 x 12 inches signed and dated p.26 Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007) Winter Scene From My Window, 1933 oil on board 15-1/2 x 11 inches signed and dated p. 27 Nelson Stevens (b. 1938) Spirit Brother (Jimi Hendrix), c. 1960’s colored pencil on paper 27 x 22 inches signed p. 28 James Phillips (b 1945) Visual Manifestations of Ashe (Life Force), c. 1980 oil on canvas 96 x 48 inches signed p. 29 Hayward Louis Oubre, Jr. (1916-2006) Pensive Family, 1949 oil on canvas 38 x 23-1/2 inches signed and dated Exhibited: Atlanta University Art Annual, 1949; Honorable Mention p. 30

Calvin Burnett (1921-2007) I’ve Been in Some Big Towns, 1942 egg tempera on board 12-1/2 x 10-1/4 inches signed and dated Illustrated: Two Centuries of Black American Art, 1976, David Driskell and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, p. 191. p. 31 Albert Alexander Smith (1896-1940) Self Portrait, c. 1920 watercolor on paper 12 x 9 inches signed p. 32 Nelson Primus (1842-1916) Landscape With Horse, 1884 oil on board 18 x 24 inches signed and dated p. 33 Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) The Good Shepherd, c. 1910 oil on canvas 14-1/2 x 17-1/2 inches signed p. 34 The Good Shepherd (Sunset), 1910 oil on canvas 9-1/2 x 7-1/4 inches signed p. 35 Eldzier Cortor (1916-2015) Stopping Place, 1937 woodcut 16 x 9-1/2 inches signed, titled, and numbered 6/10 p. 36

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Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) Cabeza Cantando, c. 1968 bronze 9-3/4 inches high initialed p. 37 Claude Clark (1915-2001) The Entertainer, 1938 oil on board 22 x 28 inches signed p. 38 Rex Goreleigh (1902-1986) The Mourners, c. 1940 oil on canvas 27 x 32 inches signed p. 39 Marion Perkins (1908-1961) Mother and Child, c. 1940 stone 15 x 19 inches signed pp. 40-42 Gerald Jackson (b. 1936) Girl Holding Moon, 1969 oil on canvas 50-1/4 x 50-1/4 inches signed and dated p. 43 Ramon Gabriel (1911-1960) On South Parkway, 1941 watercolor on paper 23-1/4 x 18 inches signed and titled p. 44

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Joseph Kersey (1908-1982) Ellen Jane, 1940 poured stone 9-3/8 x 7 x 7 inches Illustrated: Modern Negro Art, James Porter; The Negro in Art Alain Locke.

Exhibited: American Negro Exposition, 1940, Honorable Mention, illustrated, listed as Anna; 44th Annual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and Vicinity, Art Institute of Chicago, 1940. p. 45 Archibald Motley (1891-1981) Baseball in the Schoolyard, c. 1934 oil on canvas 17-3/4 x 21-3/8 inches signed pp. 47-49 Sargent Johnson (1888-1967) Untitled (Female Egyptian Head), c. 1930 terracotta 4 x 2-1/2 x 4 signed p. 50 The Cat, c. 1945 terracotta 5-3/4 x 16 x 4-1/2 inches p. 51 Earlie Hudnall, Jr. (b. 1946) Hip Hop Galveston, 1993 silver gelatin print 18-1/2 x 15 inches signed p. 52 Gordon Parks (1912-2006) Muslim Women in Chicago, 1970 silver gelatin print 20 x 29 inches signed and dated p. 53

Richard Mayhew (b. 1924) West Wind, 1954 oil on canvas 54 x 74 inches signed p. 55

Aaron Douglas (1899-1979) Haitian Street Scene, 1937 oil on canvas 17 x 19 inches signed p. 61

Lois Mailou Jones (1905-1998) Haiti Voudou #4, 1968 watercolor on paper 22 x 30 inches signed, dated, and inscribed Haiti p. 56

Hughie Lee-Smith (1915-1999) Boy in Landscape With Balloons, 1956 oil on board 7-1/4 x 17 inches signed and dated pp. 62-64

Ellis Wilson (1899-1977) Voodoo Harlequin, c. 1950 oil on board 24 x 17-1/2 inches signed p. 57

Henry Bozeman Jones (1889-1973) Slim, 1930 oil on board 10 x 7 inches signed and dated p. 65

Charles White (1918-1979) The Open Gate, 1949 graphite on paper 28-1/2 x 20-1/2 inches signed and dated p. 58

Dox Thrash (1893-1965) Backstage, c. 1942 carborundum mezzotint 7-1/2 x 9-3/4 inches signed and titled p. 66

Augusta Savage (1892-1962) Lift Every Voice and Sing, 1939 silver oxide 11 x 9-1/2 x 4 inches signed p. 59

James Van Der Zee (1886-1983) Portrait of a Girl, 1936 cyanotype 6-1/2 x 4-1/2 inches signed, dated, and inscribed NYC p. 67

Allan Freelon (1895-1960) Untitled (Harbor Scene) c. 1930 oil on board 8 x 10 inches signed p. 60

Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs (1917-2010) The Teacher, 1935 watercolor on paper 14-1/2 x 10-3/4 inches signed p. 68

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Charles Dawson (1889-1981) Southern Scene, c. 1940 watercolor on paper 20-1/2 x 25 inches signed p. 69

Minnie Evans (1892-1987) His Eyes Are Watching You, 1962 crayon on paper 12 x 9 inches signed and dated p. 75

John Wilson (b. 1922) Mother and Child, 1952 lithograph on paper 22-1/2 x 18-1/2 inches signed, dated, titled, and numbered 38/50 p. 70

Bob Thompson (1912-1959) Ibiza, 1963 oil on canvas 5-1/2 x 5 inches signed, dated, and titled p. 76

Frederick D. Jones, Jr. (1913-1996) The Girl in the Yellow Dress, c. 1950 oil on board 30 x 8 inches signed p. 71

Daniel LaRue Johnson (b. 1938) Abstract (From Emergence Series), 1963 oil on canvas 48 x 48 inches signed and dated p. 77

Cleveland Bellow (1951-2009) Catch a Southern Beauty, c. 1970 photo transfer collage on paper 23-3/4 19-1/2 inches signed and titled p. 72

William Pajaud (1925-2015) Jazz Ensemble, 1950 tempera on board 43 x 21 inches signed p. 78

Robert Blackburn (1920-2003) Yellow in Red, 1962 serigraph on paper 19 x 24 inches signed, dated, titled, and inscribed ED/10 p. 73

Thomas Sills (1914-2000) Pleasant, c. 1966 oil on canvas 42 x 49 inches signed Provenance: Witchita State University, Ulrich Museum of Art, KS (Gift of the artist); de-accessioned; Melvin Holmes.

Illustrated and exhibited: Exhibition of Contemporary Paintings and Sculpture By Afro-American Artists, National Guard Armory, Wilmington, DE, 1971; Presented by Aesthetics Dynamics. p. 79

Tom Feelings (1933-2003) Untitled (Two Boys), c. 1960 charcoal on paper 16 x 12-1/2 inches signed p. 74

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Ulysses S. Grant Tayes (1885-1972) Barber Shop, 1947 watercolor and gouache on board 20 x 21 inches signed and dated p. 80

Joe Overstreet (b. 1934) Untitled, 1969 mixed media on paper 25 x 18 inches signed and dated p. 88

William Sylvester Carter (1909-1996) Still Life With Purple Plum, c. 1950 oil on canvas 18 x 32 inches signed p. 81

Ruth Waddy (1909-2003) Untitled Series B, 1969 linocut 20 x 16 inches signed, dated, titled, numbered 8/25, and inscribed Lino p. 89

Charles White (1918-1979) Fulillment, 1966 oil on canvas 61 x 18 inches signed and dated p. 84

William “Bill� Walker (1927-2011) The El, c. 1955 tempera on board 20-1/4 x 34 inches signed pp. 91-93

Love Letter I, 1971 color lithograph 30 x 22 inches signed, dated, and numbered 9/25 p. 85

Herbert Gentry (1919-2003) Untitled (Abstracted Landscape), c. 1960 oil on board 21-1/2 x 16-1/4 inches signed p. 94

Walter Williams (1920-1998) Dusk, 1963 oil on board 9-5/8 x 12 inches signed p. 86 Thelma Johnson Streat (1912-1959) Boy With Bird, c. 1950 oil on board 21 x 15 inches signed p. 87

Hale Woodruff (1900-1980) Untitled (Abstract), c. 1960 oil on canvas 30 x 18 inches signed p. 95 Sam Gilliam (b. 1933) Untitled, 1971 lithograph on paper 21 x 26 inches signed and dated p. 96

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O

ur goal in producing Selections from the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art is to provide the reader with a feeling for the depth and breadth of the collection of art acquired by Melvin Holmes over the years. This would mean the diversity of subjects and mediums, as well as the span of nearly 150 years in dates of execution.

The irst book produced on the collection, The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art, addresses each of the more than 300 works in the collection. That book is available in print or online at our website: www.tfaexhibits.com. Selections includes 70 works chosen from the collection, and while the most historically important works are represented, inclusion was not determined by value only.

Selections is irst and foremost, a picture book. In an effort to be as unobtrusive as possible, we decided not to place the description of the artwork on the same page as the image, thereby transforming the reader into a viewer.

Some of the earliest works in the collection are Edward Bannister’s Untitled (Pastoral Landscape) and four remarkable works by Grafton Tyler Brown. Bannister was inluenced by the Barbizon School of landscape painting and worked primarily around the Providence, Rhode Island area in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Brown began his career in Philadelphia as a lithographer , but eventually moved west, to work in Northern California, Oregon, and southwest Canada. Brown made a major contribution to the development of early California landscape painting.

A very scarce, early painting of a portrait of a horse by Nelson Primus is also included. Primus and Brown were two of the very few black artists working in California in the nineteenth century. The collection includes two ine oils by Henry Ossawa Tanner from the 1910s. The notion of The Good Shepherd was one of Tanner’s favorite subjects.

According to Jesse Tanner, the artist’s son, his father believed “God needs us to help ight with him against evil and we need God to guide us.” (1). Tanner sought to

convey a sense of peace with this subject after leaving the United States because of the unequal treatment of African Americans.

Two very important works from the Harlem Renaissance are Malvin Gray Johnson’s Over the Harlem Rooftops and Charles Alston’s Harlem at Night. Both works are depictions of a densely populated community—the former during the daytime and the latter at night--yet oddly, both images are devoid of a single igure. Despite that, as the viewer, you sense the presence of people. While Alston is typically associated with abstraction, Malvin Johnson was criticized for his tendency toward cubism and abstraction. Johnson’s work precedes Alston’s by twenty years.

Chicago rivaled New York as a hub for African American artists following the Great Migration. The Art Institute of Chicago, and after 1940, the South Side Community Art Center, were vital centers for the education, promotion and exhibition of the work of black artists. The Melvin Holmes Collection includes an impressive representation of work by artists who worked exclusively in Chicago or spent a portion of their careers there; painters Charles Dawson, Fred Jones, Eldzier Cortor, Margaret Burroughs, William Carter, and Ramon Gabriel to name a few. Also included are sculpture and works on paper by Elizabeth Catlett, Joseph Kersey, and Marion Perkins. Sculptures by Kersey and Perkins, both highly talented artists, are scarce.

A few of the foundation works to the collection were done by artists who not only worked in Chicago, but attended the same high school (Englewood). Archibald Motley, Jr. originally painted Baseball on the Playground for the P.W.A. in 1934, but after the work appeared in a listing at BarnettAden Gallery in Washington, D.C. the following year, its whereabouts were unknown until Melvin discovered it and acquired it around 2000. The collection includes in total four works by Charles White: two prints, a drawing and a painting. The Open Gate is a very important, early drawing (1949). White’s use of stigmata in the hand of the subject adds an element of surreal symbolism to the work. Fulillment, done in 1966, is a terriic example of White’s painting style of the mid-Sixties. He had moved to Los Angeles and begun

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teaching at the Otis Art Institute and was on the heels of ACA Gallery’s inal solo exhibit of his work. The work of Chicago artist, Bill Walker, was collected in depth by Melvin Holmes. Walker was best-known as being the architect of the Wall of Respect mural in Chicago, as well as subsequent related murals there and in other cities. Holmes was introduced to the work of Walker when Lizetta LeFalle-Collins curated an exhibit of 15 works by the artist at the Sargent Johnson Gallery in San Francisco. Walker told Holmes his easel work had not been given much-- if any--attention.

Several of the works by Walker relate stylistically and in subject to his better-known murals.

It is uncommon to see such a strong representation of sculpture by African American artists in a single collection.

Holmes’ collection of the work of Bay-area sculptor, Sargent Johnson, is unrivaled (the entire collection of 29 pieces by SJ may be seen in The Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art book, and in the forthcoming book, The Melvin Holmes Collection of the Work of Sargent Johnson), but also included are William Artis’ Head of a Boy (1930) and Augusta Savage’s Lift Every Voice and Sing (1939).

AfriCobra is an acronym for African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists (“bad” meaning “boldly good”), and in 1970 ten artists held their irst organized exhibition at the Studio Museum of Harlem, Ten in Search of a Nation. Nelson Stevens, whose portrait of Jimi Hendrix is included in the Holmes collection, was part of that exhibition, and James Phillips joined the group later.

Abstraction in African American art was a result of not only the revolution of abstract art in the 20th century, but also the emancipation of black artists from the agenda handed to them by Alain Locke. Generally speaking, abstract art is the symbolic reshaping of the natural world into an expressive, yet formal composition of colors, lines, forms, and gestural marks. The style loosely coincided with scientiic and technological advances and discoveries, which is reasonable because those events reshaped how we saw and understood our world. Locke’s concept of the New Negro, albeit, originating with optimistic intentions and practical purpose, eventually became oppressive

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to the black artist. Creating images that did not address one’s African heritage, or one’s experience speciically as an African American, was discouraged and in some cases, it led to being left out of important exhibitions (e.g., the Atlanta Annuals). Hale Woodruff and Charles Alston were pioneers in black abstraction. Thomas Sills, Ruth Waddy, William Pajaud, Daniel LaRue Johnson, and Joe Overstreet also chose to work in abstraction.

Two strong examples of the narrative art Locke supported may be seen in Claude Clark’s The Entertainer (1938) and Rex Goreleigh’s The Mourners (1940). These subjects depict the daily life of the “average” African American in humble, but arguably, simplistic terms, emphasizing the importance of music, family, and indirectly, religion. Allan Crite described himself as a “reporter-artist”, depicting typical daily activities in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston where he lived.

Many African American artists of the mid-20th century delved into the subject of voodoo, because they traveled to Haiti. Two examples of this are Lois Mailou Jones’ Haiti Voudou IV (1968) and Ellis Wilson’s Voodoo Harlequin (1950).

Wilson was inluenced by the direct use of color and daring breaks of perspective seen in the works of Haitian artists. (2) The Melvin Holmes Collection only touches on the medium of photography by black artists, but there are works by very important artists included; notably, Gordon Parks’ Muslim Women in Chicago (1970), James Vanderzee’s Portrait of a Girl (1936), and Earlie Hudnall’s Hip Hop Galveston (1993).

1. Mathews, Henry Ossawa Tanner, American Artist, 1969, quotation from Jesse Tanner.

2. Everything of Interest and Beauty, essay by Margaret Vendryes, The Art of Ellis Wilson, p.9.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Anita Mauro and her mother, the remarkable real life Ellen Jane, for the use of family photos and anecdotes about artist and family member Joseph Kersey.

The Saint Louis Art Museum and the Friends of African American Art for providing a lovely reception for the Melvin Holmes Collection of African American Art at our gallery in Saint Louis.

Photo Credits: John Wilson White Studio

Pat Albano and Aaron Galleries of Glenview, Illinois for their expertise and time, helping evaluate and research the artwork of the MHCAAA. Catalog layout and artist entries: RenĂŠe Yeager, Tyler Fine Art Catalog essay and artist entries: Thom Pegg, Tyler Fine Art

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