Aaron Douglas
American, 1899-1979
The Founding of Chicago c. 1930-1933
Gouache on Paper Board
14-¾ in. x 12- 3/8 in (37.5 cm x 31.4 cm)
Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Museum purchase: R. Charles and Mary Margaret Clevenger Art Acquisition Fund, 2006.0027
One of the most noteworthy African American artists from the Harlem Renaissance, Aaron Douglas inflects the ideas of the New Negro Movement. His work publicized the harsh conditions of African American life and symbolizes hope for their future. As the son of a sharecropper and a homemaker, Douglas had first hand experience of the Jim Crow south. The above piece, which is typical of his style, incorporates silhouette forms to represent an African American experience, which alludes to a Haitian fur trader, Jean Baptist du Sable, the founder of Chicago. Raising her child up, the woman hopes for a better future. The silhouetted figures gaze out from the darkened wilderness onto the bright modern city of Chicago—collapsing space and time in order to bridge gap between Black history and the progress of America.
Jaquana Savage
An extended look at Aaron Douglas’s The Founding of Chicago