Unlike many self-taught artists who only gained fame following their deaths, David Butler experienced success during his lifetime, holding several museum and gallery exhibitions at various locations including the Delaware Art Museum and Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Living to the ripe old age of 99, Butler was one of the original recognized stars of Southern African-American yard art. His home in Patterson, Louisiana is where he created an amazing tin zoological environment both inside and outside his home. He did this over several decades, and began his work as an artist at middle age, after his employment at a sawmill left him injured. The 1982 exhibition “Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980” held at Washington, DC’s Corcoran Gallery, is where Butler’s art first rose to prominence. Unfortunately, one year later in 1983 illness would strike Butler, resulting in his having to move in with his family, away from the zoological environment he had created.

Butler liked to call the “creatures” he created “critters.” He drew inspiration both from mythological sources, and the Bible, as his mother was a missionary. Butler’s family’s religious beliefs impacted his artistic vision to an extent; he also created kinetic sculptures which included windmills, weathervanes, and spinning “whirligigs.”

An interesting fact is that Butler’s artistic ability developed somewhat due to the fact that he desired color in his yard during winter months, when the “real” flowers he had planted in spring would disappear. Some of the results of his imagination include cowboys, alligators, sea monsters, even flying elephants. Some of his works of art include “Two Headed Dragon Wagon,” “Peacock,” “Train,” “Man in the Moon,” and “Two Wisemen on a Camel.” His work can be found today at Gilley’s Gallery in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

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“I will preach with my brush.”
-Henry Ossawa Tanner

At the age of 21 in 1880 Henry enrolled in the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. There, he studied under Thomas Eakins who had an enormous amount of influence on Henry, not only in the development of his style but also in his pursuit of art itself. Henry became an illustrator for the Harper Brothers publishing company. It was one of the few businesses willing to utilize the talents of minorities for artists and writers.

Despite the small success he had at Harper Brothers as an African American at the turn of the century, it was difficult for him to receive much encouragement to pursue a career as an artist. Aside from this disheartening fact, Henry’s good friend Eakins always championed for minorities, and even women, to boldly strive towards art making.

In 1888 Tanner began teaching at Clark College, but wanted to go abroad for more exposure and opportunity. He was able to gain enough funds to do so when a bishop and his wife purchased his entire collection.

He went on to Paris and  was so taken by the inspirational spirit of the city, and its tolerance and cosmopolitan flavor, that he eventually made it his home.

His art, beautiful and expressive evolved through his experiences and travel to the Holy land where he was inspired to paint introspective religious subjects, for which he is now best known today.

In 1893 on a short return visit to the United States, Tanner painted his most famous work, The Banjo Lesson, while in Philadelphia. The painting shows an elderly black man teaching a boy, assumed to be his grandson, how to play the banjo. This deceptively simple-looking work explores several important themes and stereotypes.

In 1921 Tanner was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honor, The highest honor the French government bestows on nonmilitary personnel.

Later in 1969, the Smithsonian exhibited many of his works and Henry Ossawa Tanner became the first artist of African American descent to have a major solo exhibition in the United States. In 1996, his work Sand Dunes at Sunset was bought by the White House and was the first piece by an African American artist to join the collection.

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Eldzier Cortor (January 10, 1916 – November 26, 2015) was an African-American artist and printmaker.

Early on he dreamed of becoming a cartoonist and took evening classes at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before enrolling full time in 1937.

He is considered to be the first African American artists to depict nude women as the central theme of his work. This was an unpopular choice for many artists at the time as a reaction to the dominant European and American cultural landscape at the time. This was also unfavored because of the historical legacy of the sexual exploitation of black women during slavery. Cortor refutes these notions by showing the nude black female body as a source of strength.

One of the most popular works by Cortor is The Room, which is a painting from a series of paintings of rooms, depicting scenes in the lives of people of the slum areas. [It] shows the overcrowded condition of people who are obliged to carry out their daily activities of life in the confines of the same four walls in a condition of utmost poverty.

One of his first moments of popular recognition came in 1946, when Life magazine published one of his figures, a seminude woman. He received prestigious fellowships — including the Guggenheim, which allowed him to travel to Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti, where he was exposed to new examples of art and culture in the African diaspora.

“The idea is to get someone to pause awhile” instead of walking past a picture. Mr. Cortor said in the recent interview. “You try to just get them to stay with that painting for a while, you don’t just burst past it there. And that’s the idea. If you can get someone, to catch their eye a little bit.”

Other African American Artists
Artist Thornton Dial – Read More
David Butler, Southern African-American Artist Famous for Creating ‘Yard Art’ from Tin – Read More

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