With
the culture of Harlem
as his primary source of inspiration, Jacob Lawrence possessed a consciousness of black
history that is generally not included in textbooks. Jacob Lawrence was a student of life
and made exposing the reality of black history though art his life long pursuit. After a
long period of research and study research, Jacob Lawrence began his first series
documenting African history. This effort became known as the establishment of the first
black Western republic through the efforts of military leader Toussaint L'Ouverture.
Jacob Lawrence was twenty-one years old when
he completed the forty-one panel Toussaint L'Ouverture series in 1938. This series,
based upon Toussaint L'Ouverture's struggle to free Haiti from the tyranny of the Spanish
and the French in the early nineteenth centuries, set the standard for Jacob’s
lifelong sojourn to explore, expose and visually capture black life within a narrative
context.
Jacob Lawrence painted forty-one small works that
chronologically documented the history of the Haitian revolution. These works documented
Columbus's discovery of Haiti
on December 6, 1492, and chronicled Toussaint's victory over the French with the signing
of the Declaration of Independence on January 1, 1804.
Never to be known as a traditionalist Lawrence used
quotations to function as a verbal description of his art works and to enhance themes of
his artworks. An example of this is, General Toussaint L'Ouverture, number twenty
in the series of paintings, is labeled "statesman and military genius, esteemed by
the Spaniards, feared by the English, dreaded by the French, hated by the planters, and
revered by the blacks."
In 1938 Jacob Lawrence’s Toussaint L'Ouverture
series premiered during Lawrence's first solo exhibition outside of Harlem. Since its
premier, the series has been exhibited at museums throughout the continental United States
including the Baltimore Museum and
Museums in the Chicago area. The series is currently housed in the Amistad Research Center's Aaron
Douglas Collection, in New Orleans, Louisiana.
Lawrence's original intention was to provide African
Americans with a sense of pride, accomplishment, and hope during a time when many blacks
were experiencing extreme political, economic, and racial difficulties. In 1986, the
Spradling Ames Corporation and the Amistad Research Center, in conjunction with Lawrence
and silk-screen artist Lou Stovall, decided to publish the works of Lawrence in
silk-screen. General Toussaint L'Ouverture was the first painting to be issued as
part of this silk-screen presentation and has been described as " Jacob Lawrence's
most heroic painting and maybe his most decorative."
Whitney
Museum of American Art, New York, 1974
Midtown Payson Galleries, New York, 1993
Jacob Lawrence Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle, 1994 Art Institute of Chicago, 1995
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 1996
National Academy of Design, New York, 1996
With
the culture of 