Description:
Lynching; hanged man; tree; horses
Label Text:
This drawing--unlike any other in French's known oeuvre--was created for the 1935 NAACP-organized exhibition An Art Commentary on Lynching, held at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries from February 15 to March 2. The NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], under the leadership of Walter White, hoped that the exhibition would draw the public's attention to and make "fashionable" the anti-lynching movement. The timing of the exhibition was deliberate; in the early 1930s, the incidence of lynching was increasing and new anti-lynching legislation, the Costigan-Wagner bill, had just been introduced into Congress in 1934.
White personally contacted dozens of the most talented artists of the day, such as John Steuart Curry and Julius Bloch, to solicit lynching-related drawings, prints, paintings, and sculptures. C. Adolph Glassgold, curator of the Whitney Museum of Art, recommended that White contact Paul Cadmus, who in turn recommended French.
Unusual in its level of polish and violent subject-matter, this drawing is otherwise characteristic of French's style at the time, particularly in the rounded forms and languid postures of the figures. Amidst those casually standing men, however, another rushes into the scene on horseback. It is unclear what his purpose is--is he protesting? The title of the artwork, Lynched, suggests that if this is the case, he is too late.
MD, 2013
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=AC+2012.253 |
