Description: head and shoulders of young man with short hair in open neck shirt looking slightly downward; portrait; man
Label Text: John Wilson was born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, the son of immigrant parents from Guyana. Here he depicts his younger brother, Frederick, against a lightly sketched urban backdrop. The artist was only twenty years old and a student at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when this portrait was completed.
Responding to a letter from a Smith student in 1976, Wilson wrote: Growing up in the forties was a frustrating, sometimes dehumanizing experience for a young black person…. There were no black images symbolizing universal truth and beauty in any art history books and museum collections that I studied, at least at that time. I vaguely wanted to create a form that would make my people and their environment visible. This little painting seemed to sum up what I had been trying to do.
Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1943.4.1 |