© The Charles White Archive
On view
Wilmerding Pavilion
Philip & Nancy Anschutz Gallery
Paul Robeson,
1943
Born in Princeton in 1898, Paul Leroy Robeson was the youngest of the five surviving children of Reverend William Drew and Maria Louisa Bustill Robeson. He was one of the most successful and influential figures of the twentieth century. Although best known as an actor for his role in the musical Show Boat, with its poignant anthem “Ol’ Man River,” and for his legendary performance as the first African American cast as Shakespeare’s Othello, he was a Renaissance man who received wide recognition as a cultural scholar, outstanding athlete, lawyer, author, and political activist. Mostly, Mr. Robeson was a leader in the war against racism in America and fascism abroad. He stated, “Through my singing and acting and speaking I want to make freedom ring. Maybe I can touch people’s hearts better than I can their minds, with the common struggle of the common man.”
Shirley A. Satterfield, Educator, Historian, President of the Witherspoon-Jackson Historical and Cultural Society
More Context
Grounded in the academic tradition, Charles White is celebrated for his monumental and expressive drawings of his fellow African Americans. Like his paintings and prints, these works were motivated by White’s lifelong commitment to addressing subjects of black history and themes of racial injustice, while claiming that his art had "a universality to it." This iconic portrait of the renowned singer, actor, and political activist Paul Robeson relates to White’s large multifigure mural <em>The Contribution of the Negro to Democracy in America</em>, which he painted in 1942–43 at the historically black Hampton University in Virginia. Inspired by Mexican muralists such as Diego Rivera, the work proclaimed a sweeping and polemical panorama of African American accomplishments in history, science, and the arts. This drawing may have served both as a detailed study to which White referred when painting the figure of Paul Robeson in the mural and as an independent teaching model for Hampton students. In its exquisitely modulated linear network of charcoal and carbon pencil that molds the planes and furrows of Robeson’s head and face, the drawing transcends its category of portrait study, breaking free from the crowded struggle against racism depicted in the Hampton mural to resonate as an inspirational presence.
More About This Object
Information
1943
North America, United States, New York, New York, Harlem
- "Acquisitions of the Art Museum 1992," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 52, no. 1 (1993): p. 36-83., illustrated p. 55, p. 60
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 316, checklist no. 420 (illus.)
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collection (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), p. 352
- Princeton University Art Museum: Handbook of the Collections (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 2013), p. 406
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Charles White, 1918-1979: Drawings and Watercolors from the Estate of Charles White and the Heritage Gallery Collection 1984
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West to Wesselmann: American Drawings and Watercolors from the Princeton University Art Museum (October 16, 2004–July 23, 2006)
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An Educated Eye: The Princeton University Art Museum Collection (Friday, February 22, 2008 - Sunday, June 15, 2008)
