Douglas helped visually define the Harlem Renaissance through his work as a painter and illustrator. Created a year after the artist moved to Harlem, this drawing exemplifies Douglas’s signature style. The work ripples with bands of graded grays, and a shaft of light illuminates the powerful, silhouetted figure who grasps the chains of bondage. Missing are wrist and ankle shackles, suggesting that this man is not enslaved but rather shaping his own fate. This drawing may be related to the artist’s illustrations for James Weldon Johnson’s 1927 book God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse.

Gallery label from

2020

Medium Tempera and pencil on board
Dimensions 17 5/8 × 14" (44.8 × 35.6 cm)
Credit Acquired through the generosity of Jack Shear, Agnes Gund, Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, Alice and Tom Tisch, Marnie Pillsbury, Karole Dill Barkley and Eric J. Barkley, and gift of The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Foundation for the Arts
Object number 8.2020
Department Drawings and Prints

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Harlem Renaissance

A period of African American literary, artistic, and intellectual activity centered in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem, spanning from the 1920s to the mid-1930s.

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