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“Africa” by Loïs Mailou Jones (American) – Oil on canvas board / 1935 – The Johnson Collection (Spartanburg, South Carolina) #WomenInArt #WomenArtists
#LoisMailouJones #BlackArt #AfricanAmericanArt #TheJohnsonCollection #artText #LoïsMailouJones #WomensArt #WomanArtist #africa #HarlemRenaissance
American artist Loïs Mailou Jones painted “Africa” in 1935, five years after joining the faculty of Howard University, where she would teach for nearly half a century. Colleagues there encouraged the Boston-born artist to challenge racist stereotypes and explore African heritage, and this painting reflects that developing engagement. Three monumental Black figures fill the composition, pressed close to the picture plane against a glowing yellow-orange background and broad tropical leaves. The central woman dominates the upper half of the painting, her long, symmetrical face framed by dark hair and accented with green, almond-shaped eyes. She wears dangling gold earrings, a necklace of pale tusks or teeth, and patterned fabric draped across one shoulder. Below her, two additional figures overlap across the foreground. At left, a figure tilts inward beneath stacked gold neck rings and an elaborate spiral earring. At right, another face reclines horizontally, partially obscuring the boldly striped garment at center. Deep browns, greens, golds, cream, blue, and red repeat across skin, jewelry, foliage, and textiles, creating a tightly orchestrated pattern. The elongated faces, simplified features, still expressions, and compressed space give the figures a sculptural presence that evokes African masks, an aesthetic vocabulary Jones would return to throughout her career. At the same time, the work displays her exceptional command of decorative pattern and color, skills rooted partly in her early training as a textile designer. The Johnson Collection describes the painting’s jewel-like palette, patterned cloth, jewelry, and mask-inspired faces as central to Jones’s response to calls for Black artists to engage more directly with African cultural traditions.
October 4, 2026 at 5:59 PM
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“The Bathing Girl” by William Arthur Cooper (American) - Oil on canvas / 1932 - The Johnson Collection (Spartanburg, South Carolina) #WomenInArt #TheJohnsonCollection #WilliamArthurCooper #AfricanAmericanArt #BlackArt #art #artText #BlueskyArt #PortraitofaGirl #AmericanArt #AfricanAmericanArtist
Painted in 1932, over 30 years prior to U.S. swimming pools being desegregated across most of the country, this painting turns leisure into a form of dignity and insistence. A “bathing girl” can suggest sport, freedom, and summertime ease, yet the era’s realities make those ideas politically charged to ask who was allowed to swim, where, and under what conditions? A teenage Black girl sits turned slightly toward us, her long legs extending to the right as if she has just paused mid-rest. She has warm brown skin and a steady, direct gaze that looks out with confidence. Her dark hair is pulled back smooth. She wears a turquoise one-piece bathing suit paired with dark shorts with a white band at the waist. Her right shoulder lifts subtly, creating a gentle diagonal through her torso and arms. Behind her, dense leaves and soft, mottled greens form an outdoor backdrop that feels humid, shaded, and more close garden than beach. The paint handling emphasizes quiet presence over spectacle with soft modeling of face and limbs, controlled highlights along cheekbones and shoulder, and a calm, composed expression that is reflective rather than posed. William Arthur Cooper, an American artist-minister, repeatedly worked against degrading caricature by portraying Black individuals as specific, complex people that are self-possessed, varied, and fully human. In the 1930s, while serving as a pastor in Charlotte, he gained wider attention, including a major commission to paint portraits of African Americans across North Carolina. Those works were later published with his captions as “A Portrayal of Negro Life” (1936). His stated aim was quietly radical because his book, he wrote, might make “its silent contribution to Race appreciation… and interracial good will.” Here, the girl’s calm stare does that “silent” work while asking us to see Black girlhood not as stereotype or symbol, but as lived interiority full of beauty, thought, and rightful space.
February 9, 2026 at 12:23 AM
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(thejohnsoncollection)
Homer Ellertson (1892 – 1935) •
"The Dean House, Spartanburg, S.C" • circa 1932
June 11, 2026 at 2:58 PM