Hi everyone! Hope you all are doing well and staying safe!

I wanted to talk a little about my assigned artist for the 100 Women Artists in Art History Exhibition project. I’m excited to reveal that my artist is Laura Wheeler Waring (1887-1948). Ms. Waring was an African American artist known for painting portraits of prominent people during her era. Most of her subject were African American people like Marian Anderson, George Washington Carver, W. E. B. Du Bois, Thurgood Marshall, Paul Robeson, and others. Ms. Waring studied in Pennsylvania and Paris, France. She taught art for more than 30 years at what is now Cheyney University of Pennsylvania. She was considered a Harlem Renaissance artist. Some of her works are currently housed at the Smithsonian as part of their permanent collection.

I chose Ms. Waring’s portrait called “Anna Washington Derry” to interpret for this project. Ms. Derry was reportedly a family friend of Ms. Waring’s family. She was not famous, and lived a humble life, but her portrait became on of the best known works of Ms. Waring. My interpretation focused on the depiction of Ms. Derry’s face, which appears to hold the burdens of black people, particularly black women, during that era. The subject was born during the Civil War, and was among the group of blacks who migrated north from the southern states to have better socio-economic opportunities. Ms. Derry’s family would eventually settle in Pennsylvania. The painting was painted in the 1920s, yet Ms. Waring left the specific year incomplete.

Source: Life of a Portrait: Laura Wheeler Waring’s Anna Washington Derry, by Valerie Harris, Features section of Summer 2019 issue of Pennsylvania Heritage.

To learn more about Laura Wheeler Waring, read Beautiful Shades of Brown: The Art of Laura Wheeler Waring, by Nancy Churnin.