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This image is presented as a "thumbnail" because it is protected by copyright. The Brooklyn Museum respects the rights of artists who retain the copyright to their work.
Funeral Sermon
- Artist: Jacob Lawrence, American, 1917-2000
- Medium: Watercolor and graphite with some varnish on heavy, textured wove paper
- Dates: 1946
- Dimensions: Sheet: 29 3/8 x 21 1/8 in. (74.6 x 53.7 cm)
- Signature: Signed lower right: "Jacob Lawrence 1946 ©"
- Collections: American Art
- Museum Location:
This item is on view in American Identities: A New Look, Everyday Life/A Nation Divided, 5th Floor - Accession Number: 48.24
- Credit Line: Anonymous gift
- Image: Overall, 48.24.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
One of the first nationally recognized African American artists, Jacob Lawrence came to maturity in Harlem in the 1930s—a dynamic milieu marked by the great cultural achievements of the Harlem Renaissance, yet also by racism and the Great Depression. Throughout his long career, Lawrence devoted himself to painting genre scenes of working-class black life and epic series about African American history. Displaying the abstracted design elements and vibrant colors that characterize Lawrence’s style, Funeral Sermon commemorates the death of his sister from tuberculosis in 1944. An expression of personal grief, this work also addresses larger social issues, including the importance of spirituality in the black community—notice how Lawrence unifies the congregation in the foreground through the repetition of geometric forms—and the overcrowded housing and inadequate health-care facilities in Harlem that led to disease and untimely death.
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Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum