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Accession #	2012.1
Artist	Loïs Mailou Jones
Title	Dans un Café à Paris (Leigh Whipper)
Date	1939
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	36 x 29 in. (91.4 x 73.7 cm) frame: 42 x 37 x 2 5/8 in. (106.7 x 94 x 6.7 cm)
Credit Line	Brooklyn Museum Fund for African American Art and gift of Auldlyn Higgins Williams and E.T. Williams, Jr.
Location	Visible Storage: Case 23, Screen I (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: Here, Lois Mailou Jones painted Leah Whipper at the height of his career as a Broadway and Hollywood actor. Whipper would soon become famous for his role as Crooks in the 1939 film adaptation of John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. His character—a stable hand ostracized because of his race—served to illuminate the movie’s Depression-era message that the American Dream’s promise of economic and social success was impossible.

The artist’s portrayal of a pensive Whipper answered Alain LeRoy Locke’s call for Black artists to create ennobling representations of African Americans. Locke was an intellectual during the Harlem Renaissance, a movement of the 1920s and ’30s that resulted in a blossoming of African American culture.