Wheeler
Waring
Laura Wheeler, later Laura Wheeler Waring, was a celebrated artist of the Harlem Renaissance era best known for her portraits and still lifes. Wheeler was born in Hartford, CT, on May 16, 1887, the fourth of six children. Her father studied Theology at Howard University and received his diploma ten years before Laura’s birth. He was a minister at Connecticut’s first all Black church. Her mother was a teacher and amateur artist. Waring was a bright student and a gifted artist. Her early education in Hartford included Arsenal Grade School and the Hartford High School. Even as a senior in high school she had begun teaching part-time in Philadelphia at the Cheyney Training School for Teachers, later Cheyney University. At the school, she taught art and music and later headed the divisions.
She graduated from Hartford High School in 1906 with honors at a time when few women attended secondary school. Her artistic talents then drew her to Philadelphia where she enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1908. This was one of the leading art institutes in the United States. She remained there for the next six years graduating in 1914. Times were difficult financially for Laura who was paid just seven dollars a month although room and board were provided. The person who influenced Laura the most at the Academy was Henry Bainbridge McCarter, an American illustrator and painter known for his influence on the modernistic art movements. McCarter had worked as an illustrator in New York before becoming an instructor at the Academy. He managed to encourage Waring to take on board and appreciate Impressionism and Post-Impressionism.
Displaying originality and mastery in her technique, Waring was awarded the William Emlen Cresson Travel Scholarship in 1914, which enabled her to to study in Paris. Laura was the first Black woman to receive the award. During her stay in the French capital, she spent much time in the Louvre Museum studying the works of Claude Monet, Édouard Manet, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, and Paul Cézanne. There, she studied romanticism, which stressed emotion and rejected the idealization and order that typified ancient Greek and Roman art. During this trip abroad, she had an opportunity to study briefly at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere in Paris and travelled throughout Great Britain.
A visit to the city also allowed her to frequent the Jardin du Luxembourg, where her sketches there morphed into full-scale paintings several years later. Laura Wheeler Waring had originally planned to travel more around Europe visiting Switzerland, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands, but World War I interrupted her three-month stay and study of art in Europe. Upon her return, she worked at the all-Black Cheyney Training School for Teachers in Philadelphia, where she established both the schools' new art and music programs. She remained there for three decades and influencing hundreds of students. Between 1921 and 1934 she conducted the Cheyney Choir, training her students in high-toned spirituals and classical music.
The Cheyney College like the local church, the Thornbury African Methodist Episcopal Church, slowly became the community center for the Black residents of Cheyney. Laura took her choir to sing at the church. It was through her involvement with the church that she first met Annie Washington Derry, who would later become the subject of her most famous portrait which she completed in 1927 and which is owned by the Smithsonian is American Art Collection in Washington DC. Laura took a year out from teaching and returned to France in June 1924 and spent the following year studying painting at the Grande Chaumière and traveling through the South of France, Italy, and Algiers. This time she was accompanied by famed novelist Jessie Redmond Fauset.
Laura had a greater determination to observe and delve into the art and history of the France. One of the benefits of this second tour was to resume her study at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, where she was more intensively devoted to style and application. It was there that she began to cultivate her lifelong interest in portraits, particularly her choice in displaying a more realistic and vibrant method than ordinarily prevailed at the Academie. One piece, "Houses at Semur", would receive wide acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. In France, Waring socialized with the small but influential community of expatriate African American artists and writers. She dined frequently with the legendary artist Henry Ossawa Tanner and also connected with leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance including Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, and Claude McKay.
In January 1925, Laura Waring travelled to the South of France where she spent four days in the coastal town of Villefranche-sur-Mer. While living there she began to create illustrations for short travel stories and completed a number of figurative pen and ink drawings for "The Crisis", the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). One of these was her pen and ink drawing entitled "Once More We Exchange Adieu". It depicts an African American woman dressed in a modern collared long sleeve dress, with black pumps holding a briefcase and waving goodbye to a White woman and child dressed in winter attire. After her short stay in the south of France, Waring returned to Paris in the Spring of 1925 and continued her studies at the Académie de la Grande Chaumiére. That year Laura completed her paintings, "Houses at Semur", "France" and "Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port".
Despite the production of paintings during this period, there is scant evidence of exhibitions in Paris. Along with her paintings, Waring continued her love for writing short stories, including “Dark Algiers and White,” which was published in "The Crisis". She illustrated covers for "The Crisis", in 1923, 1924, 1926, 1927, and 1928. There appears to be some discrepancy of whether this piece was a short story by Waring or a two-part article written by Jessie Redmond Fauset during their joint trip to Algiers in 1924, with paintings by Waring. Waring also produced illustrations for the children’s books published by Harcourt, Brace, and Howe, Inc., "The Brownies Book", and for the cover of "The Crisis."
Three years later, she married Walter Waring, a school teacher in Philadelphia and professor at Lincoln University who was ten years her junior. Laura Waring was actively painting during the Harlem Renaissance. Upon their return from their honeymoon, she was invited to participate by the Harmon Foundation exhibit, featuring African-American She executed portraits of several prominent African Americans, including Marian Anderson and W.E.B. Du Bois - all of which are in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C. In 1927 Laura exhibited the portrait of Anna Washington Derry at New York’s Harmon Foundation where it received the First Award in Fine Art – Harmon Awards for Distinguished Achievement Among Negroes. From there it was exhibited at Les Galeries du Luxembourg in Paris and across America.
In 1927, she received a gold medal from the Harmon Foundation for achievement in fine art. Waring’s first solo exhibition took place the following year at Miner Normal School in Washington, DC. Between 1927 and 1945, Waring also participated in various group exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Howard University, and the Brooklyn Museum. In 1943, the Harmon Foundation commissioned a painting series from Waring and Betsy Graves Reyneau entitled "Portraits of Outstanding American Citizens of Negro Origin". The idea behind the exhibition was to try and counteract racial intolerance, ignorance and bigotry by illustrating the accomplishments of contemporary African Americans. The exhibition featured forty-two oil paintings of leaders in the fields of civil rights, law, education, medicine, the arts, and the military.
Laura Wheeler Waring, and various other artists painted the portraits that became known as the Harmon Collection. US Vice President Henry A. Wallace presented the first portrait, which featured scientist George Washington Carver, to the Smithsonian in 1944. The Harmon Foundation donated most of this collection to the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in 1967. For the next ten years, Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin, exhibition, travelled to museums, historical societies, municipal auditoriums, and community centers around the United States. The public response was overwhelmingly positive .
Known primarily as a portrait painter, Waring was praised for her use of color, her vivid imagination, and a steady strength of line. Her work is especially significant for having preserved the images of many distinguished African-Americans such as, James Weldon Johnson, Marian Anderson, and Jessie Redmon Fauset. Alice Dunbar-Nelson, who was a prominent political activist and journalist and much in demand as a public speaker, became the subject of Laura Wheeler Waring’s 1927 portrait. Waring also painted murals and landscapes of both America and Europe, which gained her wide acclaim. She is distinguished from other American painters of the period not only for her talent but also for the unusual amount of formal training she underwent.
Waring tempered her social agenda in her most important works of art, believing that images of non-threatening African Americans who had made major contributions to American society would win more friends for the cause of civil rights than throwing their racism back in their face. In fact, her 1944 paintings are more conservative in palette and realistic than the rugged, somewhat impressionistic portrayals of unknown Black women she executed sixteen years earlier. Waring is best remembered for her educational work and the portraits which displayed the achievements and dignity of her people. Although active in the struggle for civil rights, Waring was no militant. Like Marian Anderson who used her voice to speak for herself, Laura Wheeler Waring used her art to speak for her. Waring died in February of 1948, aged 60, in her Philadelphia home after a long illness.
