Images(2)

Charleston

Artist Aaron Douglas American, 1899–1979

Datecirca 1928

MediumGouache and pencil on paper board

Dimensionsimage: 14 11/16 × 9 13/16 in. (37.3 × 24.9 cm)
paper: 18 × 12 9/16 in. (45.7 × 32 cm)
frame: 21 1/2 × 16 1/4 × 1 1/4 in. (54.6 × 41.3 × 3.2 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the North Carolina State Art Society (Robert F. Phifer Bequest) and the State of North Carolina, by exchange

Object number2005.15

On View

Not on view

ProvenanceCommissioned by Viking Press, New York, ca. 1928; created ca. 1928; collection of the artist; [Raymond Sacks, Sacks Fine Art, Inc., New York];[Fulton Burt Gallery, Sarasota, FL]; Susie R. Powell and Franklin R. Anderson, Chapel Hill, NC, 1998; on extended loan to NCMA, 1999–2005; given to NCMA, 2005.Published ReferencesPaul Morand, Black Magic (New York: Viking Press, 1929), illus. (b-w) 31.

Amy Helene Kirschke, Aaron Douglas: Art, Race, and the Harlem Renaissance (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1995), 102-108, 115, illus. (b-w) pl. 62.

Donna M. Cassidy, Painting the Musical City: Jazz and Cultural Identity in American Art, 1910–1940 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997), mentioned 146, illus. (b-w) 145, fig. 96.

The News and Observer (Raleigh, NC), August 28, 1998, illus. (b-w).

Marissa Vincenti, "Paint it Black: Aaron Douglas's Black Magic lllustrations," North Carolina Museum of Art Preview and Calendar of Events (Sept/Oct 2001), 8-9, illus. (b-w) 9.

Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist, Susan Earle, ed. (exhibition catalogue) (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, in association with Spencer Art Museum, 2007), discussed 67, illus. (color) 66, pl. 27.

John W. Coffey, entry for Charleston, in North Carolina Museum of Art: Handbook of the Collections, rev. ed. (Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2010), 458, illus. (color) 459.

Teresa A. Carbone, ed., Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties (exhibition catalogue) (New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc., 2011), discussed 87, illus. (color) 89, fig. 65.

Frank Mehring, “How Silhouettes Became ‘Black’: The Visual Rhetoric of the Harlem Renaissance,” in Circulation (Terra Foundation Essays), Vol. 3, François Brunet, ed. (Chicago and Paris: Terra Foundation of American Art, 2017), discussed 201, illus. (color) 200, fig. 9.

Jonathan Stuhlman and Martha R. Severens, ed., Southern/Modern: Rediscovering Southern Art from the First Half of the Twentieth Century (exhibition catalogue) (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2023), 119, fig. 100 (illus. color) (catalogue only, not in exhibition).Exhibition HistoryLawrence, KS, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas, "Aaron Douglas: African American Modernist," September 8-December 2, 2007; Nashville, TN, Frist Center for the Visual Arts, January 19-April 13, 2008, discussed 67, illus. (color) 66, pl. 27.

Brooklyn, NY, Brooklyn Museum of Art, "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties," October 28, 2011-January 29, 2012; Dallas, TX, Dallas Museum of Art, March 4-May 27, 2012; Cleveland, OH, Cleveland Museum of Art, July 1-September 16, 2012, illus. (color) 89, fig. 65.
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