It looked familiar, with its stylized image of a Madonna and child bordered by a hot-pink mat. A little gaudy, I’d say. As the auction staffer held the piece a-loft so we could all view it closely, I spied the name of the artist in the lower right corner.

Sam J. Brown.

I sat up, alert. I finally recognized the painting because I had seen it during a preview last year of artwork at the auction house. It wasn’t one that captured my attention then, but I knew the artist’s name. Samuel J. Brown – also known as Samuel Joseph Brown and Samuel J. Brown Jr. – was a black Philadelphia artist whose work I had acquired a couple years ago at this same auction house.

This piece apparently was never sold, or someone had purchased it at a previous auction and never paid for it. So, I decided to bid on it when the auctioneer dropped the initial bid to $10. Someone counter-bidded and I kept at it. I got the painting for $20.

It’s not a large painting; it’s slender (a lithe Madonna, like the three women in the Brown watercolor I have at home). It’s 11″ x 30″.

The painting appeared to be on thin tissue paper with gold-leaf accents; the medium watercolor. The word “holy night” was in gold leaf. At some point, the painting was apparently folded because there was a crease across the center and some paint loss on Madonna’s robe. The hot-pink matting was an awful backdrop.  

I’ll obviously have it reframed, primarily because the frame shop – which stamped its name on the back – used cardboard as the back cover. Any reputable frame shop would never use cardboard. A painting, a print, whatever should be framed in acid-free or archival materials. Fortunately, the cardboard hadn’t been on this one long enough to cause damage.

I’m glad I was able to get the painting because I try to collect local artists like Brown, whose works are in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Howard University Collection.

The Philadelphia museum included a Brown watercolor “The Lynching” (1934) in an exhibit a few years ago. The painting was part of a 1935 exhibit in New York called “An Art Commentary on Lynching,” described in this Crisis magazine article (page 106). It was organized by the NAACP, which had to find another location for the exhibit when the first gallery pulled out because of the subject matter. 

The painting is mentioned in the book “Race Consciousness: African American Studies for the New Century” (page 161), published in 1997. There is also a photo of it.

Brown was a painter, printmaker, sculptor and teacher who was born in Wilmington, NC, in 1907 and moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1917. He attended the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art and the Teachers’ College of the University of Pennsylvania. Like many artists during the 1930s, he worked for the Work Projects Administration and the Federal Art Project, and participated in many exhibitions. In later years, he taught art in the Philadelphia school system. He died in 1994. The self-portrait at left is from the Metropolitan Museum website.

Here are other examples of his works:

Wash Girl (1935), woodcuts sold at Swann Auction Galleries  (below) in 2007 and Pook and Pook Auctioneers in 2008, along with others examples at askart.com.

Related posts:

1. African American painting? I think not
2. An artist’s ‘dark and stormy night’ painting
3. Cartoonist Bo Brown’s ink drawings

That was the case recently at the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent. A local writer named David Emmi came across two pendant portraits of an African American businessman and abolitionist named Stephen Smith and his wife, Harriet Lee Smith, according to a story in my local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer. The portraits are believed to date to the 1830s, and papers at the museum say that they were painted by an African American.

Hiram Charles Montier and his wife Elizabeth Brown Montier. Their portraits were exhibited at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

This was not the first pre-Civil War African American couple portrait to grace Philadelphia in the last year. The Philadelphia Museum of Art mounted an exhibit of a pair of portraits of Hiram Charles Montier and his wife Elizabeth Brown Montier. Hiram Montier was a bootmaker and descendant of the son of Philadelphia’s first mayor. These portraits are believed to be from 1841. They are on loan from the Montier descendants, who said they had been kept for years under their grandmother’s bed. (The portraits above are of Hiram Montier and his wife Elizabeth, from the Antiques and Arts Online website.)

Portraits were the most popular type of painting up into the 19^th century, according to the National Gallery of Art website. Sitters had themselves painted - the work was usually done by roaming nonskilled artisans - among nice interiors or landscapes to project their social status, the website said. As writer Emmi noted, a portrait of a black man before the Civil War was rare.

In 2006, the Delaware Art Museum exhibited 70 paintings, photographs, silhouettes and prints of African Americans  from the 1700s to 1890s. Blacks used the portrait sittings, according to the exhibit, to ”express common middle-class ideals and social aspirations.” (The painting below is of Mrs. Nancy Lawson (1843), from the collection of the Shelburne Museum, VT. It was part of the exhibit.)

The portraits from the Atwater collection were discovered in storage, and had been donated in 1931 to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania by Henrietta Clemens Mouserone, Smith’s grandniece, according to the newspaper. The Atwater Kent got them 20 years ago from the society. Smith was born in slavery in 1797, bought his freedom at 20 and became a wealthy businessman in Lancaster County, PA, according to the newspaper. He eventually moved to Philadelphia, built a lumber and coal business and continued his involvement in the Underground Railroad.

The Montiers were part of one of the largest free black communities in the North, according to Antiques and Arts Online website. Hiram Montier was descended from Richard Morrey, son of Philadelphia Mayor Humphrey Morrey, and Cremona Morrey, a black woman with whom he lived in Cheltenham during the 18^th century.

Although not portraits, in my research I found that scholar W.E.B. DuBois presented a collection of photographs of black life 35 years after slavery during the 1900 Paris Exposition. He chose about 500 photos of blacks in successful roles, rather than the stereotypical negative ones. NPR in 2003 conducted an interview with historian Deborah Willis who wrote a book based on DuBois’ presentation, “A Small Nation of People.” Here’s a look at some of the images.

These are the types of discoveries that keep me searching in auction bins and at auction houses for hidden treasures.

Update: My local newspaper, the Philadelphia Inquirer, ran a story on June 23,2011, about a man who was related to the Montiers. He had presented their portraits to the Philadelphia Museum of Art two years earlier and had been searching for their graves. With a little help, he found them at Eden Cemetery in Collingdale, PA.

Related posts:

1. Locating lost family members from our past
2. Extolling the work of early black craftspeople
3. Photos of African American portraits, sculptures

We stood impatiently as the auctioneer tried to literally give away a lovely black grand piano. It was huge. Probably just needed a little tuning – along with a big truck to haul it home and a big parlor to hold it. I’ve always wanted a grand piano in a room with music-inspired artwork where I could play snatches of jazz. I’ve even taken piano lessons, but learning comes hard with age. The piano was fin-a-l-l-y sold – for $100.

Then it was on to the rest of the art on the walls. The piece I wanted wasn’t a large piece at all; it was rather small, and the colors were a bit awkward. But what struck me was the sentiment on the back, written by a young artist-in-training in ink. I could hear his (or her) voice in the words:

VIEW FROM MY WINDOW

CLINTON ST, PHILLY

WHILE IN ART SCHOOL

Philadelphia School of Industrial Art
Broad & Pine

It was signed C. Raughley 1940.

The scene was one of Philadelphia’s ubiquitous red-brick rowhouse communities with chimneys, a storefront with awning and what looked like an alley, the wall above it lined with an iron fence for security. The scene had the feel of winter, with its dark purples and grays. It wasn’t a brilliant work of art but sometimes the beauty is not necessarily in the paint.

Who was this young artist? Was he living with his parents? An art student away from home? Something about the scene outside his window captivated him? What in particular? I may never know, but his sharing of what he saw on that particular day in 1940 moved me. We all stare out a window from time to time, enamored at what nature (or man, as in Raughley’s case) puts in front of us. Raughley captured his in a watercolor. For those of us without artistic talent, the memory stays in our heads.

I was not able to find out anything about C. Raughley. But I did find that the school itself began as a part of the Pennsylvania Museum School of Industrial Art, founded in 1876 as a museum and art school, according to Wikipedia. In 1893, the school moved to Broad and Pine Streets. Students were taught such courses as drawing and painting, along with textiles, furniture design, pottery and other crafts. The aim was to prepare them for work in industry.

The two were separated in 1938 into the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art. The renamed school is now part of the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, one of the oldest in the country.

I also found a reference to the school in a 1900 “Report on Technical Education” by Bernard McEvoy. He extolled the textile curriculum and its aim to produce students to work in that industry as a career. The textile school eventually became a separate entity and was renamed Philadelphia University.  The report also mentioned that there were drawing and design courses at the School of Industrial Art.

I got Raughley’s painting for $35 at the auction. It’s sitting on an easel in my living room. It still has its bright orange mat and black frame (I’m not sure if they’re the originals), but I can’t seem to bring myself to have the painting re-framed. There’s something utilitarian about the framing that won’t allow me to alter it.

It’s not the first time I’ve come across anonymous artists, and I get a thrill at each new discovery. What new artists have you found lately?

Related posts:

1. Black women artists at fine art auction
2. Frank J. Dillon, one of my “found” black artists
3. Pyramid Club’s forgotten women artists