2 paintings from my collection in museum exhibit

When I arrived at the Woodmere Art Museum exhibit in Philadelphia, I had one thing in mind:

I wanted to see where the museum had hung the two paintings I had loaned for the exhibit.

Two museum reps had been at my house several months ago to examine the artwork I had hung on my walls and stored in a room. I had bought most of the paintings and prints at auction, and a number of them were created by Philadelphia artists, both black and white.

The Woodmere is devoted to Philadelphia artists, but this exhibit is even more specific. It is titled “We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s.” It consists of 70 paintings, photographs, sculptures, and prints by African American artists who lived or worked in the city.

The two paintings from my collection were “The Odd Sister” by Samuel J. Brown and an untitled watercolor of three women singing and praising by Columbus Knox. Having the paintings in the exhibit – and in the catalog, of which I have a copy – will enhance their provenance (or history), an art appraiser and dealer noted.

At the museum, most of artwork was in the rotunda encircled by a balcony just above my head. Standing in the center of the room, I combed the lower gallery for my paintings but did not see them. Then I looked up and saw Knox’s women, the bright light illuminating them. Just around the corner was the painting of Brown’s three women in various pigments of skin color.

Brown’s painting was one of the first that I’d ever purchased at auction. I distinctly recall sitting there at the auction house not paying much attention to what was going on when I heard the auctioneer mention that he was an African American artist and school teacher. Then I looked at the painting a little more closely, realizing its message and admiring its craftsmanship.

I bought the Knox watercolor at another auction many years later, after I started my hunt for African American art. I was familiar with the artist because I had bought an oil painting from him at the Rittenhouse Square Fine Arts Show, where he was a fixture for years.

Brown is the better known of the two. He taught art in the Philadelphia public schools, exhibited at the Pyramid Club and the Harmon Foundation in the early 20^th century, and has artwork in major museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I have two of his works, the other also purchased at auction.

In researching “The Odd Sister,” the museum reps turned up some interesting information about it. The painting was exhibited in the 1975 Second World Black and African Festival of Art and Culture (FESTAC) held at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, according to Woodmere.

This was one of several proposed regional exhibits around the country whose intent was to select artists to be represented in the FESTAC in Lagos, Nigeria, said Allan Edmunds, one of the organizers and founder of the Brandywine Workshop in Philadelphia. The Southeast regional – which included artists from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey – was the only one that was formed, he added. The regional also produced its own catalog for its show.

The regional was one of the things that helped Edmunds to form the workshop in 1972. Among the organizers were some heavy-hitting African American artists who had “experience and reputation,” he said, and he asked them for support. “I was the water and they were the good ground that nourished it (the idea),” said Edmunds, a 22-year-old printmaker at the time.

The Woodmere exhibit runs until Jan. 24, 2016. It includes works by some major artists, many of whom I’ve come across at auction (and written about), including Roland Ayers, Laura Wheeler Waring, Dox Thrash, Moe Brooker, Selma Burke, Horace Pippin, Ed Loper Sr., Paul Keene Jr., Barkley Hendricks, Charles Searles and Ed Jones. It also includes videos of photographs by John W. Mosley of exhibitions at the Pyramid Club.

I was especially attuned to the artists I did not know and were introduced to. Here are several of them:

Ida Jones was a self-taught artist who lived in Chester County, PA, just west of Philadelphia, and began painting at age 72. She died in 1959.

Charles Jay was a self-taught artist who learned to paint by studying the masters. He paints in what he calls a “primitive” style that calls for very little mixing of paints. He lives in West Chester, PA.

Laura Williams Chassot is a graduate of Cheyney State College (now university), and studied at art institutions in Philadelphia. She has been an art teacher in the public schools and has offered art education in her community. She also writes poetry.