19

2The artist must be the medium through which humanity

expresses itself. In this sense the greatest artists have faced

the realities of life and have been profoundly social.

—Romare Bearden (1934)

Can you and I in looking at their work catch the reverberation

of this sensation, this experience, and take it in and make it part

of ourself ?

—J. Z. Jacobson (1933)

Her dark brown eyes stare back, seemingly quizzical about

our presence. Perhaps, just moments before, she was lost in

the thoughts of the day, from negotiating a seat on the State

Street Trolley to the procurement of a new box of “High-

Brown” powder. Though poised and alert, she seems to

occupy a liminal space. Her unbuckled shoes could indicate

either coming or going. Her surroundings seem quietly

staged, from the deep purple curtain pulled to the side, to

the warm lamp glow that bathes the vanity, to the empty

couch reflected in the mirror behind her. Her dressing table

is pulled out away from the wall, and the throw rug beneath

her feet is slightly rumpled. Like Dutch precedents, she

moves beyond the portrayal of a specific individual, slip-

ping into an archetype where her representation addresses

broader social concerns. As with Vermeer’s seventeenth-

century masterpieces, this contemplative woman and

the artist who rendered her question our expectations of

gender, race, class, and sexuality.1 In crafting this portrait,

Motley was careful to leave much ambiguity, recognizing

that the power of the portrait lies in its ability to foster con-

nections with viewers beyond the constraints of time or

place. Painted in 1931 on his return from Paris, Brown Girl

After the Bath is arguably one of Motley’s most compelling

works of art (catalogue 18). Though the artist drew from his

deep familiarity with the art-historical tradition, he innova-

tively utilized its conventions to both expand the canon and

trouble its somatic signs.

In Brown Girl After the Bath, the sitter does not use the

mirror to look at herself, following the mode of classical

vanitas. Instead, she uses the mirror to look at the view-

ers as they look at her. The mirror provides a space for

the contemplation of how we see and how this seeing is

THE PORTRAITS OF ARCHIBALD MOTLEY AND THE

VISUALIZATION OF BLACK MODERN SUBJECTIVITY

amy m. mooney

20

catalogue 21. Self-Portrait (Myself at Work), 1933 (detail)

constructed through aesthetic and social conventions.

Unlike traditional nudes, she is not passive, subject to the

gaze; rather, it is her looking that activates and directs the

exchange, thus expectations of the black female body to

perform the established categories of prurient wanton or

asexual caretaker are thwarted. In lieu of titillation, there is

cultural validation through the large-scale oil painting (just

over four by three feet) and its public exhibition. Instead of

idealized objectification, there are signs to be read through

the physical experience of an ordinary body—breasts that

lie on the torso and shift to the side, a soft belly, a tuft of

pubic hair—all of which call upon the viewer’s ability to

empathize with the subject.

Though feminist art historian Carol Duncan has argued

that “male representations of the female body assert the

artist’s sexual domination over his subject,” I would like to

suggest that given the strong women in Motley’s life and

his awareness of the political roles that black female repre-

sentation played, his portraits are more than an expression

of his heterosexual desire. Through his portraits of women,

the artist presents a modern subjectivity that encompasses

the very process of identity formation through which we

can come to know ourselves and others.2

In order to understand the representational value and

function of the portraits generated by Archibald J. Motley

Jr., we need to be in conversation with the advent of moder-

nity in multiple contexts, seeing this painter’s work as part

of a larger discursive skein on what it means to be modern.

Although scholar Houston Baker rightly notes that the mul-

tiple meanings of the term modernity can lock viewers “into

a questioning indecision that can end in unctuous chias-

mus,” some outlining of the expectations of modernism is

necessary.3 From urban cosmopolitanism to the embrace-

ment of technology, we expect moderns to optimistically

seek progress and to break with some aspects of history.

Innovation, inversion, and insolence are among the means

of affecting the modern. Further, I would like to offer that

modernism, in all its myriad forms, relies on three central

components: conflict, change, and a conscious search for

identity. In so many ways, the paintings of Archibald Mot-

ley reflect the conflicts and changes in society, subjectivity,

21

figure 2.1. Group of students in class at the School of the Art Institute of

Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (view includes Archibald John Motley Jr., wearing a

visor in bottom row, on right), c. 1917. Photographic print. Collection of Mara

Motley, MD, and Valerie Gerrard Browne, Evanston, Illinois. Image courtesy

of the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, Illinois, ICHI-61108.

© Valerie Gerrard Browne.

to the “functional dialectic of portraiture,” I hope to outline

the “work” that Motley’s portraits accomplished, merging

the artist’s philosophical approach toward the expectations

of the genre with the socially constructed and historically

shifting categories that define the performance and under-

standing of black modern subjectivity.12

a modern life

Though Motley’s biography is well documented in several

sources, it is rarely considered a “modern life,”13 by which

I mean a life impacted by rich, diverse, and urban experi-

ences that contribute to the formation of the independence

and self-consciousness constituting modern subjectivity.

The early determination to be a painter was without prece-

dent in his family and childhood community and generated

some conflict with his father.14 In his autobiography, Motley

speaks of a singular drive to learn creative expression, re-

ferring to his time as a student at the School of the Art In-

stitute of Chicago (SAIC) as his “utopia.”15 This was also a

period in his life when he enjoyed deep friendships and the

support of his peers and teachers.16 His dedication and abil-

ity garnered high marks and opportunities for exhibition.

From lunches at the renowned Berghoff restaurant to torrid

love affairs, Motley’s student days were a heady mixture of

hard work and pleasure (figure 2.1).17 Throughout his life,

in various writings and interviews, the artist refused to be

discouraged from making African Americans his primary

subject. He held himself to the technical standards of the

National Academy of Art, yet rejected the racism inherent in

its aesthetics and policies.18

and aesthetics that marked the 1920s through the 1940s.

From his rigorous consideration of African American “New

Women” to his dynamic and innovative play with light and

color, Motley visualized black modern subjectivity and gen-

erated a dialogue on black cultural capital.4

Reading Motley’s portraits within the context of moder-

nity, I hope to tease out the ways in which his work visual-

ized the shifting expectations of class, race, and gender that

constituted modern life.5 As I and many other scholars have

argued, Motley’s works embody attitudes and perceptions

about the lives of African Americans that simultaneously

reinforce and challenge dominant assumptions.6 For this

essay, I will draw from the historical nature of subjectivity

in relation to the shifts in habits, practices, and discourses

during the artist’s era. As noted by art historian Richard

Powell, the politics of black representation superimposes

meaning and impacts the psychological role of African

American portraits.7

I am particularly interested in contextualizing the artist’s

portraits within the expectations of the genre, demonstrat-

ing how the artist viewed them as a means of achieving

racial equality. In his 1925 address “To Certain of Our

Philistines,” Harlem Renaissance philosopher Alain Locke

noted that “social conventions stand closer guard over

painting than most of the other arts. It is for that reason

that a new school and idiom of Negro portraiture is particu-

larly significant.”8 Like Locke, Motley recognized the value

and necessity of integrating black subjects into the canon

of art and optimistically believed that such efforts would

result in fundamental social change. By utilizing portrai-

ture, the most conservative of pictorial conventions, Motley

sought to radically transform the way that “individuals,

groups, and viewers could envision interaction.”9 Its staid

established pictorial codes, when infused with modern psy-

chology, contemporary fashion, and black agency, proved

to be a dynamic and powerful force.10 He painted portraits

throughout his life, interspersing the practice of presenting

the individual likeness with the more generalized depiction

of black urban genre scenes.11 Both efforts reflect the art-

ist’s interest in connecting and conveying identity, noting

its fluidity between the specific and the collective. Looking

22

(opposite)

catalogue 3. Self-Portrait, 1920. Oil on canvas, 30.125 x 22.125 inches

(76.5 x 56.2 cm). Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois. Art © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

Digital Image © The Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois.

discourse, it is not surprising that he internalized philoso-

phers who believed that sympathy formed the “‘very basis

of society,’ because it gave humans the ability to transcend

their own self-interest.”26 Aestheticians such as Jean-

Baptise DuBos described sympathy as a “reflex-like respon-

siveness” to the other that “would help humans to secure

one another’s assistance or affirmation.”27 The artist wholly

subscribed to the idea that art can affirm the necessity of

and assist in the realization of social progress.

the portrait as a site of empathy

For Motley, the portrait provided the opportunity to con-

nect the subject and viewer with broader discourses on

the contingencies between self and society. His figures

represent socially and historically constructed “selves that

could only be understood—and understand themselves—in

relation to others.”28 In other words, like many portraitists,

Motley realized that we come to know ourselves through

the very means that we employ to define others. Photogra-

phy expanded the portrait’s range from the singular to the

multiple, necessitating reconciliation between the wide

array of representations and their influence upon one an-

other. Hence, the exchange of cultural capital that is part

of portraiture increased significantly during the artist’s era

to include advertisements, cinema, literature, cartoons,

and even children’s dolls. For this reason, when consider-

ing Motley’s portraits, we must look beyond the traditional

definition of a portrait as a commissioned likeness retained

by the sitter for posterity. Instead, Motley’s portraits were

largely generated by the artist’s own initiative and desire to

paint his subjects as he knew, saw, and felt them as part of

himself.29 Because of Motley’s intersubjective approach, the

portrait becomes a representation of a subject, and the act

of portraiture becomes the process of looking for that sub-

jectivity, searching for the “inner humanity of the subjects

as a basis for acknowledging our own.”30 Yet as art historian

Jeannene Przyblyski reminds us, the construction of sub-

jectivity is “never a neat or univocal proposition.”31 It is par-

ticularly troubled by the complex histories and conflation

of race, gender, sex, and class, thus subjectivity is “continu-

ously individuating itself by constructing an identity and

As with most moderns, contradictions and conflicts

contributed to the artist’s sense of self, as well as the con-

sciousness of how that self would be perceived by others.

At some points in his life, Motley was a vegetarian, yet later

he professed a taste for veal and lamb chops.19 Although he

stated that he did not partake in vice, his youth was filled

with a broad array of experiences countering the idealized

black bourgeois upbringing that is typically attributed to

the artist and that he himself took great pains to construct.

But it is probably his early exposure to gamblers, prosti-

tutes, and drinking that helped to formulate a personal phi-

losophy of tolerance and understanding.20 The neighbors

and boarders that his family took in provided up-close char-

acter studies and an awareness of the complex negotiations

implicit in modern life. The rational thinker who diligently

calculated the vantage point for his murals is also the emo-

tional son who shot his stepfather for abusing his elderly

mother.21 My intention is not to parse the sensational de-

tails of Motley’s life but to see the artist as a complicated,

multivalent persona who cannot be reduced to a positive or

negative determination. As with the concept of race, such

a binary approach toward understanding Motley and his

work would result in essentialization and perpetuate the

very racist bias that he worked against.22

In the original draft for his article “The Negro in Art,”

Motley wrote that there were three criteria by which art

should be judged: personality, intensity, and sympathy.23

For Motley, “personality” connoted the artist as “one who

possesses those great qualities of self-expression in an

original and individual manner.” The complex factor “in-

tensity” not only enabled the artist to discern the mediocre

from the extraordinary, but also denoted the artist’s ability

to communicate the qualities of sincerity and seriousness as

well as the embodiment of a forceful and energetic expres-

sion. By “sympathy,” Motley did not mean a sentiment of

pity; rather, he evoked the earlier aesthetics of Einfühlung,

or empathy, noting that the artist must deeply connect with

both the process and the subject of his or her efforts.24 He

believed that sympathy bonded the artist and his audience

through “mutual human emotions and intelligence.”25

Given Motley’s academic training and exposure to aesthetic

23

24

a transition between the interior and exterior, thus bridg-

ing the gap between “us” and “them.” For Levinas, it is the

sanctity of the human face—the unique presence and spe-

cific accountability of the individual—that protects against

the oppression of totality.35 He argues that there is a moral

contingency within us, what he calls “the humanity of con-

sciousness,” that will not permit “a stance of indifference

before the suffering, pain, or exploitation of the Other.”36

As we will see, Motley similarly imbued his approach to art

with a moral purpose—describing his work as “honest”

and “sincere” with the intent of enlightening both black

and white viewers, generating understanding and thus im-

proving race relations.37

Through the artist’s philosophy, we can understand how

the portrait becomes a social tool facilitating the imagined

physical embodiment of the other.38 Yet we must consider

this embodiment critically, evaluating its intent, applica-

tion, and experience, as such a projection can reify the very

systems of subjugation one seeks to dismantle.39 Indeed,

as art historian Cécile Whiting observes, “Given that dur-

ing the 1920s and 1930s biologists, social scientists, artists,

and others debated whether the substance of race could

be grasped at a glance at the body,” the physical identifica-

tion of and with one another held the potential to promote

social progress.40 Whether that potential could be realized

depended on the viewer’s own desire and agency. Motley

believed that his paintings could bring about “sincere ap-

preciation” and “mutual understanding.”41 In his portraits

and genre scenes, Motley sought to create images that af-

firmed difference but recognized the subject’s humanity,

regardless of the “race, color, or creed” of the artist or

audience.42

archetypes of the new

Self-formation often draws on contradictory sources; some

aspects of past models are embraced, while others are

disregarded. Likewise, the template for the “New Negro

Woman” was styled from competing and occasionally

antagonistic sources. In some respects, she was a “con-

strained throwback to Victorian womanhood,” modeling

the virtues from the cult of true womanhood—purity, faith,

understanding itself and the world from various potentially

contradictory subject positions.”32 Indeed, in the following

close readings of Motley’s portraits, I hope to offer a sense

of contingency and reciprocity, simultaneously acknowl-

edging the imposition upon the subject as well as agency of

self-determination that was so integral to this historic era.

Despite my open-ended consideration of portraiture, I

argue that the specific conventions of the portrait and the

practice of portraiture deeply influence our interactions

with these images. Though an anonymous photograph re-

produced in an ephemeral pamphlet may seem far removed

from a commissioned painted portrait of an ancestor, the

expectations of the genre bind them. What particularly in-

terests me is the established ways of looking to pose, prop,

and personas that inform and influence our interpretations

of the image.

In the portrait, we recognize our forms, as variable as

they may be, and it is this moment of recognition that af-

fords opportunity for exchange. Further, drawing from

the work of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, I ask whether

Motley’s portraits can function as a site of empathy where

one recognizes oneself, surrendering culturally embedded

notions of difference that permit the conceptualization of

the other as object, subject to domination.33

Arguably, the portrait has always played a key role in

society, but during an era marked by prejudice and dis-

crimination the portrait served as a means of socialization.

Whether a photograph of a young woman modeling spring

fashions that appears in the pages of a circulating daily

or a painted homage to a grandmother that hangs on the

walls of an elite cultural institution, the portrait can teach

us the value and strategies of a measured looking. In effect,

Motley’s portraits invited viewers to scrutinize the exterior

and interior character of their subjects as yardsticks of their

own participation in shifting standards for the performance

of race, gender, class, and sexuality. The portrait demands

that viewers constantly move between interrogations of

self-perception, the construct and projection of the self for

others, the artist’s perception of the self, and the display

and reception of such a self as a work of art.34 In this way,

the portrait can serve as a means of socialization providing

25

figure 2.2. John Henry Adams, “Gussie,” from “Rough Sketches—

A Study of the Features of the New Negro Woman,” Voice of the Negro, 1904.

and devotion to the domestic—all of which had been de-

nied as part of her personal expression during slavery.43

Illustrator John Adams was among the first to contribute

to the visualization of the New Negro Woman. In draw-

ings that accompanied a feature article for the journal Voice

of the Negro, Adams reflected contemporary attitudes that

celebrated black women’s beauty and culture but limited

her agency and individuality.44 Readers were introduced

to idealized images that were “offered for women to pat-

tern themselves after.”45 The didactic portraits of “Eva,”

“Gussie,” and “Lena” demonstrate how Adams conflated

the idealized exterior with the women’s abilities and char-

acter so that audiences could better know and appreciate

the “colored woman” (figure 2.2). Adams called on view-

ers to scrutinize and measure her “by all the standards of

human perfection.”46 Problematically, however, Adams

based his “standards” on the pictorial protocols of the

Euro-American Gibson Girl. Though the New Negro

Woman followed the contemporary fashion associated this

emerging New Woman type, from her upswept hairstyle,

to her wasp-corseted waist, to the graceful sweep of her

full skirt, Adams did not adopt the popular conception of

the white model’s audacious and potentially problematic

character.47 Instead, his extension of a patriarchal and

socially conservative gaze to audiences was intent on as-

suaging anxiety and affirming black women’s allegiance

to their male counterpart, the “New Negro Man,” thereby

countering the emasculation of black men who were un-

able to protect their women from rape during slavery.48 As

historian Elsa Barkley Brown, among others, has argued,

the assertion of heteronormative gender roles was a critical

component of recognizing and protecting the integrity of

the post-Reconstruction black family.49

Yet in other contemporaneous accounts, the New Negro

Woman could also be a seductive temptress or, in others, an

educated woman engaged in public activism.50 For some,

she was “the product of profound and vital change . . . along

the entire gamut of social, economic, and political atti-

tudes.”51 Often, however, she was reclaimed as helpmate for

the New Negro Man. The progressive black magazine the

Messenger credited the New Negro Woman with having

26

figure 2.3. “Who Is the Prettiest Colored Girl in the United States?,”

photo composite from Half-Century Magazine, 1922.

and gendered norms become apparent.53 In Motley’s por-

traits, we see “contemporary African American women’s

struggles to reconcile the template of the race woman with

their own self-definition.”54 Collectively, Motley’s female

subjects are depicted as independent, self-confident, and

expressive of their own agency. By extension, their like-

nesses offer viewers the possibilities of modern imagining

and identification.

appearance and personality

of new negro women

Portraitists rely on exterior signs to signal interior states of

being. During Motley’s era dramatic shifts in the manufac-

turing of goods and services contributed to the possibilities

of individual expression. As scholars such as Davarian Bald-

win have demonstrated, the changes in women’s fashions

and cosmetics during the period represent significant shifts

toward political and economic autonomy.55 Further, the

advertisements and discourse around fashion and beauty

culture generated a greater awareness of the ways in which

one could control the perception and projection of one’s

identity. A key topic to emerge from this dialogue focuses

on the diversity of black women’s skin tones. Multiple

sources stress and celebrate each person’s uniqueness, at

the same time identifying plurality as a unifying experience.

Madame C. J. Walker’s “Egyptian Brown Face Powder,” for

example, promised congruous blending for all, “impart-

ing an ‘olive tint’ to ‘fair complexions’ and harmonizing

‘bewitchingly with darker skins.’”56 As an assertion of racial

pride, Half-Century Magazine, started by Anthony Overton,

the founder of High Brown Cosmetics, held contests that

encouraged readers to see themselves as “the prettiest

colored girl in the United States.” Editors sought not only

to counter the “many white people [who] are under the

impression that there are no pretty colored women,” but

also “to show them that there are many colored beauties

of varying types.”57 Additionally, their efforts challenged

prevailing mores of modesty, encouraging women to cel-

ebrate and admire themselves by sending in their own

photographs to be selected for publication in the monthly

composites (figure 2.3). When considering his series of

“effected a revolutionary orientation,” in “business and

labor, in the professions, church and education, in science,

art and literature,” yet noted that her “big task” was to “cre-

ate and keep alive in the breast of black men, a holy and

consuming passion to break with the slave traditions of the

past; to spurn and overcome the fatal, insidious inferiority

complex of the present.”52

If we can keep in mind the fluidity of modern identity

and see “New Negro Womanhood” as “one site of the

continuous production, definition, and redefinition of

women’s roles and women’s behaviors,” the contradictions

faced by women who challenged accepted social, racial,

27

catalogue 6. Woman Peeling Apples (Mammy) (Nancy), 1924. Oil on canvas,

32.5 x 28 inches (82.6 x 71.1 cm). Art & Artifacts Division, Schomburg Center

for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and

Tilden Foundations, New York, New York. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

28

(opposite)

catalogue 7. The Octoroon Girl, 1925. Oil on canvas, 38 x 30.25 inches

(96.5 x 76.8 cm). Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, New

York. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

figure 2.4. Advertisement for Arroway Products composed of several

women modeling bob hairstyles, n.d. Photomechanical print. Image courtesy of

the Chicago History Museum, Chicago, Illinois. Claude A. Barnett A. Collection,

ICHi-67679.

municated the depth of the interior self. Though frequently

dismissed as vanity or artifice, the investment in hair prod-

ucts and acquisition of styling skills attests to the ways in

which women expressed their modernity. In particular,

the distinctive bobbed hairstyle of the 1920s signaled the

self-reflexivity, acquisitiveness, and ability to participate in

commoditization.59 By rejecting the expectation to grow

their hair long, women also expressed a sort of modern

secularism, as religious doctrine dictated that women

should strive to have long hair.60 With few exceptions, the

women depicted in Motley’s portraits model the bobbed

styles that appeared in the advertisements of the day, like

those presented by the Arroway Cosmetic Company (figure

2.4).61 Such hairstyles and the artist’s astute rendering of

fabrics and attention to the details of drape and cut make

it clear that Motley understood the role of fashion in self-

presentation. Scholar Miriam Thaggert notes, “Fashion

provides more clues to the elusiveness of black modern-

ism” as the expression of taste and style function within

systems that seek to make the abstract concrete.62 Looking

to Roland Barthes’s Fashion System, Thaggert calls atten-

tion to the transition from the visual to the verbal that takes

place in the caption accompanying an image, calling out the

complex negotiations that are part of naming.63 Given the

emphasis on both fashion and categorization in Motley’s

portraits, a close read of these two elements, and of their

interdependency, is surely warranted. Titles such as A Mula-

tress, Head of a Quadroon, and The Octoroon Girl force viewers to

reconcile their understanding of these historic Creole terms

with the physical characteristics of the depicted women, a

futile attempt that exposes the inevitable fallacy of consan-

guineous evaluation as well as the fraudulence of the social

and political systems on which they relied.64

It is important to note that for the most part—we can-

not name the women in Motley’s images—we cannot

identify them with lives actually lived, deeds accomplished,

and relationships established.65 As subjects, the women

remain anonymous types, easily aligned with the fiction

of Nella Larsen and similarly engaged in the class identity

and self-preoccupation that was fashionable at that time.66

The Octoroon Girl (1925; catalogue 7) provides the opportu-

portraits of racially mixed women, Motley, too, emphasized

the importance of variety of skin tone, stating that he was

“trying to fill the whole gamut” from black to light to those

in between.58 His refusal to depict black womanhood as a

homogenous, fixed identity was part of a larger effort to

reconfigure how women could be seen and see themselves.

Further, the exhibition and publication of his portraits of

racially mixed women in the contemporary press was part

of a larger visual campaign that promoted black women’s

self-acceptance, pride of appearance, and control over their

own physical selves.

New fashions and experimentation with hairstyles were

central to the generation of an exterior presence that com-

29

30

(opposite)

catalogue 2. Mulatress with Figurine and Dutch Seascape, c. 1920. Oil on

canvas, 31.375 x 29.75 inches (79.7 x 75.6 cm). Collection of Mara Motley, MD,

and Valerie Gerrard Browne, Evanston, Illinois. Image courtesy of the Chicago

History Museum, Illinois. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

in one’s ability to be accepted in society at large.70 Despite

their seeming conformity to the iconography of the black

bourgeois, these portraits offer the promise of the free self-

expression sought by modern viewers. A similar sense of

freedom and a willingness to break with the past marked

the artist’s life (e.g., marrying a white woman during an era

marred by segregation), yet to position Motley as an icono-

clast would be reductive and simplistic. Instead, like most

moderns, he navigated the social and aesthetic codes and

conventions of his era, simultaneously rejecting and accept-

ing the mores that governed the performance of identity.

For Motley, the portraits of racially mixed women call

into question the viewer’s own consciousness of the ways

that society conflates skin color, class, and character. At the

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Motley learned how

to communicate interiority through exteriority, relying on

the physiognomic systems that had similarly informed art-

ists such as John Henry Adams, yet how he chose to employ

the system’s codes results in a far more empowered repre-

sentation.71 In his painting Mulatress with Figurine and Dutch

Seascape (c. 1920; catalogue 2), Motley visualized the char-

acter trait of “refinement” that was not typically associated

with the sexualized trope of the “tragic mulatress.”

In this three-quarter-length portrait, the artist seated a

young woman next to a table with carefully arranged ob-

jects. The books, plaster cast of a classical male nude, and

Chinese incense burner were among the means that the

artist employed to convey the sitter’s cosmopolitan status.

From such iconographic inclusions, as well as her tailored

ensemble and tasteful jewelry, viewers were expected to as-

sume that the sitter possessed the “earmarks of a lady.”72

Modeling awareness of art and culture and conveying a

confident demeanor through her gaze, this woman portrays

middle-class deportment that her audience could emulate

and that served as a “visual rebuttal to the popular media

images of the ‘mammy’ or the ‘jezebel’ of black American

women which continued to hold a place in the minds of the

majority of Americans.”73 Further, her presence recipro-

cally works to define the artist’s own identity as one who

is not only conscious of the social relevancy of portraiture

but also possesses the skills to realize its potential. Indeed,

nity to consider the parallels between the fictive narratives

and Motley’s visualization of the New Negro Woman. In

Larsen’s stories, the female protagonists model the glamor-

izing of the psychological that became popular during the

1920s. The women are internally subject to the guilt and

shame that their decision to racially pass causes others.

Their demise is generated by their own anxiety and fear of

being exposed in the construct of their performance. Larsen

draws on the modern ideologies of subjectivity that divorce

the quality of “character” from the emergence of “person-

ality.” Character follows the earlier expectations of New

Negro Womanhood, demanding that the individual priori-

tize moral consciousness, self-denial, and self-sacrifice, as

well as respectability.67 By contrast, personality prioritizes

the aspects of women that have been socially repressed,

including the desire for “self-gratification, sex appeal,

consumption, and popularity.”68 In essence, through their

representations of women from this era, Motley and Larsen

begin to address the whole self, recognizing its accom-

plishments as well as its conflicts and consequences. By

depicting individuals who were willing to take risks in style

and expression, they projected and advocated for “new”

New Negro Women.

Although literary scholar Cherene Sherrard-Johnson

rightly notes that Motley’s images were part of a larger

discourse during the Harlem Renaissance that fetishized

“the mulatta as the ideal race woman,” thereby illuminat-

ing “the insidiousness of colorism and class,” she does not

consider the ways in which the artist countered the trope of

the tragic mulatta.69 Given the dearth of representations of

black women in visual culture, Motley’s portraits present

self-confident, well-dressed educated individuals who do

belong; in fact, it is through their own self-determination

that they can choose where they want to belong and how

their belonging will be performed. The women featured in

this series may be objectified, even exoticized, but their set-

tings, pose, and persona present viewers with the possibil-

ity of individuals of mixed-race heritage free from tragedy,

self-doubt, and the threat of exposure. As I have previously

argued, the visual presence of these women offers a critique

of the color line and asserts confidence in blackness and

31

32

figure 2.5. Photographs of “Some Ladies of Chicago from ‘Exalting Negro

Womanhood,’” Messenger, January 1924.

Mary Huff Motley (1870–1959). From her early childhood

on a plantation in Plaquemine, Louisiana, she was encour-

aged to pursue an education. As her mother cared for the

white children living on the plantation, Mary joined them

in play and in school lessons. She then attended a Catholic

boarding school, where later she became a teacher. Be-

cause of the continued legacy of slavery, Mary knew many

individuals of mixed race; she herself was fathered by a

white man.78 Perhaps her positive experiences with whites

and her perception that her community had little prejudice

influenced the acceptance of others that she later extended

to her own family and friends. Throughout his life, Motley

referred to his mother’s kindness and her support of his

art. Painted in 1919, his first portrait of her was publicly

presented at the Art Institute of Chicago annual exhibi-

tion of Chicago artists. Titled simply Portrait of My Mother

(catalogue 1), this three-quarter-length depiction of a single

figure against an indeterminate background follows the

precedents of his recent teachers, including painter George

Bellows.

According to Motley, Bellows saw the portrait as an op-

portunity to foster connections between subject, artist, and

audience and encouraged his students to “give out in one’s

art that which is part of oneself.”79 Following this dictate,

Motley’s portraits are not only a part of himself, but also a

part that he wished to “give out,” again implying the receipt

and acceptance of his vision. Motley positioned his figure

frontally, like the figures in many of Bellows’s portraits,

so that she directly engages the viewer, projecting a forth-

right personality perhaps enfranchised by the recent shifts

toward women’s suffrage and her own continued educa-

tion. Keenly aware of the discrimination against recent

migrants, Mary Motley took English courses at Englewood

High School to alter her accent and “northernize” her col-

loquialisms.80 An exterior light source highlights her face,

drawing the viewer’s attention to her large expressive eyes.

Though he painted this portrait when she was nearly fifty,

Motley took care to include details that express his aware-

ness of his mother’s modern style. Like many women of her

era, Mary Motley complemented her visage with cosmetics:

Motley was well aware of the con-

tinuing battle for representative

likenesses that played out in the

pages of Chicago’s black media,

such as the Messenger, Half-Cen-

tury, and the Chicago Defender.

As part of its “Exalting Negro

Womanhood” series, the Messen-

ger expanded its earlier discourse,

titled “Some Ladies of Chicago,

ILL,” to show readers not only

their unique beauty but also the

ways in which they were “intel-

ligent, industrious, talented, and

successful” (figure 2.5).74 Fur-

thermore, when introducing this

new section, editors at the Messenger explained: “It is quite

commonplace to see . . . page after page of pictures of white

women. . . . If a colored woman commits some crime or

does something very indecent and censurable, her picture

may be presented. . . . The buffoon, the clown, the criminal

Negro will be seen, but seldom the Negro of achievement,

culture, refinement, beauty, genius, and talent.”75

Thus, the physical appearance and character of African

American women were not simply issues politicized by a

few intellectuals; rather, concern for what was deemed a

“positive image” influenced popular culture and must be

considered when evaluating Motley’s portraits. Convinced

that he could bring about a “better understanding between

the races,” he used the aesthetics and politics of skin tone

as a central motif through which to educate both black

and white audiences. For blacks, Motley hoped that seeing

themselves in art would generate an appreciation of their

own racial identity.76 For whites, the artist hoped that see-

ing the beauty, accomplishments, and humanity of African

Americans would dispel stereotypes and end racism.77

between a mother and son

Motley’s empathetic concern for women and their changing

social roles extends to the depictions of his own mother,

33

catalogue 1. Portrait of My Mother, 1919. Oil on canvas, 32.125 x 28.25 inches

(81.6 x 71.8 cm). Collection of Mara Motley, MD, and Valerie Gerrard Browne,

Evanston, Illinois. Image courtesy of the Chicago History Museum, Illinois. ©

Valerie Gerrard Browne.

34

figure 2.6. Chicago art critics view Archibald Motley’s Portrait of My Mother

(1930) at Fifty-Third Annual Exhibition of Chicago Artists, the Art Institute of

Chicago (from left: Eleanor Jewett of the Chicago Tribune, Frank Holland of

the Chicago Sun-Times, and C. J. Bull), 1949.

this same scrutiny, encouraging the viewer’s acknowledg-

ment of the variety, beauty, and diversity that constituted

black modern subjectivity. As in the portraits previously dis-

cussed, he extends this racialized seeing to the viewer, mak-

ing visible the complicated social relations that required

daily negotiation. Given that this work was the first portrait

by an African American artist of an African American sub-

ject to hang in the elite exhibition halls of the Art Institute

of Chicago, Motley’s initial effort to employ portraiture to

bring about social change proved effective.82

More than ten years later, the artist returned to his

mother as subject, painting her likeness while she visited

him in Paris. Portrait of My Mother (c. 1930) celebrates the

evolution of Mary Motley’s persona (figure 2.6). Known

only through reproductions, the painting depicts Mary

Motley as a doyenne of contemporary couture, enjoying the

opportunity to shop and sightsee while in Paris. Her son’s

success made this opportunity possible: he paid for her trip

through funds provided by his Guggenheim Fellowship and

his nearly sold-out exhibition at the New Gallery.83 In the

portrait, she wears one of the knit suit styles popularized

by Coco Chanel, with a bell-sleeved blouse in a contrast-

ing tone underneath. Her chunky bead necklace and bold

flower-shaped appliqués attest to the ways that she was

known to invent her “smart” appearance.84 She sits on a low

sofa with one hand resting in her lap, clasping the other at

her side. Her body is angled toward the left, yet she turns to

the right, counterbalancing the composition. For this work,

she does not directly look at the viewer in a forthright man-

ner; rather, she angles her gaze lower, seemingly focused

on something or someone beyond the picture plane.

Raising one stylishly arched eyebrow, she appears to

express a sort of sophisticated skepticism as if aware that

she is the object of our attention even if she has decided

not to directly engage us. Mary Motley made the most of

being in Paris, including a radical change in her hairstyle:

there she became “beautifully marceled.”85 Invented in Paris

during the 1880s, the marcel hairstyle was popularized by

the glamorous Josephine Baker. Crafted with a hot iron,

the style consists of deep, regular waves or “ondulations”

rouge and lipstick bring a vibrant pink to her cheeks and

lips. The thickly mascaraed lashes that frame his mother’s

eyes not only emphasize their depth, but also provide an

opportunity for the artist to demonstrate his skill with the

impasto technique. A pinky ring, large earrings, and a black

cord lavaliere with prominent red glass beads provide fur-

ther adornment.

In effect, Portrait of My Mother is a study in brown requir-

ing the viewer’s (and the artist’s) careful discernment of

tone and hue. The dark russet tones of her ensemble are

complemented by the lighter chestnut color of the wall

that she is positioned against. Her dark brown hair, brows,

and eyes are set off by the golden-brown color of her skin,

which contrasts with the stark white of her collar. Yet,

more than a study of tones, the color choices that the art-

ist made emphasize the variety of colors associated with

African American skin and call out his mother’s mixed

racial heritage.81 As in the portraits of racially mixed young

women, Motley subjects his mother and thereby himself to

35

figure 2.7. Worthingtons Piny Pongs, Four portraits of Mary F. Hu� Motley,

Chicago, Illinois, n.d. Photographic print. Image courtesy of the Chicago History

Museum, Chicago, Illinois, ICHi-36511. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

all over the head.86 Given that she was then sixty years old,

her willingness to experiment may seem uncharacteristic,

yet Mary Motley was not bound to the conventions of a

bourgeois matron. From bicycle riding to enjoying a beer,

Motley’s mother modeled the modern woman’s attitude

toward self-fulfillment, even if it occasionally conflicted

with social convention. She expressed her own desires, and

her sense of agency was clearly influential on the children

she raised.87 A quick comparison with a contemporary pho-

tograph reveals the extent to which Motley idealized and

flattered his mother’s countenance, again reflecting his ide-

alization of her persona (figure 2.7).

Following the academic iconographic vocabulary estab-

lished in his previous portraits, Motley conveyed his moth-

er’s education and cultured tastes through books stacked

on a small table next to her as well as by the oval framed

painting that hangs on the background wall. This was the

last painting that Motley completed in Paris and reflects his

devotion to their relationship.88 Considering this painting,

Motley wrote: “I have tried to match the warmness of the

color in the painting with my mother’s warm and under-

standing personality. It was painted with a great deal of very

delicate, kind emotion and possibly a bit overdone in senti-

mentality. But it is a true honest expression of that greatest

love existing between mother and son.”89

On his return from Paris and subsequent exhibition

of the painting, a photographer from the Chicago Defender

asked Motley to pose with the portrait. Formally dressed for

the occasion, Motley struck a formidable stance, his arms

crossed (figure 2.8). The painter’s serious expression and

direct stare seem to communicate a sense of satisfaction

and accomplishment. He stands just so that it appears his

mother is looking at him, coolly evaluating her son, who

transfers that same gaze to the photographer and by exten-

sion to us. Though this painting was prized, widely ex-

hibited, and celebrated, Motley destroyed it in the 1950s.90

Though the artist did not explain his action, his nephew,

Willard Motley, believed the act to be a psychological purg-

ing, reflecting the painter’s self-doubts and questioning of

his dependence on his mother.91

36

catalogue 19. Portrait of a Woman on a Wicker Settee, 1931. Oil on canvas,

38.25 x 31.25 inches (97.2 x 79.4 cm). Collection of Mara Motley, MD, and Valerie

Gerrard Browne, Evanston, Illinois. Image courtesy of the Chicago History

Museum, Illinois. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

37

figure 2.8. Photograph of Archibald John Motley standing next to his

painting Portrait of My Mother (1931). Reproduced in the Chicago Defender,

February 20, 1932.

sive arts, sustaining community institutions, and fostering

black solidarity.”94

Edna Powell Gayle had a long and multifaceted rela-

tionship with Motley, first as a love interest, then later as a

student, taking art classes that he offered in his studio. At

the time of the portrait, she was a gallery dealer offering

a broad array of his works during the 1950s.95 Gayle was

“one of the most refined colored women” that he had ever

known, so Motley sought to visualize her accomplishments

and skill.96 In 1953, she established an art gallery on Chica-

go’s South Side at Sixty-third Street just under the Elevated

tracks. Gayle Galleries served as a “neighborhood” site with

an educational mission, seeking to “make the Negro rank

and file more art conscious.”97 Gayle noted that though

many may yearn “for the ownership of original art, to have

portraits of themselves painted, and to hang nice things on

the walls of their homes,” the “elaborate temples of art in

the Loop” prove to be “intimidating.” At this point in Chi-

cago, few downtown galleries featured the work of African

American artists, and most did not actively cultivate a black

clientele.98 Gayle worked with patrons to establish afford-

able installment payment plans, arranging commissions

for portrait paintings and murals, and in some cases served

as an artist’s agent.99

The painter worked on the portrait of Gayle for over a

year, meticulously rendering the detailed textures and sur-

faces that distinguished his earlier portraits. The work fol-

lows the previous format: the subject is seated, positioned

frontally, and looks directly at the viewer. Again, through

the “earmarks of a cultured lady,” Motley demonstrates her

taste and wherewithal. She sits on a finely wrought Arts and

Crafts chair, next to a vase of flowers in various shades of

pinks and fuchsia. Instead of quoting the work of another

artist as in previous portraits, Motley includes his own

work in the background, a watercolor titled Extra Paper (State

Street Scene) (1946). This lively scene of downtown Chicago

features the long-defunct State Street Trolley Car and a

wide array of citizens making their way across the crowded

street, patronizing grocery stores and newsstands. As in all

of Motley’s portraits, its inclusion and placement is specific

paragon and person:

portrait of a cultured lady

Portrait of a Cultured Lady (1948; catalogue 38) represents

the culmination of Motley’s conceptualization of the New

Negro Woman. Like Motley’s other portraits, the work is

titled to represent an anonymous yet definitive paragon.

But recent research brings a layer of specificity to this

image, allowing for the consideration of biographical

context that remains allusive in all but the family portraits.

The “Cultured Lady” is a depiction of Edna Powell Gayle,

who represented Motley at her art gallery in Chicago.92 De-

scribed as “charming and popular,” Gayle moved in several

black bourgeois circles, ranging from the NAACP and the

Urban League to various Chicago social clubs and commit-

tees.93 As a member of the board of Supreme Liberty Life

Insurance and a radio announcer for the Chicago’s Negro

Chamber of Commerce, Gayle’s public roles and politi-

cal activism demonstrate the multiple ways that women

contributed to vibrancy of the Chicago Black Renaissance.

Although celebrated primarily for its literary contribu-

tions, scholar Anne Meis Knupfer has documented that the

achievements of the 1930s and 1950s were largely due to

black women who were “involved in promoting the expres-

38 39

figure 2.9. Chicago NAACP membership campaign photograph featuring

Mrs. Edna Gayle at center, Crisis, November 1940.

(opposite)

catalogue 38. Portrait of a Cultured Lady, 1948. Oil on canvas,

39.5 x 32 inches (100.3 x 81.3 cm). Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC,

New York, New York. © Valerie Gerrard Browne.

ciation. As in so many of Motley’s portraits, the specificity

of the individual opens to represent the collective, modeling

the possibilities of not only how to know black female sub-

jectivity but also, perhaps more importantly, how to become

known by her. Motley’s interpretative projections afford

viewers the opportunity for reconciliation with the reality

of black educated professional women and addresses their

absence from the canon of fine art portraiture.

coda

In retrospect, Motley’s portraits accomplished much during

their initial exhibition and critical discourse, yet for us, as

contemporary viewers of the twenty-first century, they con-

tinue to contribute to our own consciousness of the ways

that we negotiate the politics and aesthetics inherent in the

formation and performance of identity. If we can begin our

looking at these works with an awareness of our own subjec-

tivities, we can engage in the process of portraiture crafted

by the artist, which in his perspective would result in a

deeper consciousness of the ways we are interdependent.

Further, we must keep in mind that the psychological

reading of others is an exercise in power, requiring the

mutual acknowledgment of privilege and disenfranchise-

and layered with meaning. Positioned above the sitter’s

head, the image of this predominantly white world speaks

volumes as to the experience of segregation. In addition to

documenting Gayle’s role as his gallery dealer, the artist

also acknowledges the risks of her entrepreneurial efforts

within this racially charged era.100 Moreover, as a mnemonic

device the painting may also reference a romantic evening

between the sitter and subject, as they once enjoyed a stroll

down State Street.101 Finally, her calm poise contrasts with

the frantic bustle of the scene, furthering the viewers’ sense

of the depth of her interiority and commitment to achieving

her goals.

Motley’s positioning of Edna Powell Gayle as “a cultured

lady” relies on the reading of her signature sense of style

and underlines the collaborative nature of portraiture. Her

deep purple dress, with its flattering drape and padded

shoulders, not only serves as a postwar display of the opu-

lence and femininity made popular by Dior’s “New Look”;

it also conveys a consciousness of the type of public presen-

tation that women of her status and aspirations needed to

perform. Her carefully applied makeup, long lacquered red

nails, and prominent display of a diamond wedding ring

further complement her preference for the controlled dra-

matic. Simultaneously, for the artist, the dress, accessories,

and persona presented the opportunity to display his own

command of form, hue, and composure. Motley’s treat-

ment of the deeply saturated purple of the dress, in particu-

lar, demonstrates his profound love of the technical pos-

sibilities presented by chroma, light, and shadow. The tone

of the dress emanates throughout the composition, literally

and symbolically coloring her environment. Its effect visu-

alizes the impact of Gayle’s efforts to support the agencies

of black cultural capital. As evident in her contemporane-

ous photograph celebrating her successful advocacy for the

Illinois NAACP, Gayle’s serious demeanor, straightforward

gaze, and signature matching jewelry set became the means

by which she defined herself (figure 2.9). In effect, Gayle

became a paragon. She is one of many possible modern

resolutions for the New Negro Woman, a compelling self-

presentation extended to others for emulation and appre-

40

catalogue 10. Uncle Bob, 1928. Oil on canvas, 40.125 x 36 inches

(101.9 x 91.4 cm). Collection of Mara Motley, MD, and Valerie Gerrard Browne,

Evanston, Illinois. Image courtesy of the Chicago History Museum, Illinois.

© Valerie Gerrard Browne.

41

notesI would like to thank Dr. Rick

Powell, the Motley family, and the

scholars who have contributed to

making this rich reconsideration

of Motley’s work possible. I am

particularly indebted to the rigor-

ous scholarly exchange with Dr.

Davarian Baldwin and Dr. David

Driskell. My research was supported

by archivists at the Chicago History

Museum, the Special Collections

at Northern Illinois University, and

the Vivian Harshe Archives at the

Woodson Library, including Peter

Alter, Beverly Cook, Michael Flug,

and Lynne Thomas. The staff of the

Nasher Museum and Duke Univer-

sity Press, including Katie Adkins,

Renee Cagnina, and Christi Stan-

forth, ensured the timely comple-

tion, editing, and illustration of my

essay, for which I am most apprecia-

tive. I also extend deep affection and

appreciation to Geof and Esme, each

of whom, in their own way, sustains

my work.

The Romare Bearden quote is

from “The Negro Artist and Modern

Art,” Opportunity (1934), reprinted in

David Levering Lewis, ed., The Por-

table Harlem Renaissance Reader (New

York: Viking, 1994), 141; the J. Z.

Jacobson quote is from Art of Today

(Chicago: L. M. Stein, 1933), xv–xvi.

1. For critical perspective on

the black female nude see Judith

Wilson, “Getting Down to Get Over:

Romare Bearden’s Use of Pornog-

raphy and the Problem of the Black

Female Body in Afro-U.S. Art,” in

Black Popular Culture, ed. Gina Dent

(Seattle: Dia Center for the Arts with

Bay Press, 1992), 112–122. Also see

Deborah Willis and Carla Williams,

The Black Female Body: A Photographic

History (Philadelphia: Temple

University Press, 2002), and Lisa

Farrington, “Reinventing Herself:

The Black Female Nude,” Women’s

Art Journal (Fall 2003/Winter 2004),

15–23. For the ways in which the

female figures function in Vermeer’s

work see Bryan Jay Wolf, Vermeer and

the Invention of Seeing (Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 2001).

2. Carol Duncan, “Virility and

Domination in Early Twentieth

Century Art,” in Feminism and Art

History: Questioning the Litany, ed.

Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard

(New York: Harper & Row, 1982),

293–314, quoted in Farrington, “Re-

inventing Herself,” 19.

3. Houston Baker Jr., Modernism

and the Harlem Renaissance (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1987),

1.

4. In addition to Pierre Bour-

dieu’s definition of cultural capital

as the knowledge that lends social

advantages, I look to Diane Grams’s

specific application, defining black

cultural capital as the knowledge,

experiences, and practices that pro-

duce power relevant to black people,

their experiences and social location

on Chicago’s South Side. In Motley’s

portraits, these values are performed

by both artist and sitter, yet they de-

pend on the viewer’s own subjectiv-

ity. See Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A

Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste,

trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge,

MA: Harvard University Press, 1984),

6, and Diane Grams, Producing Local

Color: Art Networks in Ethnic Chicago

(Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2010), 72–73.

5. The Modern Girl around the

World Research Group: Alys Eve

Weinbaum, Lynn M. Thomas, Priti

Ramamurthy, Uta G. Poiger, Mad-

eleine Yue Dong, Tani E. Barlow,

eds., The Modern Girl around the World:

Consumption, Modernity, and Globaliza-

tion (Durham, NC: Duke University

Press, 2008), 4.

6. A recent list would also in-

clude David C. Driskell, The Other

Side of Color: African American Art in

the Collection of Camille O. and William

H. Cosby Jr. (San Francisco: Pome-

granate, 2001), 36–41; Richard J.

Powell, “Archibald J. Motley, Jr.,” in

To Conserve a Legacy: African American

Art from Historically Black Colleges and

Universities (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1999), 215–216; Cécile Whit-

ing, “More Than Meets the Eye: Ar-

chibald Motley and Debates on Race

in Art,” Prospects 26 (October 2001):

449–476; and Phoebe Wolfskill,

“Caricature and the New Negro in

the Work of Archibald J. Motley, Jr.

and Palmer Hayden,” Art Bulletin 92,

no. 3 (September 2009): 343–365.

7. Richard J. Powell, Cutting a

Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture

(Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 2008), 10.

8. Alain Locke, “To Certain

of Our Philistines,” Opportunity 3

(May 1925): 155. Cited in Martha

Jane Nadell, Enter the New Negroes:

Images of Race in American Culture

(Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-

sity Press, 2004), 44. Locke, along

with Mary Beady Brady of the Har-

mon Foundation, would see that

portraitist artists were supported

throughout the annual exhibitions

held by the foundation and would

work to generate a touring exhibi-

tion, Portraits of Outstanding Americans

of Negro Origin, to address the need

for academic formal portraits that

they believed would generate social

change. See David C. Driskell and

Tuliza K. Fleming, Breaking Racial

Barriers (Washington, DC: Smithson-

ian Institution Press, 1997).

9. Catherine M. Sousloff, The

Subject in Art: Portraiture and the Birth of

the Modern (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-

versity Press, 2006), 1. I would like

to thank Hamza Walker for making

me aware of this reference.

10. Powell, Cutting a Figure,

20–21.

11. As Wendy Greenhouse has

persuasively argued, Motley aspired

to be a portraitist, but found that

commissions alone were not sub-

stantial enough to support his artis-

tic practice. See “An Early Portrait

by Archibald J. Motley, Jr.,” American

Art Journal 29, nos. 1 and 2 (1998):

97–102.

12. Sousloff, The Subject in Art, 13.

13. See Elaine Woodall, “Ar-

chibald J. Motley, Jr.: American

Artist of the Afro-American People,

1891–1928,” MA thesis, Pennsylva-

nia State University, 1977, and Jon-

tyle Theresa Robinson, “The Life of

Archibald J. Motley, Jr.,” in The Art of

Archibald J. Motley, Jr. (Chicago: Chi-

cago Historical Society, 1991), 1–32.

14. Craig Abbott, transcript of

“Mother” Willard Motley’s interview

with Mary Motley (1953), Willard

Motley Papers, Manuscripts Collec-

tion, Northern Illinois University,

DeKalb (hereafter referred to as

WMP).

15. Archibald J. Motley Jr., “Auto-

biography,” n.d., Archibald J. Motley

Jr. Papers, Chicago History Museum

(hereafter referred to as AJM).

derstood himself in relation to black subjectivity. Yet I agree

with his characterization of the work and believe that the

artist’s efforts, as manifested in his portraits, allow us all to

“lay bare” and consciously know ourselves through others.

ment that marks our contemporary society. When art critic

Edward Allen Jewell noted, “Motley lays bare a generous

cross-section of what psychologists call the subcon-

scious—his own and that of his race,” I doubt that he un-

42

16. For more on his friendships

see Wendy Greenhouse, “Motley’s

Chicago Context, 1890–1940,” The

Art of Archibald J. Motley, Jr. (Chicago:

Chicago Historical Society, 1991),

33–63, and Craig Abbott, transcript

of “Brother” Willard Motley’s in-

terview with Archibald J. Motley Jr.,

September 23, 1953, WMP.

17. In his conversations with his

nephew, Motley frankly discussed

numerous affairs of his youth. See

transcript of “Brother,” WMP.

18. For a general overview of the

conservatism that ruled the Acad-

emy see Saul E. Zalesch, “Competi-

tion and Conflict in the New York

Art World, 1874–1879,” Winterthur

Portfolio 29 (1994): 103–120. For

Motley’s specific negotiation of its

teachings see Mooney, “Represent-

ing Race,” 31.

19. LaDonna Tittle, interview

with Archibald J. Motley Jr., March

21, 1971, AJM.

20. Many of the boarders at the

Motley household were offered a

sort of social refuge, including pros-

titutes, a woman who became a her-

oin addict, and an “out” gay man.

See transcript of “Brother,” WMP.

21. See “Artist Jailed for Shooting

of Stepfather,” Chicago Daily Tribune,

July 25, 1955.

22. For a contemporaneous

discussion of the essentialization of

black artists see Romare Bearden’s

insightful article “The Negro Art-

ist and Modern Art,” Opportunity

(1934), reprinted in The Portable

Harlem Renaissance Reader, ed. David

Levering Lewis (New York: Viking,

1994), 138–141. Bearden furthered

his thoughts in “The Negro Art-

ist’s Dilemma,” Critique (November

1946): 16–22. During the emergence

of cultural studies in the 1980s,

the theorist Stuart Hall addressed

the critical role that binary think-

ing played in political and cultural

analysis; see “New Ethnicities,”

in Black Film, British Cinema, ed.

Kobena Mercer, ICA Documents 7

(London: Institute of Contemporary

Arts, 1989), 27–31, followed by Paul

Gilroy’s groundbreaking The Black

Atlantic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

University Press, 1993). More re-

cently Jacqueline Francis provides

important insights in Making Race:

Modernism and “Racial Art” in America

(Seattle: University of Washington

Press, 2012).

23. Motley, “The Negro in Art,”

draft edited for article published

in the Chicago Defender, July 6, 1918,

AJM. Among the many concerns

expressed by the artist in this earlier

draft (which differs significantly

from the final version published in

the Defender), Motley addresses the

need to develop black patronage for

visual art. His efforts in this regard

coincide with Robert Harshe’s writ-

ing African American businessmen

on behalf of the artist in an attempt

to generate their interest in Motley’s

work. According to the artist, this

effort was in vain: in their responses

the five prominent businessmen

rebuffed Harshe. Unfortunately, the

original letters and the responses

are not included in the archives of

the former Art Institute Director at

the Ryerson Library. There is a letter

from John Nail, a New York–based

African American real estate mogul

who purchased Motley’s paint-

ing Mammy. Nail advised Motley

to focus on his art and disregard

the politics of patronage. See AJM.

Later, in an interview with Dennis

Barrie, Motley disclosed that Chi-

cago banker Jessie Binga was among

those contacted. See “Oral History

Interview with Archibald Motley,

1978 Jan. 23–1979 Mar. 1,” Oral

Histories, Archives of American Art,

Smithsonian Institution, Washing-

ton, DC (hereafter cited as “Barrie

interview”).

24. Empathy is frequently con-

fused with sympathy, pity, and com-

passion; they all appeared within

the nineteenth-century aesthetic and

philosophical discourse, and they

were not always (or consistently) dif-

ferentiated. See Juliet Koss, “On the

Limits of Empathy,” Art Bulletin 88,

no. 1 (March 2006): 140.

25. Drawing from his uncle’s

perspective, Willard Motley offered

additional insights. See “A Chal-

lenge to the Artistic Conscience of

Chicago,” WMP.

26. DuBos quoted in Susan

Leigh Foster, Choreographing Empa-

thy: Kinesthesia in Performance (Lon-

don: Routledge, 2011), 131.

27. Ibid.

28. Sousloff, The Subject in Art,

back cover summary.

29. See Archibald J. Motley Jr.,

“How I Solve My Painting Prob-

lems,” 1947, Harmon Foundation

Papers, Library of Congress, Wash-

ington, DC; copy in AJM.

30. Alan Trachtenberg, Reading

American Photographs: Images as His-

tory, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans

(New York: Hill and Wang, 1989),

203–205. Cited in Janet Zandy,

“Photography and the Work of Class

and Race,” American Quarterly 60, no.

1 (2008): 189.

31. Jeannene Przyblyski, “Ameri-

can Visions at the Paris Exposition,

1900: Another Look at Frances

Benjamin Johnston’s Hampton Pho-

tographs,” Art Journal 57, no. 3 (Fall

1998): 62.

32. Ellen Wiley Todd, The “New

Woman” Revised: Painting and Gender

Politics on Fourteenth Street (Los Ange-

les: University of California Press,

1993), xxx.

33. As Linda Bolton surmises,

Levinas critiqued the sociocultural

values placed on “the exercise of

the same,” which only permits the

self-knowledge through differentia-

tion of the “I” from the “Other,”

thus excusing ethical obligation

and permitting objectification. See

Bolton, Facing the Other: Ethical Dis-

ruption and the American Mind (Baton

Rouge: Louisiana State University

Press, 2004), 6–7. For Levinas, see

Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso

Lingis (Boston: M. Nijhoff, 1961),

and “The Proximity of the Other,”

in Is It Righteous to Be? Interview with

Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jill Robbins

(Stanford: Stanford University Press,

2001), 211–218.

34. Roland Barthes, Camera Lu-

cida, trans. Richard Howard (New

York: Hill and Wang, 1981), 13.

35. My reading of Levinas is

indebted to Bolton, Facing the Other,

86–87. Further, the complications

inherent with empathetic identifica-

tion are discussed in Robert Ber-

nasconi and Simon Critchley, eds.,

Re-reading Levinas (Bloomington:

Indiana University Press, 1991).

36. Ibid., 89.

37. See Whiting, “More Than

Meets the Eye,” 452. Whiting fol-

lows many of the readings offered in

my article “Representing Race: Dis-

junctures in the Work of Archibald J.

Motley, Jr.,” Museum Studies 24, no. 2

(1999), and in my dissertation, “The

Crisis of Crossing,” Rutgers Univer-

sity, 2001.

38. German aesthetician Robert

Vischer conceived as empathy as an

experience undertaken by one’s en-

tire subjectivity, requiring a unique

synthesis of visual analysis, the

willingness to extend one’s physical

self to “inhabit the other,” and re-

sistance to the limitations imposed

by social hierarchies. See Foster,

Choreographing Empathy, 126–128. See

also Robert Vischer et al., Empathy,

Form and Space: Problems in German

Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Santa Monica,

CA: Getty Center for the History of

Art and the Humanities, 1994).

39. See Saidiya V. Hartman,

Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery,

and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century

43

America (New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1997).

40. Whiting, “More Than Meets

the Eye,” 449.

41. Archibald J. Motley Jr.,

“Plans for Study,” application for

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial

Foundation Fellowship, 1928, AJM.

42. Barrie interview.

43. Cherene Sherrard-Johnson,

Portraits of the “New Negro Woman”:

Visual and Literary Culture in the Harlem

Renaissance (New Brunswick, NJ:

Rutgers University Press, 2007), 27.

See Barbara Welter, “Cult of True

Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American

Quarterly 18, no. 2, Part 1 (Summer

1966): 151–174. For a nuanced un-

derstanding of the conflicting right

and desire to perform within the

paradigm of the Cult of True Wom-

anhood, see Kirsten P. Buick, Child

of the Fire: Mary Edmonia Lewis and the

Problem of Art History’s Black and Indian

Subject (Durham, NC: Duke Univer-

sity Press, 2010).

44. John Henry Adams, “Rough

Sketches: A Study of the Features of

the New Negro Woman,” Voice of the

Negro 1 (August 1904): 323–326. For

the groundbreaking consideration

of the work that these images and

text accomplished, see Henry Louis

Gates Jr., “The Trope of the New

Negro and the Reconstruction of the

Image of the Black,” Representations

24 (Fall 1988): 129–155.

45. Wayne Martin Mellinger,

“Ancestors: John Henry Adams and

the Image of the ‘New Negro,’” Inter-

national Review of African American Art

14, no. 1 (1997): 30.

46. Adams, “Rough Sketches,”

325.

47. When defining his “girl,” the

original illustrator, Euro-American

Charles Dana Gibson, stated that

she was “bold, confident, and free

to do as she pleased,” and he ex-

pressed concerns that she posed a

threat to time-honored gender roles.

Perhaps, because of the historical

denigration of the character and

bodies of black women, Adams did

not risk a misreading of the expecta-

tions of the New Negro Woman, as

each caption indicated that her intel-

lectual and cultural talents would be

employed to the benefit of husband

and family, not to the questionable

pursuit of women’s suffrage or birth

control. See Carolyn Kitch, The Girl

on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of

Visual Stereotypes in American Mass

Media (Chapel Hill: University of

North Carolina Press, 2001), 37–39.

Contextual information on how the

Gibson trope both sanctioned and

undermined women’s desires for

progressive sociopolitical change

and personal freedom at the turn

of the century is discussed in

Martha H. Patterson, Beyond the Gib-

son Girl: Reimagining the American New

Woman, 1895–1915 (Urbana: Univer-

sity of Illinois Press), 28–29.

48. Patterson, Beyond the Gibson

Girl, 47.

49. Deborah Gray White suc-

cinctly summarizes the scholarship

on this power dynamic in Ar’n’t I a

Woman? Female Slaves in the Planta-

tion South, rev. ed. (New York: W.W.

Norton, 1999), 176–177. For Brown,

see “Negotiating and Transforming

the Public Sphere: African American

Political Life in the Transition from

Slavery to Freedom,” Public Culture 7

(1994): 107–146.

50. See Fannie Barrier Wil-

liams, “The Club Movement among

Colored Women of America,” in

The New Negro for a New Century, ed.

Booker T. Washington, N. B. Wood,

and Fannie Barrier Williams (Chi-

cago: American Publishing House,

1900), 379–405, and Elise Johnson

McDougald, “The Task of Negro

Womanhood,” in The New Negro, ed.

Alain Locke, 369–382 (1925; repr.,

New York: Simon and Schuster,

1997).

51. “The New Negro Woman,”

Messenger 5 (July 1923): 757.

52. Ibid.

53. Todd, The “New Woman” Re-

vised, xxviii.

54. Sherrard-Johnson, Portraits of

the “New Negro Woman,” 27.

55. See Davarian L. Baldwin,

“Making Do: Beauty, Enterprise,

and the ‘Makeover’ of Race Woman-

hood,” in his insightful book

Chicago’s New Negroes: Modernity, the

Great Migration, and Black Urban Life

(Chapel Hill: University of North

Carolina Press, 2007), 53–90. For

further contributions to the schol-

arship on black beauty culture see

Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making

of America’s Beauty Culture (Philadel-

phia: University of Pennsylvania

Press, 1998), and Noliwe M. Rooks,

Hair Raising: Beauty, Culture, and

African American Women (New Bruns-

wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press,

1996).

56. Alys Eve Weinbaum, Lynn M.

Thomas, Priti Ramamurthy, Uta G.

Poiger, Madeleine Y. Dong, and

Tani E. Barlow, “The Modern Girl

around the World: Cosmetics Adver-

tising and the Politics of Race and

Style,” in Weinbaum et al., The Mod-

ern Girl around the World, 44.

57. Half-Century Magazine 12, no.

1 (1922): 9

58. Barrie interview.

59. Weinbaum et al., “The Mod-

ern Girl around the World,” 50.

60. Rooks, Hair Raising, 49.

61. See Claude A. Barnett

Collection, “Kashmir Chemical

Co—Nile Queen Cosmetics,

Arroway Products,” Chicago

Historical Museum.

62. Miriam Thaggert, Images

of Black Modernism: Verbal and Visual

Strategies from the Harlem Renaissance

(Amherst: University of Massachu-

setts Press, 2010), 66.

63. Ibid., 66.

64. See Amy M. Mooney, “Face

Value,” in Archibald J. Motley Jr. (San

Francisco: Pomegranate, 2004),

31–59.

65. In terms of attempting to

resolutely identify the sitters for his

series on mixed-race women, the

Motley archive proves contradic-

tory. For example, in the artist’s

biography written by Willard Motley,

the model for the painting Head of

Quadroon is described as a portrait

of friend who had died, named

Clotilde. In his essay “How I Solve

My Painting Problems,” Motley de-

scribes the model as a doctor’s wife,

and in an interview with Willard he

refers to the model as “Cecile.” AJM.

Only in one known painting, Aline an

Octoroon (c. 1927), is the subject actu-

ally named in the title.

66. The use of Motley’s portraits

on the covers of Harlem Renais-

sance fiction began in 1990 with the

reissuing of Jessie Fauset’s Plum Bun.

The Octoroon Girl was reproduced on

the reissue of Nella Larsen’s Passing

in 1997, and Mulatress with Figurine

and Seascape (c. 1920) appeared on

the cover of Quicksand in 2002.

67. Warren Susman as quoted

by Joel Pfister, “Glamorizing the

Psychological: The Politics of the

Performances of Modern Psychology

Identities,” in Inventing the Psychologi-

cal (New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press, 1997), 174.

68. Ibid.

69. Sherrard-Johnson, Portraits

of the “New Negro Woman,” 36–37.

Though Sherrard-Johnson builds

on the comparison of Motley and

Larsen made by several authors, she

fails to cite the earlier literature; see,

for example, Mooney, Archibald J.

Motley Jr., and Mooney, “The Crisis

of Crossing,” where I draw similar

conclusions on the painter’s use

of exoticism based on insights

on Larsen from Marcia Balshaw,

“‘Black Was White’: Urbanity, Pass-

ing, and the Spectacle of Harlem,”

44

Carolina” and was accompanied by

a partial label. Email to author, No-

vember 17, 2003. Looking through

the catalogues for the Fifty-Third An-

nual Exhibition by Artists of Chicago and

Vicinity in 1949, I was able to verify

its inclusion in the exhibition. In a

handwritten will dated November 2,

1960, in AJM, the artist noted that he

gave the painting to Mrs. Gayle.

93. “Unique ‘Invites’ Bid Guests

to Birthday Party,” Chicago Defender

(National edition), June 4, 1938, re-

trieved from ProQuest Historical News-

papers: Chicago Defender (1910–1975),

http://search.proquest.com.emils.

lib.colum.edu/docview/492650635

/13E76C1DC8C4D630029/1?accoun

tid=10231# (accessed February 26,

2013). Gayle’s wide range of com-

munity activism included judging

baby and beauty queen contests;

see “Lake Meadows to Hold Buggy,

Baby Parades,” Chicago Daily Tribune,

March 23, 1958, retrieved from

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Chicago

Tribune (1849–1989), http://search.

proquest.com.emils.lib.colum.edu/

hnpchicagotribune/docview/18203

1107/13E76CB01C74101850E/1?acc

ountid=10231# (accessed February

26, 2013), and A. L. Foster, “Other

Peoples BUSINESS (2),” Chicago

Defender (National edition), July 11,

1959, retrieved from ProQuest His-

torical Newspapers: Chicago Defender

(1910–1975) http://search.proquest.

com.emils.lib.colum.edu/docview/

492982529/13E76C1DC8C4D6300

29/7?accountid=10231# (accessed

February 26, 2013).

94. Anne Meis Knuper, The Chi-

cago Black Renaissance and Women’s Ac-

tivism (Urbana: University of Illinois

Press, 2006), 2. Recent publications

continue to expand the understand-

ing of the context and art of the

Chicago Renaissance. See Darlene

Clark Hine, ed., The Black Chicago

Renaissance (Urbana: University of Il-

linois Press, 2012), and Robert Bone

See also Kate Mulvey and Melissa

Richards, Decades of Beauty (New

York: Checkmark Books, 1998). Ever

keen to the enterprise and style of

the black neighborhood, Motley in-

cluded the “marcel” among the ser-

vices available at “Le Bon Shoppe,”

depicted in his painting Street Scene,

Chicago (1936; catalogue 29).

87. See interview with “Mother,”

WMP.

88. There is some debate as to

the number of portraits that Motley

painted of his mother. Portrait of a

Woman on a Wicker Settee (c. 1931; cat-

alogue 19) may be another represen-

tation of her. It was painted on his

return from Paris. Given that Mary

Motley was sixty-one years old at

this point, and comparing the paint-

ing to a photograph from the era,

the resemblance is less than abso-

lute. Yet in the work titled Portrait of

My Mother (catalogue 1), painted just

a year before, Motley clearly altered

and idealized some of her features,

making her look more youthful.

89. “How I Solve My Painting

Problems,” p. 4, AJM.

90. When it was exhibited with

the Harmon Foundation, Motley

listed the painting for sale at fifteen

hundred dollars, the highest price

for his works on loan for exhibition.

See Memorandum to Miss Brady

from Miss Moriarta, June 18, 1931,

The Harmon Foundation Archives,

Library of Congress.

91. Willard Motley, “Mother:

Last Days Notes Written in Chicago,

August–September 1959,” WMP.

92. I would like to thank archi-

vists Michael Flug and Beverly Cook

of the Vivian Harshe Archives for

their assistance with researching

Edna Powell Gayle. The portrait

first became known to me in 2003

through the Michael Rosenfeld Gal-

lery. According to Rosenfeld, the

painting was found by “a private

collector in a thrift store in South

one of the relatives of the master

of the Craighead Plantation. See

interview with “Mother,” as well as

Willard Motley letter to Frederica

Worthington Rodgers Westbrooke,

April 14, 1960, WMP.

79. Motley quoting Bellows in

Marguerite Williams, “Putting a

Race in Pictures—Archibald Mot-

ley’s Story,” Chicago Daily News Mid-

week Features, July 31, 1929, Harmon

Foundation Papers, Collections of

the Manuscript Division, Library of

Congress. After graduating from

SAIC, Motley continued to take

classes with Bellows while he was

an artist in residence.

80. Willard Motley letter to Eliza-

beth, October, 22, 1959, WMP.

81. I have argued that Motley

also employed this approach in his

Self-Portrait (c. 1920; catalogue 3) as

well. See Mooney, Archibald J. Motley

Jr., 4–6.

82. Greenhouse, “An Early

Portrait by Archibald J. Motley, Jr.,”

97–102.

83. Reproduced in the Chicago

Defender, February 20, 1932. A pho-

tograph of the painting was featured

in an article on art criticism in

Chicago, surrounded by critics who

regularly wrote on Motley, including

Eleanor Jewett, Frank Holland, and

C. J. Bulliet. See David M. Maxfield,

“Historians Say Chicago Wasn’t

as Anti-modernist as Believed,” St.

Louis Post-Dispatch, August 14, 1988.

84. Edward A. Jewell, “Art,”

New York Times (1923–Current file),

February 17, 1931. ProQuest Historical

Newspapers: The New York Times (1851–

2009) with Index (1851–1993), January

18, 2013. Thanks to my colleagues

Virginia Heaven and Arti Sandu for

their read on the fashions of Mary

Motley and Edna Gayle.

85. Ibid.

86. Victoria Sherrow, Encyclopedia

of Hair: A Cultural History (Santa Bar-

bara, CA: Greenwood, 2006), 258.

Journal of American Studies (August

1999): 307–322.

70. See Mooney, “Face Value,”

31–59.

71. On Adams see Mellinger,

“Ancestors,” 29–33. On Motley see

my discussion of his self-portraits in

Archibald J. Motley Jr., 3–29.

72. Charlotte Hawkins Brown,

The Correct Thing to Do—to Say—to

Wear (1940; reprint, New York: G. K.

Hall, 1995), 21.

73. Sharon Patton, African Ameri-

can Art (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1998), 122.

74. “Exalting Negro Woman-

hood,” Messenger 6, no. 1 (January

1924): 7.

75. Ibid.

76. Archibald J. Motley Jr.,

“Plans for Study,” application for

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial

Foundation Fellowship, 1928. Simi-

lar sentiments were also expressed

in his 1929 application: for example,

he stated that the overarching goal

of his artwork was to “bring about

a sincere appreciation of the Negro

and a mutual understanding of the

races” (AJM). As scholar Davarian

Baldwin has noted, the “basic defi-

nition of beauty was challenged” at

this point by University of Chicago

anthropologist Frederick Starr, who

wrote in 1921 in the Chicago Whip that

“there is no real beauty among white

American girls” and that it could

only be found “among the Liberian

and kindred races.” See “From the

Washtub to the World: Madame C. J.

Walker and the ‘Re-creation’ of Race

Womanhood 1915–1930,” in Modern

Girl around the World, 68, 76n 23.

77. Archibald J. Motley Jr.,

“Plans for Study,” application for

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial

Foundation Fellowship, 1929.

78. Though Mary explained that

her mother later married an African

American man with the last the

name Huff, her biological father was

45

African American Painters in Chi-

cago, 1893–1945,” in Chicago Modern

1893–1945: Pursuit of the New Chicago,

ed. Elizabeth Kennedy (Chicago:

Terra Foundation, 2004), 38–51.

99. The impact of Gayle’s efforts

is just coming to the forefront as the

scholarship on African American

artists active in the 1960s and 1970s

expands. Assemblage artist John

Outterbridge, featured in the recent

Now Dig This exhibition, recalls that

Gayle’s Gallery was the first black

art gallery in the country, stating, “I

was a punk painting, and she would

occasionally hang some of my stuff

because she liked what I was doing.”

See “African American Artists of Los

Angeles: John W. Outterbridge,”

interviewed by Richard Candida

Smith, Department of Special Col-

lections, University of California,

Los Angeles (1989–1990).

100. Gayle was not the only trail-

blazer in her family. Her brother was

William J. Powell, a prominent black

aviator who founded the Bessie

Coleman Aero Club and Craftsman

of Black Wings, Inc., which offered

free training in piloting and aero-

nautic engineering as means of ra-

cial advancement. See Von Hardesty,

Black Aviator: The Story of William J.

Powell (Washington, DC: Smithson-

ian Institution Press, 1994).

101. See “Brother,” WMP.

76CCA2D16F67E291/2?accoun

tid=10231# (accessed February 26,

2013).

98. The dearth of exhibition op-

portunities for contemporary black

artists contributed to the establish-

ment of the Art Craft Guild, an

informal group of African American

artist who held exhibitions in com-

munity spaces throughout the city.

Their advocacy realized the South

Side Community Arts Center. See

Erik S. Gellman, “Chicago’s Native

Son: Charles White and the Labor-

ing of the Black Renaissance,” in

Hine, The Black Chicago Renaissance,

147–164, and Daniel Schulman,

“‘White City’ and ‘Black Metropolis’:

and Richard A. Courage, The Muse

in Bronzeville: African American Creative

Expression in Chicago (New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011).

95. For specifics on their love

affair, see “Brother,” WMP. Powell

may have also recommended sitters

for Motley’s portraits prior to open-

ing her gallery, see Barrie interview.

96. See “Brother,” WMP.

97. Roi Ottley, “Art Gallery under

Elevated Brightens 63d Street Area,”

Chicago Daily Tribune, July 15, 1956,

retrieved from ProQuest Historical

Newspapers: Chicago Tribune (1849–

1989), http://search.proquest.com.

emils.lib.colum.edu/hnpchicago

tribune/docview/179851117/13E