Betsy Graves Reyneau
Betsy Graves Reyneau , born Betsy Graves (born June 6, 1888 in Kansas , † October 18, 1964 in Moorestown, New Jersey ), was an American painter . She was best known for a series of portraits by prominent African Americans , which are now part of the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington . In addition to her artistic work, she supported the suffragettes' struggle for women's suffrage as a young woman and campaigned against social injustice and for the protection of civil rights in American society.
Life
Betsy Graves was the daughter of the lawyer Henry Ballard Graves (1861-1952) and his wife Lena L. Elliott (1863-?). She and her older brother Arthur (1884-1907) was indeed born in Kansas but grew up in Detroit , where her grandfather Benjamin Franklin Graves lived (1817-1906), the Supreme Court as a judge of Michigan ( Michigan Supreme Court have worked) was. She knew early on that she wanted to be a painter, but her father did not think this was an appropriate job for a woman. So she left Detroit and broke ties with her family to attend art academies in Cincinnati and Boston .
At the age of 26, she married on June 26, 1915 in Grosse Ile in Wayne County (Michigan) the engineer Paul Ortmans Reyneau (1886-1952).
Even in her youth, Graves had developed a keen sense of injustice and social grievances in her environment. As a student, she and others protested against the low wages of shop assistants and workers in the harbor docks. During her early years of marriage, she joined a group of women's suffrage activists led by Alice Paul and took part in the Silent Sentinels' protests and vigils outside the White House in Washington to demonstrate President Woodrow Wilson's negative stance on women’s voting rights. On July 14, 1917, known as Bastille Day , she was one of 16 women who demonstrated for women's suffrage with posters reading "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, July 14, 1789" in front of the White House and was arrested by the police . She was sentenced to 60 days in prison on July 17, 1917 at Occoquan Workhouse Women's Prison (now Lorton Correctional Complex ). Newspapers and other media outlets across Michigan reported the conviction and her kinship with Judge Benjamin Graves. Under pressure from public reporting, Graves Reyneau and the other women were pardoned by the President after three days. A few days later she and the others resumed the demonstrations and vigils.
In April 1918 she gave birth to their daughter Marie Duval Reyneau (1918–1968) in Detroit. After the success of the women's suffrage campaign in the early 1920s, Graves Reyneau felt strong enough to seek new goals and go her own way. Her marriage to Paul Reyneau was established in June 1922 after seven years on the grounds "extreme cruelty" ( extreme cruelty divorced). In the same year she moved to New York , where she opened her own studio at 31 W. 46th Street.
In 1927 she moved to Europe with her daughter. She wrote newspaper articles and perfected her drawing technique by working for the renowned London literary magazine The Bookman . Over the years she consciously experienced the growth of fascism in Europe, and in her apartment she gave Jews refuge from the increasing persecution during the time of National Socialism . The obvious preparations for war prompted Graves Reyneau in the spring of 1939 to return to her homeland after twelve years.
Back in the United States, sensitized by her experiences in Europe, she was horrified to see the obvious injustices and inequalities African Americans were exposed to in American society. The major racial tension led Reyneau to for the abolition of racial segregation to become involved. She devoted the rest of her artistic life to creating portraits of outstanding Americans of African descent in order to raise public awareness of and appreciate their achievements for the American people.
Graves Reyneau spent the last five years of her life with her daughter in the township of Moorestown in the US state of New Jersey, where her former colleague for women's suffrage, Alice Paul, also lived. Betsy Graves Reyneau died in Moorestown in October 1964 at the age of 76. The New York Times published its obituary on October 21, 1964.
In 1996, Betsy Graves Reyneau in was Hall of Fame significant women from Michigan ( Michigan Women's Hall of Fame ) was added.
Artistic career
First, Graves went to Cincinnati and learned the technique of realistic portrait painting from Frank Duveneck , who had been the director of the art academy there since 1904. She then studied from 1909 to 1914 under the name Bessie Bowen Graves at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Without aiming for an academic degree, she took numerous courses for advanced students, including "advanced painting", "life modeling" and "classical art". After their marriage and the couple's return to Detroit, Graves Reyneau painted portraits as commissioned work and earned a good reputation for her photorealistic colored oil paintings. At that time she only signed her pictures with her initials. It so happened that one day the Circuit Court of Detroit commissioned her to paint a portrait of her deceased grandfather, Judge Benjamin Graves, without the client being aware that the artist was the granddaughter of the person portrayed. During her time in New York, she had an exhibition at the Art Center on 56th Street in December 1922 that featured this portrait of her grandfather as one of the best pictures. The New York Times reported extensively on the exhibition, which also included portraits of Reyneau's friend and supporter Eunice Brannan, several portraits of children and one of Samuel Hume, director of the San Francisco Theater .
After returning from Europe, she traveled across the United States in the 1940s to meet numerous prominent African American personalities to portray them at home or at their workplaces. Those portrayed include women and civil rights activists Mary Church Terrell and Mary McLeod Bethune , civil rights activists Martin Luther King , writer James Weldon Johnson , boxer Joe Louis , sociologist and civil rights activist WEB Du Bois , first African American judge Jane Bolin and Thurgood Marshall , the first African American judge on the United States Supreme Court .
The botanist and inventor George Washington Carver gave up his lifelong opposition to being portrayed by artists only after seeing the work of Graves Reyneau. "She paints the souls of men," he said, and three months is allowed before his death in 1942 of her with a cultured from him red-white amaryllis - hybrids represent. She portrayed the actor, singer and civil rights activist Paul Robeson in his theatrical costume in the role of Othello , the opera singer Marian Anderson in front of the Lincoln Memorial .
In 1944, the Smithsonian Institute in Washington displayed a selection of her portraits in an exhibition entitled "Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin," sponsored by the Harmon Foundation . This philanthropic organization based in New York , which was active from 1922 to 1967, had deliberately commissioned the white Betsy Graves Reyneau and the African-American painter Laura Wheeler Waring to jointly produce this series of portraits in which they presented a means of overcoming racism in the United States saw. Because of the great interest the exhibition generated, the Smithsonian Institution sent it on a nationwide tour. The starting point of the ten-year traveling exhibition was the Detroit Institute of Arts .
Many portraits by Graves Reyneau are currently in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
Works (selection)
Martin Luther King
Richmond Barthé
Ruth Temple
Thurgood Marshall (1956)
Mary Church Terrell (1946)
.jpg)
Mary McLeod Bethune (1943)
Paul Robeson (1944)
Marian Anderson (1955)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Original documents accessed on ancestry.com on March 31, 2019.
- ↑ a b Katherine H. Adams, Michael L. Keene: After the Vote Was Won: The Later Achievements of Fifteen Suffragists . McFarland, 2010, ISBN 978-0-7864-5647-5 , pp. 57-67 (English).
- ↑ Doris Stevens: Jailed For Freedom . Boni & Liveright, New York 1920, pp. 366 (English, online ).
- ↑ Betsy Reyneau, 76, a painter, is dead . In: The New York Times . October 21, 1964, p. 43 (English, online obituary in the New York Times).
- ↑ Betsy Graves Reyneau. In: Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. Retrieved March 31, 2019 (English, with photo by Betsy Graves Reyneau).
- ↑ Jackie Mansky: How One Woman Helped End Lunch Counter segregation in the Nation's Capital. In: smithsonianmag.com. June 8, 2016, accessed March 31, 2019 (English, with color portrait of Mary Church Terrell by Betsy Graves Reyneau).
- ^ Fighting Prejudice through Portraiture with the Harmon Foundation Collection - National Portrait Gallery. In: npg.si.edu. Retrieved March 31, 2019 (English, with a color illustration of the portrait of Jane Bolin).
- ↑ Emily Browne: George Washington Carver. Retrieved March 31, 2019 (English, with a color illustration of the portrait).
- ↑ Emily Browne: Paul Robeson. Retrieved March 31, 2019 (English, with a color illustration of the portrait).
- ↑ Emily Browne: Marian Anderson. Retrieved March 31, 2019 (English, with a color illustration of the portrait).
- ^ "Breaking Racial Barriers: African Americans in the Harmon Foundation Collection". In: npg.si.edu. Accessed March 31, 2019 .
Remarks
- ↑ Different sources name "Greebville, Kansas", "Greenville, Kansas" or "Greensburg, Kansas" as their place of birth.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Graves Reyneau, Betsy |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Graves, Betsy (maiden name); Reyneau, Betsy (married name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American painter and suffragette |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 6, 1888 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kansas |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 18, 1964 |
| Place of death | Moorestown, New Jersey |