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Artist
Winold Reiss, 16 Sep 1886 - 29 Aug 1953
Sitter
Countee Cullen, 30 May 1903 - 1 Sep 1946
Date
c. 1925
Type
Drawing
Medium
Pastel on illustration board
Dimensions
Sheet: 76.1 × 54.7 cm (29 15/16 × 21 9/16")
Frame: 89.5 × 68 cm (35 1/4 × 26 3/4")
Topic
Costume\Dress Accessory\Neckwear\Tie\Bowtie
Countee Cullen: Male
Countee Cullen: Literature\Writer\Poet
Countee Cullen: Education and Scholarship\Educator\Teacher
Countee Cullen: Literature\Writer\Novelist
Countee Cullen: Literature\Writer\Essayist
Portrait
Credit Line
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; purchase funded by Lawrence A. Fleischman and Howard Garfinkle with a matching grant from the National Endowment for the Arts
Restrictions & Rights
CC0
Object number
NPG.72.76
Exhibition Label
Born Louisville, Kentucky(?)
“Yet do I marvel at this curious thing,/to make a poet black and bid him sing!” With these words, Countee Cullen described the ambiguous position of the black artist in American society in the 1920s. By the age of twenty-two, Cullen had graduated with honors from New York University and completed Color (1925), his first volume of verse. He would become a leading figure of the literary and artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Winold Reiss’s portrait of Cullen appeared in the “Harlem” issue of Survey Graphic magazine, an overview of the Harlem Renaissance that would be republished as The New Negro. Here, Reiss conveys the poet’s introspection with tilted head and averted glance. Celebrating Cullen’s literary accomplishments, the portrait also captures the progressive spirit of the Harlem Renaissance and its quest for a new social awakening.
