New acquisition: Jacob Lawrence

High Museum of Art

Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), Night (And then they go to sleep), 1943. Watercolor, gouache and graphite on paper. Series: Harlem (1943) (no. 12 of 30). High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Alfred Austell Thornton in memory of Leila Austell Thornton and Albert Edward Thornton, Sr., and Sarah Miller Venable and William Hoyt Venable, the David C. Driskell African American Art Acquisition Fund, and the Margaret and Terry Stent Endowment for the Acquisition of American Art, 2025.11.

The High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, has recently welcomed a significant painting by Jacob Lawrence (1917-2000) into their holdings. The artist is known for his series of genre and history paintings produced between 1938 and 1956, coinciding with his meteoric rise as the first African American artist both to receive gallery representation in New York, and to be acquired by the Museum of Modern Art.

The acquired piece titled Night (And then they go to sleep), is rediscovered from the artist’s Harlem painting series in 1943, which “notably addresses the formative moments and aesthetic concerns that shaped the full direction of Lawrence’s career,” says Anni Pullagura, Margaret and Terry Stent associate curator of American art.

Lawrence’s earliest works—like Night (And then they go to sleep)—were drawn from his observations of everyday life in Harlem, where the artist grew up. “In 1942, he committed himself to returning to this subject in a fellowship extension letter to the Rosenwald Fund, naming his time in the American South as the catalyst for what would become known as the ‘Harlem’ paintings,” explains Pullagura. “He completed 30 paintings for this project, essaying a sociologically grounded portrait of Harlem and its communities with accompanying captions possibly made in collaboration with his wife, artist and writer Gwendolyn Knight (1913–2005).”

Embodying a poetic realism, the Harlem paintings feature Lawrence’s singular attention to color and form in narrative compositions that describe the beauty and banality of modern life. “Night (And then they go to sleep) illustrates a quiet, sentimental scene of a family at home in the city—the figures rendered with mask-like faces as they cuddle under a block patterned quilt,” says Pullagura. “Inspired by the cultural writings of Locke, Langston Hughes and Charles Seifert, the work’s striking iconography reflects contemporaneous discussions exploring the diverse traditions inherent to African American art and its makers across media and geography.”

In May 1943, Lawrence’s Harlem works were featured at the Downtown Gallery in New York. The grouping has not been united since, with three out of 30 panels yet to be located. The recent discovery of Night (And then they go to sleep) in a private collection in California (via Michigan after New York, when it was purchased directly out of the 1943 exhibition) forms an exciting recovery of a painting previously thought to have been lost, helping to complete a fuller picture of this artist’s career.

Pullagura notes,“This acquisition affords the High Museum a leading place in new scholarship on Lawrence’s most formative artistic pathways, his relationship to Southern arts and culture, and the cross disciplinary presence of numerous aesthetic traditions. —