NEGRO ART Negro art, in the broader sense, may be said to include work portraying Negro life by other than Negro artists; in a narrower sense, to include all the work of Negro artists. The Negro himself, though possessing a strong African heritage in craft and decora tive art, was hampered in his expression in the field of the formal arts by the conditions of the slave system, and the sudden dis placement by Christianity of the pagan background in which the original African arts flourished. However, in favourable centres like Philadelphia, Charleston and New Orleans, craft artisans of exceptional skill in wood and ironwork flourished until the break down between 184o-5o of craft skill by the factory system. Of these the most famous were the Negro art-smiths of New Orleans.
In formal painting, the pioneer Negro artist was Edward Ban nister (Providence, R.I.), a landscape-painter, prize winner at the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia (1876) and founder of the Providence Art club. At the same exhibition, Edmonia Lewis, pioneer sculptor, exhibited her busts of William Story, Charles Sumner and Frederick Douglass. Other early Negro artists be tween 1865 and 1885 were Edward Stidham (Philadelphia), por traitist; William Dorsey (Philadelphia), landscape-painter; and Robert Duncanson (Cincinnati), figure-painter.
These were followed, after a dead interval, by the two Negro artists who achieved rank in American painting and sculpture, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859-1937) and Meta Warrick Fuller. Tanner's painting, mostly of biblical subjects, in addition to the romantic realism of his French masters, reflects the mysticism and literal faith of his Negro parentage and, like the work of the Israels, combines utmost sophistication of technique with naive simplicity of theme. His technical skill was attested by many prize awards and also by his inclusion in the Luxembourg, Wilstach, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, Chicago Art Institute and other collections. A school of formal academic painting followed Tanner : William Harper (1874-191o), landscape painter of note; William Edouard Scott (b. 1884), portraitist and mural painter; William Farrow (b. 1885), landscapist and etcher; Charles Dawson (b. 1889), portrait painter and engraver; Edward A. Harleston (b. 189o), portraitist and figure painter of merit; and Laura Wheeler Waring (b. 1887), type portraitist and decora tive illustrator.
In sculpture, the outstanding Negro has been Meta Warrick, Fuller (b. 1877), educated at the Pennsylvania School of Indus trial Art, and pupil of Colarossi academy, St. Gaudens and Rodin.
She achieved recognition in the Paris salons of 1903 and with her forceful symbolic works,—"Oedipus," "Secret Sorrow," "The Wretched," "The Impenitent Thief" and "John the Baptist." Later she turned to the delineation of Afro-American types with her series of 14 groups representing the history and progress of the Negro, for the Jamestown Exposition (19o7) and her "Ethiopia. Unbound," executed for the New York Emancipation Semi-Cen tennial (1913). Later still she turned to portrait sculpture and to abstract symbolic groups. In similar vein but with slightly more attention to racial types, May Howard Jackson (b. 1878) has done meritorious work in sculpture. Though occasionally racial in subject and reflecting somewhat the peculiar emotional background of the Negro, the work of all the foregoing artists has been tradi tional in ambition, sympathy and technique, and success and recognition have come to them primarily as artists.
The younger Negro artists since 192o have broken somewhat with academic tradition and there has emerged a school of Negro art along distinctive and original lines devoted consciously to racial portrayal and expression. Activity has mainly focused in a New York or Harlem group, among whom the more outstanding are Palmer Hayden (landscapist), Aaron Douglas (1898– , figure painter and illustrator), M. Gray Johnson (1896-1934), W. J. Russell, Albert Smith (1896– , painter and etcher), Augusta Savage (19oo– , sculptor) and a Chicago group among whom the better known are Archibald J. Motley, Hale Woodruff (1900– ), John Hardrick, Arthur Diggs, painters; and Sargent Johnson (1888– ) and Richmond Barthe (19o1 ), sculptors. The modernist trend is represented by paint ings by Archibald Motley symbolizing the African background, and the use of African motifs in illustrations of Aaron Douglas. See B. Brawley, The Negro in Literature and Art (1918) ; W. E. B. Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk (1924) ; A. Locke, The New Negro (1925) ; P. Guillaume and T. Munro, Primitive Negro Sculpture (1926) ; and A. Locke, "African Art," in The Arts (March 1928). (A. LE R. L.) NEGRO DRAMA Negro drama as found in the United States represents the same tendency toward the development of race or group drama as is to be found elsewhere. It exemplifies the development of a group consciousness and the consequent urge for artistic expression of a people possessing a common tradition and race experience. Negro drama is likewise a recognized phase of American drama.