Samuel Joseph Brown Jr. (1907–1994) was a watercolorist, printmaker, and educator. He was the first African American artist hired to produce work for the Public Works of Art Project, a precursor to the Work Progress Administration's Federal Art Project. Brown often depicted the lives of African Americans in his paintings. He worked primarily in watercolor and oils, and he produced portraits, landscapes and prints.
His paintings are held in the permanent collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Early life and education
Brown was born in Wilmington, North Carolina, and moved with his family to Philadelphia in 1917. His father was a mattress-maker and upholsterer and his mother, a seamstress.
He attended James Logan Elementary School where in fourth grade, he won his first art prize. He attended South Philadelphia High School and worked after school for S. Cohen and Sons, a local silkscreen printer.
Brown graduated from high school in 1926 and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (now the University of the Arts) for four years. He graduated in 1930 specializing in art education. Brown received a Master of Fine Arts equivalent degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
Art career
Early work
Brown befriended artist, Dox Thrash, after Thrash arrived in Philadelphia in the late 1920s. The two shared a studio in the 1920s to 1950s, and operated a sign-painting business together in the mid-30s. It was one of several jobs Brown worked over the years to sustain his family.
In 1933, he drew the cover image for the NAACP's The Crisis magazine. The drawing was titled The Problem.
Federal Art Project
In 1933, Fiske Kimball, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, appointed Brown to the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), the first federal employment program for artists. Kimball was in charge of the project in Philadelphia. Brown was the first African American artist selected for the program. He produced mostly watercolors.
When the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project (FAP) was formed in 1935, Brown began working with the Philadelphia FAP as a painter in the Easel Division and printmaker at its Fine Print Workshop. He remained there until 1938 before becoming a full-time public school teacher.
Brown spent most of his time in the easel-painting and watercolor department but did learn printmaking, producing such works as The Writing Lesson and Abstract.
Brown was employed as a public-school art teacher while simultaneously producing art for the FAP. He worked as a substitute art teacher in Camden, New Jersey in the early 1930s and began his career as a full-time art teacher for the School District of Philadelphia in 1938.
1930s
The decade of the 1930s was very productive for Brown. He completed many paintings while employed by the FAP and won high praise for his works at major competitive exhibitions. He caught the attention of the art world and public with two of his FAP paintings and was cited as one of its outstanding artists. Brown and other Philadelphia artists held jobs in WPA workshops and exhibited around the country in its traveling exhibits.
In 1933, Brown exhibited two pieces in the Harmon Foundation competition. A year later, he showed four of his works in a regional PWAP exhibit sponsored by the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Included were The Lynching, Smoking My Pipe and two mural panels of Black babies and kindergarten children.
The Philadelphia Tribune published a photo of The Lynching along with an article that stated, "Years ago, the most daring paint dabbler would not have dared offer the striking conception of a lynching". The article also called the work "one of the unusual paintings" in the PWAP exhibit and stated that "Brown is vitally an individual painter, who, despite his training for commercial design at the School of Industrial Art, breaks through conventions."
The Lynching was among the works in an NAACP-sponsored exhibit titled An Art Commentary on Lynching at the Arthur U. Newton Galleries in New York in 1935. Brown used a style “bordering on caricature. … His clever adoption of a folk-like style to present a serious subject became the mark of his artistic work.” The work had been rejected by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for its annual exhibition that year. “It is one of the most shocking pieces of stark realism ever perpetrated,” noted an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The exhibit had been scheduled for another New York gallery but it pulled out because of “political social and economic pressure”.