Study for the book God's Trombones by James Weldon Johnson
Aaron Douglas
American, 1899–1979
1926
A tempera-and-pencil study by Aaron Douglas for James Weldon Johnson’s God’s Trombones that uses a monumental silhouetted figure to translate Black sermonic and spiritual power into flat, modernist imagery.
You’re immediately struck by the towering, flattened silhouette of a man straining against chains, set against overlapping pale bands and tropical leaves that create a rhythmic, almost musical pattern of light and shadow.
As a key work of the Harlem Renaissance, Douglas’s pared-down, rhythmic silhouettes helped create a modern Black visual language—combining African diasporic motifs, jazz-age abstraction, and narrative illustration—to make visible histories and identities previously marginalized in American art.
Medium
Tempera and pencil on board
Dimensions
17 5/8 × 14" (44.8 × 35.6 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Acquired through the generosity of Jack Shear, Agnes Gund, Marlene Hess and James D. Zirin, Alice and Tom Tisch, Marnie Pillsbury, Karole Dill Barkley and Eric J. Barkley, and gift of The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Foundation for the Arts
Accession
8.2020
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
