Jacob Lawrence Painting, Missing for Decades, Is Found by Met Visitor

[David Lockmiller]

A painting by black American artist Jacob Lawrence that has not been seen in public for 60 years has been found and is taking its designated place in a 30-piece exhibit of Lawrence's work, officials at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts said Thursday (Oct. 22, 2020). A 1956 painting by Jacob Lawrence from the “Struggle” series, depicts an uprising of American farmers in Massachusetts. It will go on public view Thursday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

To see a photograph of this painting and read more extensively on the subject, follow the hyperlink to the New York Times article:

Jacob Lawrence Painting, Missing for Decades, Is Found by Met Visitor

The Metropolitan Museum’s celebrated exhibition “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle” has drawn many visitors, but recently one of them had a revelation: She suspected that one of five panels missing from the artist’s original series of 30 re-examining the nation’s early history had been hanging in her neighbors’ Upper West Side apartment for decades.

The neighbors had purchased the small painting by the renowned Black artist for a very modest sum at a friend’s Christmas charity art auction in 1960, to benefit a music school. They are an elderly couple and asked the Met and The New York Times that they not be identified to protect their privacy. They are not art collectors. [The auction high for a work by Lawrence is just over $6.1 million in 2018, for a 1947 painting, “The Businessmen.”]

The subject of the painting, Shays’ Rebellion, lined up historically to the missing Panel 16 in the cycle, for which no photograph exists — only the title given it by Lawrence from a letter by George Washington referencing the lead-up to the rebellion in Massachusetts: “There are combustibles in every State, which a spark might set fire to. — Washington, 26 December 1786.”

“It’s a group of blue-coats — new American officials — in an obvious confrontation with hardscrabble farmers, which is what the Shays’ Rebellion is about,” said Randall Griffey, the co-curator of the Met’s presentation.

Shay’s Rebellion and President George Washington’s considered response thereto has a tenuous connection to something very important President Lincoln was contemplating doing in late 1863.

The following is from Six Months at the White House, by F. B. Carpenter, (1879), Chap. XXXIII, pages 98 - 100:

The Hon. Robert Dale Owen was associated in a very interesting interview with Mr. Lincoln, which took place a few weeks prior to the issue of the President’s Message for 1863, to which was appended the Proclamation of Amnesty. It had been understood in certain quarters that such a step was at this period in contemplation by the Executive.

Mr. Owens carefully prepared a digest of historical precedents in relation to the subject of amnesty, in connection with treason and rebellion. The document analyzed English and continental history, and reviewed elaborately the action of President Washington in reference to Shay’s and the subsequent whiskey rebellion.

“I had read but two of three pages,” said Mr. Owen, in giving me this account, “when Mr. Lincoln assumed an erect posture, and, fixing his eyes intently upon me, seemed wholly absorbed in the contents of the manuscript. Frequently he would break in with: ‘Was that so?’ ‘Please read that paragraph again,’ etc. When at length I came to Washington’s proclamation to those engaged in the whiskey rebellion, he interrupted me with: ‘What! did Washington issue a proclamation of amnesty?’ ‘Here it is, sir,’ was the reply. ‘Well, I never knew that,’ he rejoined; and so on through.”