Autumn Trees

In The New Negro: An Interpretation (1925), Howard University philosopher Alain Locke wrote of the need for African American visual artists to raise “the Negro subject from the level of trivial or sentimental genre to that of serious type study . . . and furnish the fullest and most revealing portrayal of Negro life.” Citing the work of William Eduoard Scott, among others, Locke hailed the “advent of a representatively racial school of expression, and an important new contribution, therefore, to the whole body of American art.”

Scott’s training—at the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as the Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi in Paris—was rooted in the academic tradition and resulted in his inclusion at the Paris Salon and at London’s Royal Academy. While encouraged by his success abroad, Scott returned to the United States in 1914 as the European theater of war expanded. He established a studio in Chicago and, despite the growing popularity of abstract art, remained true to his representational style and commitment to depict African Americans not as subservient laborers or stereotypes, but as fully realized and wholly unique persons of dignity. In 1915, Tuskegee Institute president Booker T. Washington invited Scott to spend few months at the Alabama school. During Scott’s brief residency there, he painted “day-in-the-life pictures of the locals,” honest portrayals of African Americans living in poverty and prejudice. He would later execute a double portrait featuring Washington and faculty member George Washington Carver.

The summer of 1949 found Scott at the college now known as Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, where he had been hired by the school’s president to be a visiting professor “at the rate of one hundred dollars a week.” Over the course of his ten weeks on campus, Scott led classes and painting demonstrations, and made several objects for the school, including portraits of college leaders and at least two murals.