LOIS MAILOU JONES ORIG SIGNED 1940 WATERCOLOR HIGHLAND BEACH BLACK HISTORICAL

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PROUDLY PRESENTED FOR AUCTIONORIGINAL WATERCOLOR BY LOIS MAILOU JONESSIGNED BY THE ARTIST AND DATED 1940DONE EARLY IN HER ILLUSTRIOUS CAREER, THIS WONDERFUL WATER COLOR DEPICTS HIGHLAND BEACH ON THE CHESAPEAKE BAY. FOUNDED BY CHARLES DOUGLASS THE SON OF FAMOUS ABOLITIONIST FREDERICK DOUGLAS AND HIS WIFE AND BECAME A GATHERING PLACE FOR UPPER CLASS BLACKS.THE AREA WAS INCORPORATED IN 1922 AND BECAME THE FIRST AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY IN MARYLANDVISIBLE AREA IN FRAME APPROX 19 X 14.5, FRAME SIZE 23,5 X 19.25 INCHESTHE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE SUBJECT AND THE IMPORT OF THE ARTIST MAKE THIS A MOST TREASURED ADDTION TO ANY COLLECTION. MANY OF MISS JONES' PAINTINGS AND WATERCOLORS HANG IN MUSEUMS AND PLACES OF IMPORTANCE. PLEASE READ BELOW FOR A HISTORY OF HIGHLAND BEACH AND LOIS MAILOU JONES.Highland Beach was founded in the summer of 1893 by Charles Douglass ( Frederick Douglass ' son) and his wife Laura after they had been turned away from a restaurant at the nearby Bay Ridge resort because of their race. They bought a 40-acre tract on the Chesapeake Bay with 500 feet (150 m) of beachfront and turned it into a summer enclave for their family and friends. Their home, the Douglass Summer House , was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1992. It became a gathering place for upper-class blacks, including many of the well known personages of the age.Among the residents and guests were Paul Robeson , D.C. municipal court judge Robert Terrell and his wife Dr. Mary Church Terrell , Robert Weaver , Harriet Tubman , W. E. B. Du Bois , and poets Langston Hughes and Paul Laurence Dunbar . Charles Douglass' father, the famous abolitionist Frederick Douglass, visited and would have become a resident had he not died before the house that his son was building for him was completed.When Highland Beach was incorporated in 1922 it became the first African-American municipality in Maryland. Although founded as a summer resort, it is now a town of year-round residents who choose not to permit commercial establishments. There are some sixty homes, many of them still owned and occupied by descendents of the original settlers. The residents are proud and protective of their town's heritage, established over a century ago by people determined to overcome the prejudices of their post-Reconstruction times . However, as of the 2000 census, African-Americans make up less than 40 percent of the town's residents.The history of Highland Beach is recounted in the book, The Land Was Ours: African American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South, by Andrew W. Kahrl.Loïs Mailou Jones (b. November 3, 1905 Boston, MA. - d. June 9, 1998 Washington, D.C.) wanted to be remembered as an artist, not an African-American or woman artist. Her life spanned almost all of the twentieth century--a time of unprecedented changes in American history--and she was an active participant in the development of African-American influence in the arts. Loïs Mailou Jones is a trailblazer, a respected college professor, an artist ambassador, and an international expert on culture who documented everything she saw and did as a painter in the Harlem Renaissance, as an illustrator for Carter Woodson, a colleague of Alain Locke and Langston Hughes, an educator and mentor, and a champion of black artists in Africa and the Caribbean.Along with being an award-winning artist, Loïs became known as a tireless advocate for international artists, especially for Africans and Haitians who would not have been known outside of their own countries without her help. Loïs' first four-month visit to eleven African countries (Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Senegal) resulted in new cultural understandings for Americans and Africans, and she continued making those personal and political connections for the rest of her life. Her archive of over 1000 slides and other information are an important source of African and Ca... read more

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