Motley’s decision to concentrate on black subjects coincided with the increasing tensions that led to the outbreak of the Chicago Race Riots of 1919. Perhaps this experience influenced his desire to use art to improve race relations. Neither the riots nor other experiences of racial prejudice precluded his close relationships with whites. On the contrary, his family lived in predominantly white neighborhoods; he counted among his dearest friends Russian-born William Schwartz and Czechoslovakian-born Joseph Tomanek (both painters he met in art school); and, after fourteen years of clandestine courtship, he married a white woman, Edith Granzo. 8

Motley supported his artistic career in a number of ways, including teaching at Howard University, Washington, D.C., in 1935; working for the Easel and Mural Division of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) from the 1930s to the early 1940s; and creating hand-painted shower curtains for Chicago manufacturers in the 1950s. He exhibited widely and garnered prestigious awards, including the Frank G. Logan Medal and Prize from the Art Institute of Chicago (1925), a Harmon Foundation Award for the Fine Arts (1929), and a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for Study Abroad (1929). 9 Despite these achievements, Motley, unlike a number of his successful contemporaries, chose not to live in the leading art centers, New York and Paris; rather, he remained in Chicago, dedicating himself to creating, for the most part, works of art that focus on African American culture.

Historical Context: The Issue of Representation

Motley began his career during the Harlem Renaissance, a period marked by the flourishing and growing appreciation of art, literature, and music by African Americans. While named for the vibrancy of life and culture in New York’s large, black community, this “Renaissance” extended far beyond Harlem––to New Orleans, for example, and Chicago, whose South Side was a particularly important center, especially for music. 10 For many of the writers and artists of this era, the definition and interpretation of racial identity were pivotal concerns. From the early twentieth century until World War II, black leaders such as W. E. B. DuBois struggled “to protect and project a positive image of blacks in the battle for their civil rights.” Through his role as the editor of The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, DuBois advocated the use of art as propaganda, in order to counter negative depictions of African Americans that proliferated throughout popular culture and to promote the awareness of the successes and talents of African Americans. 11

The issue of representation pervaded almost every black public forum, especially newspapers and magazines such as the Chicago Defender, The Crisis, and Opportunity (published by the Urban League). In 1926 Carl Van Vechten, a photographer, author, and dilettante who encouraged fellow white avant-gardists to explore Harlem, initiated a dialogue among the readers of The Crisis with an article entitled “The Negro in Art: How Shall He Be Portrayed?” He posed a series of questions, including:

• When the artist, black or white, portrays Negro characters is he under any obligations or limitations as to the sort of character he will play? . . . What are Negroes to do when they are continually painted at their worst and judged by the public as they are painted? . . . Is not the continual portrayal of the sordid, foolish criminal among Negroes convincing the world that this and this alone is really and essentially Negroid, and preventing white artists from knowing any other types and preventing black artists from daring to paint them? 12

Most of the readers, black and white, who responded to Van Vechten’s queries affirmed the right of artists to freely express themselves, although many also stressed the importance of positive images. As poet Countee Cullen wrote:

• There can be no doubt that there is a fictional type of Negro, an ignorant, burly, bestial person, changing somewhat today, though not for the better, to the sensual habitude of dives and loose living, who represents to the mass of white readers the be-all and end-all of what constitutes a Negro. . . . Negro artists have a definite duty to perform in this matter. . . . We must create types that are truly representative of us as a people. 13

As Motley’s paintings and writings make clear, he too was concerned about definitions of race and about what could be considered “truly representative” of African American culture. In a 1947 essay entitled “How I Solve My Painting Problems,” written at the request of the Harmon Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in New York that promoted African American artists through exhibitions, catalogues, and awards, Motley stated:

• For years many artists have depicted the Negro as the ignorant southern “darky,” to be portrayed on canvas as something humorous; an old southern black Negro gulping a large piece of watermelon; one with a banjo on his knee; possibly a “crap shooter” or a cotton picker or a chicken thief. This material is obsolete and I sincerely hope that with the progress the Negro has made he is deserving to be represented in his true perspective, with dignity, honesty, integrity, intelligence, and understanding. 14