The Wedding

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Edward Hopper

1948

Jacob Lawrence
American, 1917–2000

“I paint the things I have experienced,” Jacob Lawrence stated. Raised in Harlem, Lawrence studied at various federally funded community cultural centers and art workshops, where his talent was quickly recognized. The young artist soon applied his bold, unique style to the creation of narrative cycles devoted to African American history, leaders, and life. His sixty-panel Migration series (1940–41), depicting the resettlement of blacks from the rural South to the industrial North in the first half of the twentieth century, debuted in 1941 at the prestigious Downtown Gallery in New York. This exhibition bought national attention to the artist, then only in his early twenties. The cycle was acquired later by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC.

In addition to his various series, Lawrence also executed individual genre scenes, such as The Wedding, throughout his long career. With its bright, flat colors, bold patterning, and economical yet suggestive forms, this vibrant composition shows a bride and groom, flanked by two attendants, standing before a stern-faced minister. This arrangement makes us, like the attendants, participants in a major life event. Befitting both the solemnity and joy of a wedding, the composition combines the symmetrical rigidity of the standing figures with a riotous profusion of intensely colored stained-glass panels and flowers. The Wedding demonstrates well what one writer described as Lawrence’s unwavering commitment “to make his subject a testament, an expression of his belief in [humanity’s] continuing strength.”

On View: American Art, Gallery 262

Artist: Jacob Lawrence
Title: The Wedding
Origin: United States
Date: 1948
Medium: Egg tempera on hardboard
Inscriptions: 78.7 x 88.9 cm (31 x 35 in.)
Dimensions: 50.8 × 61 cm (20 × 24 in.)
Credit Line: Restricted gift of Mary P. Hines in memory of her mother, Frances W. Pick
Reference Number: 1993.258
Copyright: © 2018 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

“Art Questions and Answers,” Time 53 (April 11, 1949): 57, ill.
Margaret Breuning, “Carnegie Presents Last and Best Alt American Annual,” Art Digest 24, 2 (Oct 15, 1949): 7–9.
Ellen Harkins Wheat, Jacob Lawrence, American Painter (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Seattle Art Museum, 1986), 75, pl. 46.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 96, ill.
Peter T. Nesbett and Michelle DuBois, eds. Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, (Seattle: University of Washington Press/Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, 2000), ill., 323.
Daniel Schulman, “The Wedding,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 29, 2 (2003): 76–77 (color ills.).
Judith A. Barter et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 152.
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, Highlights of the Collection (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017), 127.
Kristin Schwain, “Creating History, Establishing a Canon: Jacob Lawrence’s The First Book of Moses, Called Genesis,” in Beholding Christ and Christianity in African American Art, eds. James Romaine and Phoebe Wolfskill (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2017), 170.

New York, NY, The Downtown Gallery, The Artists Speaks in Paint, Stone, and Words, Apr 5–23, 1949, cat. 10.
Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Institute, Painting in the United States, 1949, Oct 13–Dec 11, 1949, cat. 51.
New York and other cities, American Federation of Arts, Jacob Lawrence Retrospective, Nov 1960–1962, cat. 33.
Washington, DC, The Corcoran Gallery, National Conference on the Arts Honors Ten African–American Artists, Mar 14–Apr 16, 1980.
Seattle Art Museum, Jacob Lawrence: American Painter, Jul 10–Sep 7, 1986; Oakland Museum, CA, Sep 26– Nov 30, 1986; Atlanta, GA, High Museum of Art, Dec 16, 1986–Mar 1, 1987; Washington, DC, Phillips Collection, Apr 3–Jun 1, 1987; Dallas Museum of Art, Jul 19–Sep 6, 1987; Brooklyn Museum, NY, Oct 1–Dec 1, 1987.
Thomas J. Walsh Art Gallery, Fairfield University, CT, Human Conditions: American 20th–Century Paintings & Drawings, Feb 7–Mar 7, 1992.
Art Institute of Chicago, Spiritual Expressions: Art for Private Contemplation and Public Celebration, Nov 22, 1995–Mar 17, 1996.
Washington, DC, Phillips Collection, Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence, May 27–Aug 19, 2001; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Nov 8, 2001–Feb 3, 2002; Detroit Institute of Art, Feb 24–May 19, 2002; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Jun 16–Sep 8, 2002; Houston, Museum of Fine Arts, Oct 5, 2002–Jan 5, 2003.
Salem, MA, Peabody Essex Museum, Wedded Bliss: the Marriage of Art and Ceremony, Apr 36–Sep 14, 2008.

The Downtown Gallery, New York. Mrs. Franklin Forsythe, Ann Arbor, MI, by 1960; by descent to Mr. and Mrs. Franklin Forsythe, Laguna Beach, CA. Terry Dintenfass Gallery, New York, by 1980. Dr. Daniel J. Whitner, Atlanta. Christie, Manson & Woods, New York, lot 346, September 29, 1989; Mr. and Mrs. John W. Payson, Hobe Sound, FL; Midtown Payson Galleries, New York; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1993.