This, My Brother

Arts of the Americas

1942

Charles White
American, 1918–1979

“Paint is the only weapon I have with which to fight what I resent,” Chicagoan Charles White observed, demonstrating his belief that art could be a force in promoting racial equality for African Americans. This painting of a man with outstretched hands emerging from a demolished structure draws its title from a 1936 novel about a rural white miner who experiences a political awakening and joins the proletarian struggle against capitalism. White transformed the protagonist into a black man who breaks free from a mountain of rubble, a hopeful image of the possibility of social change.

Status: Currently Off View
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Charles White
Title: This, My Brother
Place: Chicago (Object made in:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1942
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed lower right: Charles White 42
Dimensions: 61 × 91.4 cm (24 × 36 in.)
Credit Line: Pauline Palmer Prize Fund
Reference Number: 1999.224
Copyright: © The Charles White Archives

Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), cat. 137.
Sarah Kelly Oehler, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 90–91, cat. 91 (ill.).

Atlanta University, Exhibition of Paintings by Negro Artists of America, Apr. 19–May 10, 1942, cat. 69.
Chicago, Spertus Museum, A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund, Feb. 2–June 5, 2009; Allentown Art Museum, PA, Sept. 13, 2009–Jan. 10, 2010; Montclair Art Museum, NJ, Feb. 6–July 25, 2010 (Chicago only).
Art Institute of Chicago, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910–1950, Mar. 3–June 3, 2013, cat. 91.
Art Institute of Chicago, Charles White: A Retrospective, June 8–Sept. 3, 2018, cat. 15, pl. 13; New York, Museum of Modern Art, Oct. 7, 2018–Jan. 13, 2019; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Feb. 17–June 9, 2019.

The artist; to Dr. William Patterson and Louise Thompson Patterson, New York; to Mary Louise Patterson, New York; [ACA Galleries]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999.

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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