This, My Brother

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: On View, Gallery 262
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Charles White
Title: This, My Brother
Place: Chicago (Object made in)
Date: 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 (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 137.

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–Jun 5, 2009; Allentown Art Museum, PA, Sep 13, 2009–Jan 10, 2010; Montclair Art Museum, NJ, Feb 6–Jul 25, 2010 (Chicago only).
Art Institute of Chicago, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910–1950, Mar 3–Jun 3, 2013, cat. 91.
Art Institute of Chicago, Charles White: A Retrospective, Jun 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–Jun 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.

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