Migration Series

The Migration Series is a group of paintings by African-American painter Jacob Lawrence which depicts the migration of African Americans to the northern United States.^{[1] [2]}

Lawrence conceived of the series as a single work rather than individual paintings, and worked on all of the paintings at the same time, in order to give them a unified feel and to keep the colors uniform between panels.^[3] He wrote sentence-long captions for each of the sixty paintings explaining aspects of the event. Viewed in its entirety, the series creates a narrative, in both images and words that tells the story of the Great Migration.

Background

The series is based on the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural south to the urban north starting in the 1910s. The early part of the migration ran through 1930 and numbered some 1.6 million people. Lawrence himself had moved to Harlem when he was thirteen years old, having lived previously in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. His mother had been born in Virginia and his father in South Carolina, so he would have been personally familiar with the migration from members of his own family. ^[4] Lawrence created the sixty paintings in the series in 1940-41.

Technique

The works consist of casein tempera paint applied to hardboard panels, atop a traditional gesso layer of rabbit-skin glue and whiting. Lawrence made his own casein tempera, purchasing the dry pigments from Fedanzie Sperrle and using them unmixed so that the colors would not vary between panels. With the panels laid out, he worked systematically to apply one color to each, starting with black and moving on to the lighter colors.^[3]

See also

• Great Migration (African American)

References

1. "Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series: Removing the Mask". EDSITEment. Retrieved 2014-06-29.
2. "The Migration Series". The Phillips Collection. Retrieved 2014-06-29.
3. Elizabeth Steele (2000). "The Materials and Techniques of Jacob Lawrence". In Nesbett, Peter T.; DuBois, Michelle. Over the Line: The Art and Life of Jacob Lawrence. Seattle and London: University of Washington Press. p. 250.
4. Turner, Elizabeth Hutton, ed. (1993). Jacob Lawrence The Migration Series. The Rappahannock Press. pp. 13, 17. ISBN 0-9636129-1-3.

Further reading

• Lawrence, Jacob; Elizabeth Hutton Turner; Lonnie G Bunch; Phillips Collection (1993). Jacob Lawrence: the migration series. Washington, D.C.; [Emeryville, CA]: Rappahannock Press, in association with the Phillips Collection ; Distributed in the United States and Canada by Publishers Group West. ISBN 9780963612908.
• Lawrence, Jacob (1993). The great migration: an American story. New York : [Washington, D.C.] : New York: Museum of Modern Art ; Phillips Collection ; HarperCollins. ISBN 0060230371.
• Over the line: the art and life of Jacob Lawrence. Peter T. Nesbett, Michelle DuBois, Patricia Hills (eds.). Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press in association with Jacob Lawrence Catalogue Raisonné Project. 2000. ISBN 029597964X.