Betsy Graves Reyneau | |
|---|---|
 Artist Betsy Graves Reyneau standing besides portrait of Dr.George Washington Carver, 1948 | |
| Born | 1888 (1888) |
| Died | 1964 (aged 75–76) |
| Education | School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
| Known for | Portrait painting |
| Movement | Photorealism |
Betsy Graves Reyneau (1888–1964[1]) was an American painter, best known for a series of paintings of prominentAfrican Americans for the exhibition “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin” that, with those byLaura Wheeler Waring and under theHarmon Foundation, toured theUnited States from 1944 to 1954. A granddaughter of Michigan Supreme Court JusticeBenjamin F. Graves, Reyneau's sitters includedMary McLeod Bethune,George Washington Carver,Joe Louis, andThurgood Marshall.[2] Reyneau's portrait of Carver, the most famous, was the first of an African American to enter a national American collection.
Most of the contributions to the "Portraits of Outstanding Americans" are in the collection of theNational Portrait Gallery of theSmithsonian Institution inWashington D.C.
Betsy Graves was born in 1888 inBattle Creek, Michigan and raised inDetroit. Discouraged by her father from becoming an artist on the grounds that it was inappropriate for a woman, Graves broke ties with her family to pursue that career, and as a young woman attended theSchool of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where she studied under Fred Duvesack.[3]
Reyneau was asuffragette; she became, in 1917, one of the first women to be arrested and imprisoned for protestingWoodrow Wilson's stance on women's voting rights.[4]
She was later selected by theCircuit Court of Detroit, unbeknownst to her family who were not in touch with her at the time, to paint a portrait of her grandfather, Michigan Supreme Court JusticeBenjamin F. Graves. She initialed the portrait and did not sign it with her full name as the Michigan Artists with whom she first exhibited it, would not allow the work of women. Her father, who presented the portrait, was also unaware that it was painted by his daughter[3]
Reyneau's first solo exhibition inNew York City was in 1922, on theUpper West Side, where she showed this portrait among others and received coverage intheNew York Times.[3] She also lived inBoston and Washington D.C.[1]
Reyneau lived in Europe with her daughter from 1926 to 1939,[1][5] where they took in Jews suffering persecution under the Nazis.[6]
During the last years ofWorld War II, she was commissioned by theU.S. Department of the Treasury to design a poster to sellwar bonds. She depicted with ink on paper,Tuskegee AirmanRobert W. Diez with the wordsKeep Us Flying![7]
When she returned to the United States, Reyneau was horrified by the treatment of African Americans, finding it akin toGerman fascism.[5] She moved South and became active in civil rights causes.[1] Her first portrait of a Black subject was of a young garden worker, Edward Lee, in 1942. That same year she went to theTuskegee Institute to look for pilots to paint as subjects. Not finding any, she encounteredGeorge Washington Carver there who became her first and most famous subject.[5] Her portrait of him in 1944 entered collection of theSmithsonian Institution,[3] the first of a Black man in a national American collection.
The Smithsonian connected Reyneau with theHarmon Foundation, which had been supporting African American art and artists for at least two decades. Reyneau and Foundation curator Mary Beede Brady headed the traveling exhibition that became “Portraits of Outstanding Americans of Negro Origin,” sponsored by the foundation, enlisting Black artistLaura Wheeler Waring, a foundation beneficiary, to do some of the portraits and to connect Reyneau to further subjects. Reyneau and Brady saw the show as a deliberately didactic way to change the views of white Americans, with Reyneau calling it a "visual education project."[5] As the show traveled throughout the U.S. in the 1940s, including theBrooklyn Museum, Reyneau added more paintings to the collection, so that it totaled 50 by 1954[5] (Waring died in 1948).
Though it was an "intensely popular" exhibition, African American scholar atHarvard University Steven Nelson noted that the show's call for equality was lost on both the American press and the audience. Some journalists also assumed that Reyneau was Black. The reviewer for the Black newspaper thePittsburgh Courier, however, wrote "Directors of museums that showed the paintings advanced the opinion that in some communities a noticeable lessening of racial tensions took place following the art display."[5]
With the abolishing of legal segregation inBrown v. Board of Education in 1954, the Harmon Foundation ended with tour.[8] The foundation, however, did donate most of the collection to theNational Portrait Gallery of theSmithsonian Institution in 1967.[9][10]
Copies of the poster Reyneau penned in 1943 advertisingwar bonds are at theNational Archives[11] and theSmithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, both in Washington, D.C.[12] Two private portraits are also in the collection of Anthony Davenport.[13]
Seven monochrome copies of the original color canvasses from the Harmon series that Reyneau gave to the writerPearl S. Buck because of her involvement in civil rights were shown again in an online exhibition at thePearl S. Buck House inBucks County, Pennsylvania in 2020.[8]
Reyneau was inducted into theMichigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.[14]
Reyneau was married in 1915 and, a few years later, divorced. She had at least one daughter with whom she lived the last five years of her life.[1]
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