Oil on linen canvas, circa 1930. 540x648 mm; 21¼x25½ inches. Signed in oil, lower right recto. Inscribed "Sketched in Meuse-Argonne near Clermont, Nov. 4, 1918" in oil, lower left recto. Inscribed "Size 25 ½ IN. x 21 IN, Title 'My Bunk'" in oil across the verso.
Provenance: Albert Alexander Smith; Alfred Renforth Smith, father of the artist (1940s); Reverend Frederick Rickford Meyers, Detroit, MI (1950s); private collection, Michigan (2023).
Exhibited: Exhibit of Fine Arts of American Negro Artists, Harmon Foundation, New York, 1931.
This painting is part of an incredible trove of artworks by Albert Alexander Smith recently discovered in a large steamer trunk. It belonged to his father Alfred R. Smith who worked as his son's agent in New York. In the 1950s, Alfred Smith shipped this trunk to the Rev. Frederick R. Meyers of Detroit, a fellow World War I veteran and friend of Albert Alexander Smith who had become a minister. The undisturbed trunk was recently purchased from a storage facility and unpacked for the first time seventy years later.
This extraordinary painting is a depiction by Albert Alexander Smith of his World War I bunk, a recollection of his military service in France during World War I. Born and raised in New York, Smith began attending the National Academy of Design, becoming the school's first African American student in 1915 and won multiple awards. In 1917, during World War I, Smith enlisted in the US Army. He served for two and half months overseas with the American Expeditionary Forces in France in the fall of 1918. Smith was in the trenches on the frontline in Nazaire and Clermont in 1918. He also served in the US Army's 807 Pioneer Band, a Black military band formed in 1918 in New York, and was honorably discharged in July of 1919. After his discharge, he returned to his studies at the National Academy of Design.
In 1981, the Musee du Temps Banscon, France acquired Albert Alexander Smith's World War I sketchbook with beautiful pencil drawings from the fall of 1918. It includes a sketch of this bunk in Clermont, dated Nov. 11, 1918, with the names of his bunkmates.
