Linoleum cut on buff, fibrous Japan paper, 1928. 381x305 mm; 15x12 inches, wide margins. Proof, aside from an unknown edition.
Provenance: the James K. Hill collection.
Illustrated: Willis Richardson. Plays and Pageants from the Life of the Negro , 1930. This collection of twelve plays is illustrated on the front cover and throughout with James Lesesne Wells's block prints.
This linocut is a very scarce, early impression of this stylized Harlem Renaissance print. When this print was published in 1930, Wells had moved to Washington, DC and had begun teaching visual art at Howard University. There he also worked with historian Carter Woodson whose company Associated Publishers produced Plays and Pageants and other scholarly books.
An impression of this print was exhibited in the artist's 1986 restrospective James Lesesne Wells: Sixty Years in Art at the Washington Project for the Arts, Washington, DC. Powell/Reynolds p. 14 and 55.
