Ulysses Grant Dailey (1885-1961) was a successful Chicago surgeon, writer, and teacher--and was one of the first African Americans recognized in the field of medicine in the United States. Born in Donaldsonville, LA, Dailey obtained his M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School in 1906. He founded his own medical center, the Dailey Hospital and Sanitarium in 1926, and became a senior attending surgeon at Provident Hospital in Chicago from 1933 to 1952.
This striking figure is the first known portrait by William Edouard Scott to come to auction. Scott, born in Indianapolis, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1904-09, and is known for his work in mural painting and for his Haitian scenes. After winning several painting scholarships and awards at the Institute, he travelled to Paris, where he studied with Henry Ossawa Tanner and enrolled at the Académie Julian. When he returned in 1912, he received many mural commissions, reaching a total of 75 in his lifetime, including those for the Chicago World's Fair of 1933 and for the Federal Art Project of the WPA in Chicago. He also won the Harmon Foundation gold medal in 1927 and a Rosenwald fellowship to travel to Haiti in 1931. Reynolds/Wright p. 255.
