id: 118123
accession number: 1939.240
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1939.240
updated: 2024-04-24 11:46:21.641000
Ol' Peckerwood, 1939. Elmer William Brown (American, 1909–1971). Linoleum cut; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1939.240
title: Ol' Peckerwood
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series:
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creation date: 1939
creation date earliest: 1939
creation date latest: 1939
current location:
creditline: Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland
copyright:
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culture: America, Ohio, Cleveland
technique: linoleum cut
department: Prints
collection: PR - Linocut
type: Print
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CREATORS
* Elmer William Brown (American, 1909–1971) - artist
Painter and printmaker Elmer Brown was a leading Karamu artist of the 1930s and 1940s. Born in Pittsburgh, Brown moved to Columbus, Ohio, at an early age. After a series of family disruptions, the teenaged Brown became a vagrant. During his wanderings, he began to draw thing, with a piece of coal, a pencil stub, or chalk, on sidewalks, walls, or freight car doors. In 1924 he was put on a chain gang for illegally riding freight trains, an experience that gave him a “sudden and harsh maturing”. After moving to Cleveland in 1929, he associated with the art and theater departments of Karamu House, working as an actor and stage designer. He attended the Huntington Polytechnic Institute in Cleveland, 1933–34, on a Gilpin Players scholarship supplied by Karamu. Brown exhibited in the annual May Shows at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1934–43). In 1936 he joined the Cleveland theater project of the Works Progress Administration, working in scenic design. He later worked in the departments of graphic arts and sculpture-ceramics of the WPA. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, under the auspices of the WPA Ohio Art Project, Brown painted three murals for Valleyview Homes in Cleveland, a federal housing project. He exhibited with other Karamu House artists in New York City and Philadelphia (1942). Also that year he received two major commissions: one from the Men’ s City Club of Cleveland to paint a mural on the subject “freedom of expression” and the other from the U.S. Army to create patriotic illustrations to be displayed in segregated accommodations for African-American soldiers serving in World War II. In the late 1940s he taught at the Cooper School of Art, a commercial art school under private operation in Cleveland. In 1953 the American Greetings Corporation hired Brown as the first African-American illustrator on the staff, and he worked there until his death.
Transformations in Cleveland Art (CMA, 1996), p. 224
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: The May Show: 21st Annual Exhibition of Works by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen
opening date: 1939-05-03T04:00:00
The May Show: 21st Annual Exhibition of Works by Cleveland Artists and Craftsmen. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (May 3-June 11, 1939).
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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
* {'description': 'The Cleveland Museum of Art (1/26/2014 - 5/18/2014); "Our Stories: African American Prints and Drawings"', 'opening_date': '2014-01-26T00:00:00'}
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PROVENANCE
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RELATED WORKS
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CITATIONS
Elmer William Brown Entry Card to 1939 May Show. Cleveland Museum of Art May Show Records, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
page number:
url: https://archive.org/details/CMAMS04968
Kraynak, Scott, Henry Adams, Douglas Max Utter, William G. Scheele, R. A. Washington, and Mike Hudson. The Heart of Cleveland. Shaker Hts, OH: Red Giant Books, 2018.
page number: Reproduced: P. 29, fig. 28
url:
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IMAGES