Earle Wilton Richardson, (1912–1935) was an

African-American African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...

artist made famous mainly for an oil painting of his dating from 1934 titled ''Employment of Negroes in Agriculture.'' This now iconic picture (size 48 × 32 inches) depicts two male and two female Black cotton workers, one of them a child, in an unidentified Southern state loading cotton into bales. Like many other artworks at the time, the painting was commissioned and financed under the

New Deal The New Deal was a series of wide-reaching economic, social, and political reforms enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, in response to the Great Depression in the United States, Great Depressi ...

. Richardson committed suicide the following year. He was born and lived in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

, NY. "Richardson and fellow artist Malvin Gray Johnson planned to say more about the history and promise of black people in their mural series ''Negro Achievement'', slated to be installed in the

New York Public Library The New York Public Library (NYPL) is a public library system in New York City. With nearly 53 million items and 92 locations, the New York Public Library is the second-largest public library in the United States behind the Library of Congress a ...

’s 135th Street Branch, but neither young man lived long enough to complete the project." "After Johnson's sudden illness and death in November 1934, Richardson continued to work on their mural project. But within a year he too was dead; ill with fever and heart-broken over the death of Johnson, who had been his lover, Richardson leapt from his fourth-floor apartment window and died of his injuries in December 1935."Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, Jonathan Weinberg (Editors), ''The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere,'' Penn State Press, 2005, , p. 136

Works

* ''Profile of a Negro Girl'', 1932 * ''Benjamin Banneker'', 1934 * ''Columbus Soldiers—Estavanico'', 1934 * ''Employment of Negroes in Agriculture'', 1934

Bibliography

* Alejandro Anreus, Diana L. Linden, Jonathan Weinberg (Editors), ''The Social and the Real: Political Art of the 1930s in the Western Hemisphere,'' Penn State Press, 2005,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Richardson, Earle Wilton 1912 births 1935 suicides American male painters Public Works of Art Project artists 20th-century American painters 20th-century American male artists Artists who died by suicide Painters from New York City National Academy of Design alumni Suicides by jumping in New York City 1935 deaths 20th-century African-American painters American LGBTQ artists LGBTQ people from New York (state) African-American LGBTQ people