A 1930 work by Albert Smith
*Albert Smith was born on this date in 1896. He was a Black artist and musician.
Albert Alexander Smith was born in New York City, the son of parents who immigrated from Bermuda. From an early age, his parents encouraged his artistic talents, paying for music lessons. Eventually, he became a banjo player and guitarist, which he would later use as a jazz musician and singer while a member of various bands and orchestras in Europe.
Smith began his formal training in art in 1913 when he became the first black to earn a scholarship to attend the High School for Ethical Culture. He studied drawing, watercolor painting, poster design, sculpture, and basket making there. 1915 he became the first black student at the National Academy of Design. There he won several awards for poster competitions and for his charcoal work. Unfortunately, none of his works from this period survived. When World War 1 began in 1917, Smith enlisted in the 807 Pioneer Band and served overseas for two and half months. He was one of 30,000 black combat troops who saw action in France. While there, he visited cathedrals in France and Belgium and worked as a cartoonist. Only one work from this period has survived, a pen and ink drawing titled ‘The Fall of the Castle,’ in which a crowd of Black men ascends a steep hill on top of which is perched a castle bearing the label ‘PREJUDICE.’
Many believe that this work represents his belief in the determination of black people to overcome racism not only in the United States but throughout the world. In 1919 after discharge from the army, and returned to the National Academy of Design, where he won prizes in painting and etching. In 1920 his work shifted to the world of blacks in the South. His etchings, ‘Plantation Melodies’ and The Reason’, were published in 1920 in the NAACP’S magazine, The Crisis. Later that year, he left for Europe, never to live in the United States again.
From 1920 to 1926, Smith traveled throughout Europe while maintaining an apartment in Paris. He worked as a musician with various bands, and the art he produced was mostly tourist scenes of streets, bridges, ports, and marketplaces in France and Luxembourg. Some of these etchings were exhibited in the New York Public Library in 1921 and 1922, and in the Tanner Art League Exhibition, Washington, D.C., in 1922, where he won a gold medal.
He spent the first half of 1922 in Italy, performing music and studying art, and continuing to produce tourist scenes. About this time, his art took on a new direction and began celebrating black achievements and racial uplift. This is evident in his print ‘Rene Maran,’ a half-length portrait of the noted Black French author dressed in a suit and wearing wire-rimmed glasses. While in Paris, Smith executed a series of portrait etchings of black leaders, probably at the request of his patron, Walter Schomburg, a New York-based collector, and dealer. During most of 1922 and 1923, Smith lived in Belgium, where he played the banjo in a band and studied art. He also studied etching and lithography at the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Liege, and some of the prints executed during this time were exhibited at the Brooklyn Society of Etchers. In 1923, Smith expanded his study of racial uplift by depicting glorious views of Ethiopia, many of them also appearing in ‘Crisis’, including what is viewed as perhaps his most eloquent statement on inequity in the United States, a drawing titled ‘Justice.
While back in France from 1924 through 1926, Smith continued working on his three themes: racial discrimination, racial uplift, and tourist sites. One of these missing drawings, titled ‘Place de Monnaie, Pau, France’, would win an honorable mention from the Harmon Foundation in 1928. 1926 Smith traveled throughout Spain, creating scenes of local markets, streets, churches, ports, and bridges. He also depicted the common people of Spain in a series of works, several of them earning him a tie for a bronze medal at a Harmon Foundation exhibition in 1929. In the early 1930s, Smith worked primarily in Paris, performing on radio and in hot spots such as the American hangout La Coupole, the trendy nightclub Zelli’s, and the elegant Cafe de Paris. Smith learned to play the newly fashionable banjo in just three weeks and enjoyed steady employment spreading the jazz craze throughout Europe.
In 1930, Smith produced a series of works featuring stereotyped images of blacks playing the banjo. Several of these that stand out were the prints ‘Do That Thing’ and ‘Temptation’, and the paintings ‘Dancing Time’ and ‘Old Man River. Many white northeastern Americans responded favorably to the stereotyped images in ‘Dancing Time.’ The work appeared in an exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and was reproduced in the magazine ‘Art and Archeology.’ He disassociated himself from other blacks even while living in Paris. Also envied other African American artists who won success in the United States, writing disparagingly of other black artists such as Palmer Hayden and Archibald Motley, Jr.
Smith was especially bitter about his defeats for Harmon and Guggenheim Foundation prizes in 1928 and 1929, believing a former professor had rejected him because of animosity toward him. 1934 after a short trip to Italy to execute more etchings of tourist scenes, he applied to the Guggenheim Foundation for a travel grant but was rejected. Crushed by another defeat, he spent his last five years in France, mainly performing music. He seems to have produced little art from 1934 to 1936, yet he exhibited at the American Artists Professional League in Paris every year from 1935 to 1938.
He spent most of his time performing on-stage, doing work for radio, and making recordings. 1937 Smith produced another series of portraitures of historic black leaders, this time in watercolor. Some of these works may have been featured in the Association of American Professional Artists in Paris. In 1939, Smith produced images with Arabian themes. The titles of these lost works are ‘Arabian Knight’, ‘A Daughter of Allah’ and ‘Dictator.’ Shortly before his death, Smith wrote to Schomburg, “Well, every failure is a whip to drive me on to further heights. I used to feel discouraged, but that feeling is gone now, and as I can see, it’s a long and rough road, I must go on all the harder.” But in his zeal for success, he may have overworked himself. He died suddenly in France on April. 3rd, 1940, only forty-four years old.
