Artwork Page for Mother and Baby

Details / Information for Mother and Baby

Mother and Baby

c. 1937

William E. Smith

(American, 1913–1997)
Culture
America, Ohio, Cleveland
Medium
linocut
Measurements
Image: 20.5 x 17.2 cm (8 1/16 x 6 3/4 in.); Sheet: 27.1 x 25.5 cm (10 11/16 x 10 1/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1937.83
Catalogue raisonné
Teller 3; Salsbury, Benay, and Kruse 82
Edition
50
Copyright
© William E. Smith
This artwork is known to be under copyright.
Location
Not on view
Print
?

Did You Know?

William E. Smith frequently depicted the tender bond between parent and child.

Description

This print by William E. Smith was the first by any Black American artist to enter the CMA’s collection. It was purchased from the museum’s May Show, an annual exhibition highlighting regional contemporary art. Karamu Artists Inc. used this juried display to establish a reputation locally that they were then able to leverage into further opportunities. The praise that their prints received was widely noted at a time when Black artists were otherwise unrepresented in museums; as a critic for Cleveland’s historically Black newspaper, the Call and Post, noted, “A feeling of deep racial pride was mine as I noticed the names of [members of Karamu Artists Inc. in the galleries].”
Vertically oriented black-inked print with white lines outlining the scene of a nude woman and baby, the woman kneeling facing our left and looking up through a window in the upper left corner. Hair falls in waves down her back. She wraps her arm around the baby, who stands next to her looking back and to our right. Dashes of white lines streak through the window and over them, white highlights contouring their faces.

Mother and Baby

c. 1937

William E. Smith

(American, 1913–1997)
America, Ohio, Cleveland

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