Resistance and Revolution: The Toussaint L’Ouverture Series by Jacob Lawrence

In 1938 the twenty-year-old African American artist Jacob Lawrence painted forty-one tempera paintings for the series, The Life of Toussaint L’Ouverture, which were first exhibited in 1939 at the Baltimore Museum of Art. The paintings tell the story of Toussaint L’Ouverture, born a slave, but who rose to lead the liberation of Haiti. He was captured by the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte, and died in a French prison. In 1804 Haiti won its independence. Between 1986 and 1997 Lawrence created fifteen silk-screen prints based on key images of the original series. Patricia Hills, professor emeritus of art history at Boston University, will discuss Lawrence’s objective in visualizing the struggles of the Haitian people, now celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Haitian Revolution, and the ways he went about narrating the story in both the paintings and the prints.

Patricia Hills, Professor Emerita of Art History at Boston University as of July 2014, has taught at BU since 1978. She was formerly a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art and also served as Director of the B. U. Art Gallery. She has written criticism, art historical essays, books, and exhibition catalogues on both 19th- and 20th-Century American Art, including the social history of genre painting, feminist art, African American art, and art and politics. Her book Painting Harlem Modern: The Art of Jacob Lawrence was published by the University of California Press in 2009.