The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of October 3, 2026

A vertical watercolor portrait depicts a woman with brown skin from the chest up, turned toward our right. She has short, dark hair and wide, dark eyes looking to our right. She wears a dark gray, wide-necked top, a reddish hoop earring, and a long, white beaded necklace. Overlapping gray, brown, and pink washes define her face and form against a light-colored background.

Helen Evans Ramsaran

1990–94

Emma Amos

(American, 1937–2020)
America
Watercolor (acrylic wash) portrait on Saunders Waterford watercolor paper
Sheet: 66.9 x 50.7 cm (26 5/16 x 19 15/16 in.)
Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 2023.126.26
© Emma Amos; Courtesy of RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
Location: 230 Photography

Did You Know?

Emma Amos includes a self-portrait and a portrait of her daughter India in this work.

Description

The Gift comprises forty-eight individual watercolor portraits of women artists, writers, and curators in Emma Amos’s community in New York in the early 1990s. The women pictured belong to different generations and are from a range of racial and ethnic backgrounds. Amos created the work as a gift for her daughter India, on the occasion of India’s twentieth birthday.
  • Collection of the artist
    after 1990
    Emma Amos [1937–2020], New York, NY, given to daughter, India Amos
    2023
    (Mary Ryan Gallery, New York, NY, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
    2023–
    The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
  • Amos, Emma, Thalia Gouma-Peterson, and Kathleen McManus Zurko. Emma Amos: Paintings and Prints 1982-92: an Exhibition. Wooster, Ohio: College of Wooster Art Museum, 1993.
  • The Gift: Emma Amos with Friends. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 13, 2026-January 24, 2027).
    Emma Amos: Memory. Flomenhaft Gallery, New York, NY (January 31–March 9, 2013).
    Real: Figurative Narratives in Contemporary African-American Art. The Bass Museum of Art, Miami, FL (1997).
    Emma Amos: Changing the Subject. Paintings and Prints 1992-1994. Art in General, New York, NY (March 12–April 30, 1994); The Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, NJ (December 18, 1994–March 5, 1995).
    Emma Amos: Paintings and Prints: 1982–1992. The College of Wooster Art Museum, Wooster, Ohio (August 25–October 24, 1993); Wayne Center for the Arts, Wooster, Ohio (September 1–September 30, 1993); Southern Ohio Museum and Cultural Center, Portsmouth, Ohio (October 1–November 16, 1994); the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, New York (January 15–March 12, 1995)
  • {{cite web|title=Helen Evans Ramsaran|url=false|author=Emma Amos|year=1990–94|access-date=03 October 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}

Source URL:

https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2023.126.26