Hale Woodruff
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Hale Aspacio Woodruff was an American artist known for his murals, paintings, and prints.
Mutiny on the Amistad by Hale Woodruff, 1938
The Banjo Player was painted by Hale Woodruff in Paris in 1929. The original is now at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. The image has been called important, because it "reframes Black representation" shifting the viewer from the established Jim Crow image to an image put forth by an African American. Woodruff's painting counters "racist tropes", showing a Black musician playing with competence and dignity. While in Paris, Woodruff met Henry Ossawa Tanner, painter of
William E. Harmon Foundation
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The Harmon Foundation, established in 1921 by white real-estate developer William E. Harmon, is best known for funding and collecting the work of African-American artists.
Hale Woodruff
…studied at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis, Art Institute of Chicago, and the Harvard Fogg Art Museum. Woodruff won an award from the Harmon Foundation in 1926, which enabled him to spend four "crucial years studying in Paris from 1927–31." He studied at the Académie Scandinave and the Académie Moderne…
Dillard University, Harmon Foundation Exhibit, c1936-7