Anne Goldthwaite
Two Black Crows
1931
Lithograph
Sheet: 11 1/2 in. x 16 in.
Gift of Leonard Bocour
Anne Goldthwaite (1869-1944) was an American artist who prided herself on her social activism in regards to female and minority rights.1 As someone who grew up in the Jim Crow South in Alabama, Goldthwaite was constantly surrounded by inequalities that inspired her artworks and activism. To continue her activism, Goldthwaite served as the president of the New York Society of Women Artists from 1937-38.2 Through the creation of her paintings, etchings, and prints, Goldthwaite creates portraits and landscapes that utilize simplistic lines and brushstrokes with minimalistic color palettes to create impactful narratives.
Two Black Crows from 1931 is a lithograph print that has a graphite like appearance on light brown paper depicting a simplistic grey and black drawing of two black male figures standing next to a well. The strokes of the “graphite” in this piece have a loose texture with lower contrast (except in the skin tones of the male figures) to convey emotion and emphasis on the identity of the figures. While this piece is expressive, it is not so abstract that it loses the identity of the figures. One of the male figures is holding the well’s bucket and is sipping from it while two v-shaped lines that symbolize crows fly above.
Although crows are typically a symbol of death,3 in this piece, the crows symbolize their ability to scavenge anything they can find. With the lack of background and the crow symbolism, the two black male figures in the foreground symbolize foragers as they attempt to sip down every last bit of water to stay alive. The two figures are also emaciated showing their further need to scavenge to survive. This work connects to Goldthwaite’s desire for social activism by calling for a need to change ideas about people of color and to show that one cannot exploit other marginalized human beings by preying on them like animals.
1. "Anne Goldthwaite: The Johnson Collection," The Johnson Collection, LLC (Spartanburg, SC). Accessed October 26, 2016. http://thejohnsoncollection.org/anne-goldthwaite/.↩
2. "Anne Goldthwaite: The Johnson Collection."↩
3. Sarah Gleaves, "American Crow," The EBestiary (2012) Accessed October 26, 2016. http://blogs.evergreen.edu/ebestiary/blog/2012/05/29/american-crow/.↩
-Ivy Rose Smith