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Pool Parlor

1942
Not on view
Lawrence is renowned for his visual interpretations of Black life and history, which he often explored in series. This painting evokes a scene along Lenox Avenue, a central street in Harlem known at the time for its many pool parlors. The composition reveals a dimly lit room filled with dark-green pool tables punctuated with brightly colored billiard balls. Men focus intently on their competitive and communal recreation, while a few spectators look on. Zigzags of cigarette smoke and pool cues further animate the image.

Pool Parlor is the first work by Lawrence that entered The Met collection. The Museum purchased the painting as a prizewinner in its "Artists for Victory" competition in 1942, a celebratory exhibition of contemporary American art during World War II. This acquisition was a rare recognition of the talent of an artist of color by the Museum at the time. Lawrence’s artistic star had risen the previous year, when the painter, then only twenty-three years old, debuted his ambitious sixty-panel Migration Series (1940–41; Museum of Modern Art, New York and Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.), which dramatized the mass internal migrations of African Americans moving out of the segregated and rural South to Northern and Midwestern cities to find jobs, better housing, and freedom from oppression.

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Pool Parlor
  • Artist: Jacob Lawrence (American, Atlantic City, New Jersey 1917–2000 Seattle, Washington)
  • Date: 1942
  • Medium: Watercolor and opaque watercolor on paper
  • Dimensions: 31 1/8 × 22 7/8 in. (79.1 × 58.1 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Arthur Hoppock Hearn Fund, 1942
  • Object Number: 42.167
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2025 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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Blind Beggars, Jacob Lawrence American, Tempera over graphite on illustration board
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The Shoemaker, Jacob Lawrence American, Watercolor and opaque watercolor over graphite on paper
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120.9.14.286.9.33-ton 290.9.27 be at 153.9.28.110.8.17.255.9.29 evening 178.9.8... -an informer's coded message, Jacob Lawrence American, Egg temperal on hardboard
Returned to lender
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I alarmed almost every house till I got to Lexington-Paul Revere, Jacob Lawrence American, Tempera on hardboard
Returned to lender
I alarmed almost every house till I got to Lexington-Paul Revere
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1954

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