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Blind Beggars

1938
Not on view
Lawrence painted Blind Beggars while working as one of the youngest artists on the Works Progress Administration’s Federal Art Project, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Depicting a street scene in Harlem, the painting contrasts the profoundly different states of a visually impaired couple as they make their way down the sidewalk and the carefree children who frolic around them. The brick apartment building throws into relief the presence of the couple, evoking their precarious condition as it recedes into space.

In 1968, Lawrence participated in "The Black Artist in America: A Symposium," held in conjunction with Harlem on My Mind: The Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900–1968, an exhibition at The Met that lacked actual artwork by Black artists, focusing instead on photographic reproductions of the neighborhood and its inhabitants. In this context, Lawrence, speaking as a kind of elder statesman of Black art, recalled his time on the W.P.A. fondly, asserting: "If we go back about thirty years we'll find that some of the greatest progress, economic, professional . . . was made then . . . not only [by] Negro artists but [by] white ones as well." Throughout a spirited conversation with other Black artists—recorded in a Met Bulletin (January 1969)—Lawrence shared his views on racism in the art world, exclaiming, "It’s going to take education—educating the white community to respect and to recognize the intellectual capacity of Black artists... . We're always in Negro shows, not just shows."

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Blind Beggars
  • Artist: Jacob Lawrence (American, Atlantic City, New Jersey 1917–2000 Seattle, Washington)
  • Date: 1938
  • Medium: Tempera over graphite on illustration board
  • Dimensions: 20 1/8 × 15 in. (51.1 × 38.1 cm)
  • Classification: Drawings
  • Credit Line: Gift of New York City W. P. A., 1943
  • Object Number: 43.47.28
  • Rights and Reproduction: © 2022 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
  • Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art

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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
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I alarmed almost every house till I got to Lexington-Paul Revere, Jacob Lawrence American, Tempera on hardboard
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And a Woman Mans a Cannon, Jacob Lawrence American, Egg tempera on hardboard
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