“Anna Washington Derry” by Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring, Anna Washington Derry, 1927, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the Harmon Foundation, 1967.91.1

Laura Wheeler Waring was an African American painter known for painting elite African American leaders during her time. Her most celebrated work, "Anna Washington Derry" (1927) honors the legacy of an elderly working-class woman.

Explore the image on the Smithsonian website >

About Laura Wheeler Waring

Laura Wheeler Waring was born in 1887 in Hartford, Connecticut to an upper-class family. She graduated from high school and enrolled at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1908 at a time when few African Americans were receiving a formal education (Brittanica).

After graduating from the academy, Wheeler left to found the art and music departments at the State Normal School at Cheyney (later Cheyney University) outside of Philadelphia, where she taught for several years. However, it was her travels to Europe – particularly France – that inspired her painting style. She lived in Paris and spent much time in the Louvre Museum studying Monet, Manet, Corot, and Cézanne (Kooness). With its strong color palette and energetic brushwork, Waring’s work flourished during the Harlem Renaissance, a great African American artistic and cultural production period.

Waring was best known for her portraits of Black people. She painted photos that celebrated the working-class community’s strength and elegance, depictions that countered the many racial stereotypes prevalent during the time. Her work led her to be commissioned by the Harmon Foundation to paint a series titled "Portraits of Outstanding American Citizens of Negro Origin.” Her subjects included W.E.B. DuBois, George Washington Carver, Leslie Pinckney Hill, and Marian Anderson – members of the African American elite.

With hand on hip and confident bearing, this woman is self-assured and elegant. She was probably from the Philadelphia area, where the artist Laura Wheeler Waring lived and worked.

(Brooklyn Museum)

However, Waring’s most celebrated painting — the one most often reproduced as an indication of Waring at the height of her artistic talent — is of an unheralded, working-class woman named Annie Washington Derry that Waring met through her work. The painting depicts Washington Derry for how she was remembered; a powerful and elegant mother, wife, and matriarch of her community. With the subject’s full name painted in the background, along with the Latin inscription “Anno Domini 192__” (In the Year of Our Lord), it is believed that Waring was leaning into European styles to emphasize the reverence of her subject. The painting received great attention from the art world, winning awards and touring in exhibitions across the world, carrying the legacy of its subject along with it (Pennsylvania Heritage).

I've included an image of the painting again below, and some close up screenshots. Take a moment to study the painting and consider: what else do you see? What story does this paint about this woman? Why do you think it resonated with so many people at the time, and continues to now?

Reflection Questions

• Why is it important that fine arts depict not just the elite, particularly when documenting marginalized people?
• Why is representation in fine arts important?
• What other Black artists do you know? What recent paintings have you seen created by a Black artist with a Black subject?

Learn More

• READ: "Women artists who helped to break the barriers..." (Manhattan Arts)
• READ: "13 Incredible Black Artists, Past And Present, Everybody Should Know" (Blavity)
• READ: "The Most Influential Living African American Artists" (Artsy)