Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle
Jacob Lawrence was one of the greatest narrative artists of the 20th century. His revolutionary, yet little-known, 30-panel series Struggle…From the History of the American People, painted between 1954 and 1956, invited a new way of chronicling erased histories about America’s founding. The paintings depict signal moments in the American Revolution and the early decades of the republic and feature the words and actions of founding fathers, enslaved people, women, and Native Americans. For the first time since 1958, the series is reunited, along with a new panel discovered in 2020, presenting a new opportunity to address these panels not simply as history painting, but as new portals of perception and time.
Contemporary works by three artists—Derrick Adams, Bethany Collins, and Hank Willis Thomas—further enrich the context for this reunion of Lawrence’s Struggle series.
Jacob Lawrence, Panel 1:… Is Life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? – Patrick Henry, 1775 (1955)
Jacob Lawrence, Panel 21: Listen, Father! The Americans have not yet defeated us by land; neither are we sure they have done so by water—we therefore wish to remain here and fight our enemy … —Tecumseh to the British, Tippecanoe, 1811 (1956)
Jacob Lawrence, Panel 10: We crossed the River at McKonkey’s Ferry 9 miles above Trenton … the night was excessively severe … which the men bore without the least murmur …—Tench Tilghman, 27 December 1776 (1954)
Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle is organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.