Born: May 16, 1887, in Hartford, Connecticut

Died: February 3, 1948, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Known For: Painting portraits

Unlike many of her Harlem Renaissance artists, Laura Wheeler Waring worked on and off for four decades at Cheyney Training School for Teachers, now known as the Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, as an art instructor and choir director. Being a teacher ran in her family and was one of the few professions an educated African American woman could pursue.

A brilliant and talented woman, Laura graduated from Hartford High School with honors and studied at one of the leading art institutes in the United States, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1914 and 1924, she took a sabbatical to pursue art in Paris on the A. William Emlen Cresson Memorial Travel Scholarship. She studied at the Lourve and at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière studying master painters, like Monet.

Notable Works:

"Anna Washington Derry"

Date: 1927

Medium: Oil on canvas

Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum

"W.E.B Du Bois"

Date: 1943

Medium: Oil on canvas

Location: National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution

"Portrait of a Lady"

Date: 1947

Medium: Oil on canvas

Location: Smithsonian American Art Museum

Impact:

An often overlooked artist of the Harlem Renaissance, her work is impactful as she created poised portraits of members of her community that were not upper-class. Her portraitures allowed lower and middle-class African Americans to be beautifully immortalized in art cherished by black and white communities. Her talents also led her to illustrate pen-and-ink covers of NAACP’s The Crisis and The Brownies Book.

Laura Wheeler Waring in her Studio

Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Howard University, Washington, DC

Cheyney Training School for Teachers. Circa. 1920s.

Cheyney University Archives

While traveling through Europe, she produced her first paintings, and some were exhibited in Parisian art galleries. One of her most known pieces, The Houses at Semur, received wide acclaim in the United States and France. Due to her artistic talents, Waring’s work was in high demand in galleries and museums, like the Corcoran Gallery and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Houses at Semur, 1925

Clippings from the New York Age about Eleanor Roosevelt invitation to see Laura Wheeler Waring's work.

In 1943, the Harmon Foundation, an organization that recognizes the achievements of African Americans, commissioned Wheeler to paint the series “Portraits of Outstanding American Citizens of Negro Origin.” Wheeler Waring painted 23 portrait subjects, including W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, and Jessie Redmon Fauset.

The series “Portraits of Outstanding American Citizens of Negro Origin” exhibit opening at the Smithsonian Institution in 1944 had a record-breaking number of visitors at the end of its run, with Eleanor Roosevelt endorsing the exhibition in her daily column.

Harmon Foundation director Mary Beattie Brady, seated left and Wheeler-Waring on the right.

National Archive