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Artwork Details
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Title:Nous Quatre à Paris (We Four in Paris)
Artist:Palmer Hayden (American, 1890–1973)
Date:ca. 1930
Medium:Watercolor over graphite on paper
Dimensions:21 7/8 × 18 1/16 in. (55.5 × 45.9 cm)
Classification:Works on Paper
Credit Line:Purchase, Joseph H. Hazen Foundation Inc. Gift, 1975
Object Number:1975.125
Inscription: Signed (lower left, in watercolor): [cut off]mer Hayden; inscribed (center, in graphite): NOUS QUATRE À PARIS
[Just Above Midtown Gallery, New York, until 1975; sold to MMA]
New York. Just Above Midtown Gallery. "Palmer Hayden: Unseen Watercolors and Drawings," January 5–25, 1975, no catalogue.
Brooklyn. Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation. "Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art," April 14–June 14, 1976, unnumbered cat.
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, The Arsenal. "Selected Works by Black Artists from the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 7–March 30, 1979, no catalogue.
Hempstead, N. Y. Hofstra University, Emily Lowe Gallery. "A Blossoming of New Promises: Art in the Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance," February 5–March 18, 1984, no. 16.
Pleasantville, N. Y. Reader's Digest. "Faces and Figures: Selected Works by Black Artists from The Metropolitan Museum of Art," February 12–April 1, 1988, brochure no. 13.
New York. Hunter College Art Galleries. "Afro-American Artists in Paris: 1919–1939," November 8–December 22, 1989, unnumbered cat.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "As They Were: 1900–1929," April 9–September 8, 1996, no catalogue.
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "African-American Artists, 1929–1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," January 15–May 4, 2003, extended to July 6, 2003, no. 36.
Oklahoma City Museum of Art. "Harlem Renaissance," February 5–April 19, 2009, no. 26.
New York. Museum of Modern Art. "Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces," October 9, 2022–February 18, 2023, unnumbered cat. (pl. 20, as "Nous quatres à Paris (We Four in Paris)").
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism," February 25–July 28, 2024, unnumbered cat. (pl. 14).
Lowery S. Sims. The Many Facets of Palmer Hayden (1890–1973). Exh. cat., Just Above Midtown. New York, 1977, unpaginated, ill.
Lowery Sims. "The Metropolitan: Collecting Black Art." Routes Magazine 3 (May 1980), p. 25.
Gail Gelburd. A Blossoming of New Promises: Art in the Spirit of the Harlem Renaissance. Exh. cat., Hofstra University, Emily Lowe Gallery. Hempstead, N. Y., 1984, unpaginated, no. 16, ill. (erroneously captioned no. 14), dates it 1930's.
Mary Schmidt Campbell inHarlem Renaissance: Art of Black America. Exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem. New York, 1987, pl. 12.
Lowery S. Sims. Faces and Figures: Selected Works by Black Artists from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. brochure, Reader's Digest, Pleasantville, N.Y. 1988, unpaginated, no. 13.
Wendy Greenhouse in Jontyle Theresa Robinson and Wendy Greenhouse. The Art of Archibald J. Motley, Jr. Exh. cat., Chicago Historical Society. Chicago, 1991, p. 44, fig. 28, dates it about 1935.
Lowery S. Sims inNorman Lewis: Black Paintings 1946–1977. Exh. cat., Studio Museum in Harlem. New York, 1998, p. 43, fig. 25, calls it "Nous Quatre à Paris" and dates it 1930.
Sharon F. Patton. African-American Art. Oxford, 1998, pp. 137–38, colorpl. 59, dates it 1935.
Theresa Leininger-Miller. New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922–1934. New Brunswick, N.J., 2001, pp. 85–86, 98, 134, 154–56, 245, fig. 35, colorpl. 6, ill. front cover (color).
Theresa Leininger-Miller. "Continuing the Vogue for Paris Noir." Art Journal 60 (Winter 2001), p. 104.
Jennifer Marshall. "East of Harlem." Art Journal 61 (Winter 2002), p. 106, ill. (as cover illustration for Ref. Leininger-Miller 2001).
Amy Helene Kirschke. "Theresa Leininger-Miller, New Negro Artists in Paris: African American Painters and Sculptors in the City of Light, 1922–1934." African American Review 37 (Summer–Autumn 2003), p. 442.
Iris Schmeisser. Transatlantic Crossings between Paris and New York: Pan-Africanism, Cultural Difference and the Arts in the Interwar Years. Heidelberg, 2006, p. 149.
Phoebe Wolfskill. "Caricature and the New Negro in the Work of Archibald Motley Jr. and Palmer Hayden." Art Bulletin 91 (September 2009), pp. 343, 356–58, 364 nn. 96, 100–101, 104, fig. 13, ill. front cover (color).
Petrine Archer inAfro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic. Ed. Tanya Barson and Peter Gorschlüter. Exh. cat., Tate Liverpool. Liverpool, 2010, pp. 33–35, ill. (color).
Louise Siddons. "African Past or American Present?: The Visual Eloquence of James VanDerZee's 'Identical Twins'." African American Review 46 (Summer/Fall 2013), pp. 442, 444, fig. 2 (color).
Phoebe Wolfskill. Archibald Motley Jr. and Racial Reinvention: The Old Negro in New Negro Art. Urbana, Ill., 2017, pp. 122–25, 141, fig. 24.
Adrienne L. Childs inRiffs and Relations: African American Artists and the European Modernist Tradition. Exh. cat., Phillips Collection, Washington, D. C. New York, 2019, p. 60 n. 23.
Thomas (T.) Jean Lax, Lilia Rocio Taboada, in collaboration with Linda Goode Bryant, ed. Just Above Midtown: Changing Spaces. Exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York. New York, 2022, pp. 56, 171, colorpl. 20.
Richard J. Powell inThe Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism. Ed. Denise Murrell. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 2024, pp. 43–44, 46–47, 297, fig. 31 (color, detail), colorpl. 14.
Darryl Pinckney. "'Who Shall Describe Beauty?'." New York Review of Books 71 (May 9, 2024), p. 20.
Ben Davis. "6 Powerful Highlights From The Met’s Blockbuster Harlem Renaissance Show." news.artnet.com. February 27, 2024, ill. (color, installation photo, Exh. New York 2024), calls it "We Four in Paris".
Susan Tallman. "The Harlem Renaissance was Bigger Than Harlem." Atlantic 334 (July–August 2024), p. 114.
Zoë Hopkins. "The Internationalism of the Harlem Renaissance." hyperallergic.com. April 7, 2024, calls it "Nous Quatre à Paris" and dates it 1930 in text.
Jacob Lawrence (American, Atlantic City, New Jersey 1917–2000 Seattle, Washington)
1942
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