This listing is for a rare original plaque by the artist Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007). Crite's works hang in such major American art galleries as the Smithsonian, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Boston Athenaeum. This piece is a modelled sheet of silver nickel and depicts an African American Madonna and baby Jesus. This plaque is signed on the back with a typed description of the materials used. He also marked his name in the lower left corner on the front. The plaque measures about 6 3/4" tall and 5" wide including the wooden frame. It is in very good overall condition with some scuffs and scratches. We have a low opening bid price, so don't miss your chance to add this piece to your collection!
The plaque will be shipped Express Mail with full insurance coverage.
Crite's mother was a poet who encouraged her son to draw. He showed promise early, enrolling in the Children's Art Centre at United South End Settlements in Boston and graduating from The English High School in 1929. Accepted at Yale, he instead went to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, from which he graduated in 1936. Crite later decided to attend Harvard Extension School, where he completed his studies, receiving an ALB in 1968. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate from Suffolk University in Boston.
Crite was among the few African-Americans ever employed by the Federal Arts Project. In 1940, he began a 30-year relationship with the Boston Naval Shipyard when he took a job as an engineering draftsman. During his later years, Crite both lived and worked in the Allan Rohan Crite Research Institute at 410 Columbus Avenue in Boston's South End. He died of natural causes in his sleep at age 97.
Crite was a devout Episcopalian, and his religion inspired many of his works. His paintings fall into two categories: religious themes and general African-American experiences, with some reviewers adding a third category for work depicting Negro spirituals. His 1946 painting Madonna of the Subway is an example of a blend of genres, depicting a Black Holy Mother and baby Jesus riding Boston's Orange Line.
Crite explained his body of work as having a common theme: “I've only done one piece of work in my whole life and I am still at it. I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans. I tell the story of man through the black figure.” According to one reviewer, "Crite's oils and graphics, even when restricted to black and white, are bright in tonality, fine and varied in line, extremely rhythmic, dramatic in movement, and often patterned."
Crite's works hang in such major American art galleries as the Smithsonian, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Boston Athenaeum, to which he left a substantial collection upon his death, in gratitude for his long tenure there as a visiting artist and which now holds the largest public collection of his paintings and watercolors.
Among Crite's illustrated books are 1948's Three Spirituals from Earth to Heaven, in which he illustrated religious stories from such African-American spirituals as Swing Low Sweet Chariot and Nobody Knows the Trouble I See.