Laura Wheeler Waring
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| One of the major women artists of the Harlem Renaissance, best-known for her portraits of prominent African Americans of her time.
Laura Wheeler Waring was born in Hartford to Mary and the Reverend Robert Wheeler, pastor of Talcott Street Congregational Church. The Wheelers were a prominent New England family with five generations of college graduates. Laura attended Hartford Public High School and the prestigious Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In 1914 she won a scholarship to continue her studies in Europe where she worked at the Louvre until interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.
In 1918 Waring moved to Pennsylvania to direct the art and music departments at Cheney State College, where she met her husband Walter E. Waring of Lincoln University. While at Cheney, Waring was able to arrange several additional trips to Europe for further study. Her work in Paris was honored by an exhibit at the Galerie du Luxembourg. During more than thirty years as an art professor, Waring produced countless paintings, landscapes and portraits, which were shown at museums throughout the country, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and the Art Institute of Chicago. Late in life Waring turned to Negro spirituals for inspiration in works such as Jacob's Ladder and The Coming of the Lord. However, she remains best known for her landscapes of North Africa and France and for her portraits of such famous African Americans as W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, Mary White Ovington, and Marian Anderson. Because Waring herself shunned publicity, little is known about her life. Art historians are currently at work on a biography. Though many of her works have not been properly preserved, her reputation lives on as an artist of consummate skill and imagination. | |||||||||||
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