Rose Piper

The Death of Bessie Smith by Rose Piper, 1947

In 1946, Piper received a Julius Rosenwald fellowship and spent the summer traveling in the American South, "imbibing" the atmosphere, as she put it, and studying blues music.[1] As a New Yorker, she had not grown up listening to the blues; she said in an interview years later, however, "I ran out and got all kinds of recordings and listened to them. I worked at it." Her research inspired a series of increasingly abstract, blues-themed paintings. "Back Water" (1946), inspired by Bessie Smith's "Backwater Blues",[3] is both more figurative and literal in its approach than the paintings that followed. By 1947, Piper had adopted the Picasso-influenced, flat, geometric style seen in "Slow Down, Freight Train" and "The Death of Bessie Smith" (pictured right).[5]

According to critic Graham Lock, this semi-abstract style was a fitting choice for the series because the blues themselves are stylized, often using exaggeration (such as "pouring water on a drowning man") to convey strong emotions.[6] Piper never embraced pure abstraction, however, preferring to keep the human figure at the center of her work. Her purpose in creating art was political: to fight injustice "the best way I know how—by putting it on the canvas."[5]

Her work attracted national attention in the fall of 1947, when Piper gave her first solo exhibition at the Roko Gallery in New York. Titled "Blues and Negro Folk Songs", the exhibition featured 14 paintings based on folk and blues songs. The show was a major success: praised by critics, it was held over for an extra week, and most of the paintings were sold.[1] At that time, Piper was one of only four African-American abstract painters to have had solo shows in New York. The other three were Romare Bearden, Norman Lewis, and Thelma Johnson Streat.[7]

Piper scored another win in 1948 when her work was included in the 7th Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Prints by Negro Artists. Sponsored by Atlanta University, it was one of the most prestigious venues for black artists; fellow exhibitors included Richmond Barthé, Robert Blackburn, Jacob Lawrence, and Hale Woodruff. Piper's Grievin' Hearted was awarded the prize for Best Portrait or Figure Painting.[1]

Piper, alongside artist such as Elder Cortor, produced images during the 1940s that illuminated the constant contemporary problems related to women's control over their bodies within social, racial, and sexual milieux.[8]

Piper's career peaked in the late 1940s. She kept a studio in Greenwich Village, and exhibited in the ACA Gallery.[9] Her work was reviewed in The New York Times, Art Digest, and ARTnews.[10] Her circle of acquaintances included James Baldwin, Billie Holiday, and Langston Hughes. Charles Alston was a friend and mentor. Recalling those years in a 1989 interview, she said, "I had the greatest time. The world was at my feet."[1]

While it is not clear whether "Slow Down, Freight Train" was painted in 1946 or 1947, this painting represents a very different aesthetic approach to that of Back Water. This is Piper at her most semiabstract. When the Ackland Art Museum acquired the work in 1990, director Charles Millard wrote to Piper, enquiring about the origins of the title. The title referred to "Freight Train Blues", a recording by Trixie Smith who "sang and recorded the misery of the woman who had been left behind by men who hopped freight trains to the North".[11]

Even as her blues-themed paintings won her attention and acclaim, Piper was wary of being stereotyped as a black painter limited to "black" themes. It was partly for this reason that, on receiving a second Rosenwald grant in 1948, she opted to work in Paris rather than continue her exploration of the American South.[12]

When Piper returned from Paris, a series of financial and family misfortunes forced her to put her painting career on hold. For a time she ran her own greeting card business. She then worked as a textile designer, using the name Rose Ransier. Over the next three decades she built a successful, albeit anonymous, career in fashion, while raising her two children and caring for ailing family members. Her minor in geometry gave her an edge in her new line of work: she was able to design patterns on graph paper that did not need to be adjusted for the knitwear machines. In 1973, she won the Knitted Textile Association's First Annual Knit Competition. When she retired in 1979, she was a senior vice president.[13]

Go Down Neath, Easy An’ Bring My Servant Home by Rose Piper, c. 1988

In the 1980s, Piper returned to painting. This time she adopted a whole new style, influenced by her years in textile design: instead of semi-abstraction and a subdued, melancholy palette, the later paintings combined a meticulous attention to detail and bright acrylics. As influences, she cited Flemish School painters Hans Memling and Jan van Eyck, and the medieval Book of Hours tradition.[14]

She still drew inspiration from African-American music, and her sense of political purpose had not changed. In 1989 she had a solo exhibition in New York, sponsored by the Phelps Stokes Fund. The centerpiece, titled Slave Song Series, was a set of ten 12 x 9 inch miniatures based on lines from spirituals. Half were set in contemporary urban locales; for example, Go Down Neath, Easy An’ Bring My Servant Home (pictured right) is set in the 96th Street subway station. Describing her motivation for the series, she wrote that "the current state of many inner-city blacks is not unlike the desperate situation of the slave ancestors."[15]

• Dallow, Jessica (Spring 2004). "Reclaiming Histories: Betye and Alison Saar, Feminism, and the Representation of Black Womanhood". Feminist Studies. 30 (1): 74–113. JSTOR 3178559.
• Dohogne, Meghan (2016). Rose Piper: New discoveries (Thesis). Department of Art and Art History. University of Missouri-Kansas City. hdl:10355/60504.
• Kirkham, Pat (2002). Women Designers in the USA, 1900–2000: Diversity and Difference. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 130–131. ISBN 9780300093315.
• Lock, Graham (2008). "Blues on the Brush: Rose Piper's Blues and Negro Folk Song Paintings of the 1940s". The Hearing Eye: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Visual Art. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 47–66. ISBN 9780199887675.
• Lock, Graham (August 14, 2009). "Graham Lock and David Murray, editors of Thriving on a Riff: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Literature and Film". Jerry Jazz Musician.
• Patton, Sharon F. (1998). African American Art. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780192842138.
• Schulman, Daniel (2009). A Force for Change: African American Art and the Julius Rosenwald Fund. Evanston: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 9780810125889.
• Smith, Roberta (June 28, 1991). "Review/Art; 'African-American Abstraction,' an Exploration". The New York Times.
• Tidwell, John E. (2009). After Winter: The Art and Life of Sterling A. Brown. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199710898.
• "African American Fine Art Auction". Chicago: Tyler Fine Art. December 6, 2014.
• Powers, Sarah. "Piper, Rose." Oxford African American Studies Center. May 31, 2013. Oxford University Press. Date of access 29 Mar. 2021, https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195301731.013.37657
• AAREG. “Rose Piper, Artist Born.” African American Registry, 21 June 2020, aaregistry.org/story/rose-piper-artist-born/.

• Gibson, Ann Eden (1997). Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics. New Haven: Yale University Press. pp. 110–12, 138–39. ISBN 9780300063394.
• Lock, Graham (2008). "Blues on the Brush: Musical Influence in Rose Piper's Blues and Negro Folk Songs Paintings of the Mid-1940s". International Review of African American Art. 22 (1).