80
●
JAMES C. MCMILLAN (1925 - )
Mother and Child
.
Oil on masonite board, 1952. 686x546 mm; 27x21
1
/
2
inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower left.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist; private collection, NewYork.
Exhibited:
The Art of James C. McMillan: Loss and Redemption - A Retrospective
. African-American
Aterlier, Inc. Greensboro, NC, 2011;
Loss and Redemption:The Art of James C. McMillan
, Bakersfield
Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA, 2009.
Illustrated: Harris, Shawnya.
The Art of James C. McMillan: Discovering An African-American Master
, fig.
49, p. 35.
This masterful mid-century painting by James C. McMillan is the artist’s first painting to come to
auction.
Mother and Child
is a significant work in the distinguished career of this figurative painter
and sculptor, whose career and body of work is just beginning to receive national recognition.
Born in Sanford, North Carolina, James C. McMillan was encouraged by his college-educated
parents to pursue his interest in art. Talented and driven from a young age, McMillan graduated
valedictorian from his high school class at the age of 15, and won a scholarship to Howard University
in 1941. There McMillan studied under Alain Locke, Loïs Mailou Jones and James Lesesne Wells.
Jones became his mentor, arranging for an illustration assistant position with the painter Ralston
Crawford, and recommending him for Skowhegan. After Naval service during World War II,
McMillan graduated in 1947 and earned a summer fellowship at the inaugural year of the
Skowhegan School of Art in Maine, becoming its first African-American fellow. After three years
teaching at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro as the chair of their new art department,
McMillan struck out for Paris, following in the footsteps of Jones, and attended the Académie Julian
in 1950 on sabbatical. McMillan returned to Bennett College in 1951, and then, while on another
sabbatical, earned his MFA in sculpture from Catholic University inWashington, DC.
Mother and Child
shows how McMillan’s adapted mid-century approaches to painting with social
realism.This work was painted during his MFA period, or shortly thereafter, and shows his interest
in both the social-realism of the period with a sophisticated color sense and balance. McMillan
admired Hughie Lee-Smith and was influenced by the work of other African-American artists of
the 1940s, including Charles Alston, Charles White and John Wilson.
Mother and Child
recalls his
experiences of the segregated South, and the bleak lives of sharecroppers he would have seen in
rural North Carolina. In her description of the painting, Shawnya Harris points out how “the old
horseshoe is turned upside down, which, according to the artist, represents the presence of ‘bad
luck’ in some southern communities.”
In addition to the private collections that lent to his recent retrospective, McMillan’s work can be
found in the collections of Bennett College, North Carolina Central University Art Museum,
Guilford College andVirginia State University. Harris pp. 11-15, 48.
[15,000/25,000]
