- Artist or Maker
- Miki Hayakawa
Japan, active United States, 1899-1953 - Title
- Portrait of a Negro
- Date Made
- 1926
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Canvas: 26 × 20 in. (66.04 × 50.8 cm)
Frame: 36 × 29 1/2 × 4 in. (91.44 × 74.93 × 10.16 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2004.27.2
- Collecting Area
- American Art
- Curatorial Notes
Miki Hayakawa illustrates the closeness of and fluidity between various ethnic neighborhoods in 1920s San Francisco in this portrait. Hayakawa, who had recently arrived from Japan, painted studio figures, such as this model, in the first artists’ cooperative in the country. This painting highlights her use of bright colors and simplified handling of paint strokes—a technique of early American modernism that was inspired by the work of Paul Cézanne.
- Selected Bibliography
- Kim, Christine Y., and Myrtle Elizabeth Andrews, editors. Black American Portraits: From the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; New York: DelMonico Books-D.A.P., 2023.
- Wang, ShiPu, editor. Pictures of Belonging: Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo. Los Angeles: Japanese American National Museum, 2023.
