Child Reading (Primary Title)
James A. Porter, American, 1905 - 1970 (Artist)
The painter and art historian James Porter may be best known for writing the first history of African American art and for his distinguished teaching career at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He probably painted Child Reading around 1945, in Haiti or Cuba, while on sabbatical from Howard. The girl’s tilting torso and downcast eyes suggest her immersion in the unseen book. Porter had an academic interest in childhood development, which he expressed as early as 1933 in an essay about the creative and intellectual powers of young people. The girl in Child Reading, in turn, offers a visualization of the artist’s belief in the power of the humanities, reading, and critical thinking as ways of nurturing children.
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