Urban Realism and the American Scene
Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000)
The painter Jacob Lawrence is best known for his candid and expressive portrayals of twentieth-century African American life. Bar-b-que belongs to a group of strikingly modernist works set in Harlem that he made during a time when this large African American New York City neighborhood was renowned for its cultural vibrancy. The watercolor depicts a barbecue restaurant filled with customers. A white-hatted cook prepares flaming slabs of pork ribs and roasted chickens in a street-facing kitchen as several adults and a child stand transfixed at the window. Bar-b-que features a kind of eatery common in the black South transplanted to New York City—just one reflection of the Great Migration, when from roughly 1916 to 1970, some 6 million African Americans, including Lawrence’s own family, left their rural Southern homes for cities in the North, Midwest, and West.
Learn more about this watercolor on the Terra Foundation website.