Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World (2000) ISSN: 1525-447X SARGENT CLAUDE JOHNSON: A RETROSPECTIVE

Evangeline J. Montgomery

I think North Beach is the most interesting place in America. I have been in New York, Hollywood and New Orleans. New Orleans is kind of wild...I hall a tough time in the early days. They didn't give me much of a chance.They didn't know who I was, but I made up my mind I was going to be an artist.

-- Sargent Claude Johnson

SARGENT CLAUDE JOHNSON

Sargent Claude Johnson (figs. 1a & 1b) was one of the most important sculptors from North Beach's famous tipper Grant Avenue in San Francisco. Many may remember him as a familiar of the "Monkey Block" and all North Beach's favorite arty bars and restaurants, hangouts of Bohemians, Beatniks, Hippies, seamen, businessmen, artists of all kinds, and a general melting pot of people (figs. 2a & 2b). Older art lovers may remember Johnson's works in the Harmon Foundation National Exhibitions for black artists in the 1920s and 1930s, or the San Francisco Art Association exhibitions and festivals of that period (figs. 3a & 3b). They may remember his murals and animals of W.P.A. days, and his polychrome enamel metal murals, or just his warm friendly smile while he conversed about Mexico, Japan, people of the world, or art in general.

Sargent Claude Johnson was born in Boston, Massachusetts, October 7, 1888 of American parents; his father, Anderson, of Swedish ancestry, and his mother Lizzie Jackson, of Cherokee Indian and Negro ancestry. The marriage was a stormy one due to racial problems and illness. There were six children of this union, Sargent being the third child. Some of the Johnson children, due to color or appearance, were accepted as Indians or Caucasians and lived their lives as such. Sargent, however, chose to live as a Negro throughout his life.

The children were orphaned at an early age, the father passing away in 1897, and the mother dying of tuberculosis in 1902. In the early years, the children lived with an uncle, Sherman William Jackson, who became principal of the M Street High School, and his wife the famous Black sculptress, May Howard Jackson, in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Jackson was one of the first Black sculptresses who chose to remain in the United States for her education and the production of her works, maintaining a studio in Washington, D.C., and specializing, in portrait busts reflecting Negro themes. In later years, she participated in some of the same exhibitions as her nephew, Sargent Johnson. Sargent, no doubt, was influenced at an early age by this very fine sculptress.

Later the children were sent to their maternal grandparents in Alexandria, Virginia. From the grandparents' home in Virginia they were sent to school: the boys to Worchester, Massachusetts, to the Sisters of Charity, and the girls to Pennsylvania to a Catholic school for Indian and colored girls. The three girls saw Sargent for the last time in 1902. While in the care of the Sisters of Charity, Sargent was sent to a public school. There he specialised in music and mechanical drawing. Later he attended night school to increase his knowledge of art. At the same time he did some artwork for the Sisters of Charity and worked as well in their St. Vincent Hospital. One such job was copying, pictures on the walls of the green house while he was ill. He was sent to Boston to attend music school but soon gave that up in favor of explorations in art. Sargent lived for a while with relatives in Chicago, who were not favorably impressed by this decision to be an artist. He soon left Chicago for the West. Sargent arrived in the Bay Area in 1915 at the time of the great fair, the Panama Pacific International Exposition, which had a profound influence on the California art movement.

In 1915 Sargent married Pearl Lawson, a Georgia lady of English and Black French Creole ancestry, in San Francisco. In the 1917 San Francisco City Directory, Sargent Johnson is listed as working as a fitter for Schlusser Bros.; in 1920 as an artist painting photographs for Willard E. Worden; and in 1921 as a framer for Valdespino Framers. He worked for the latter about 10 years.

Shortly after his arrival in California, Sargent attended the avantgarde A. W. Best School of Art on California Street, studying drawing and painting; and, then, from 1919 to 1923 and from 1940 to 1942 he attended the California School of Fine Arts. These schools are both located in San Francisco. While at the California School of Fine Arts, he first studied under the famous sculptor Ralph Stackpole for two years, and then one year with the colorful personality, Beniamino Bufano. In 1921 and 1922 he was awarded first prize for his work as a student at the California School of Fine Arts.

In 1923, Pearl Adele, a daughter (and Sargent's only child), was born in San Francisco. She lived most of her life in Oakland, graduating from University High School in 1942. Sargent and his wife separated in 1936. Pearl remained in the care of her mother. The mother was hospitalized in 1947, and she passed away in Stockton State Hospital in 1964. Johnson visited her regularly while she was institutionalized.

Sargent's early works are portraits and busts of those who were around him or works fashioned after ideas affecting his own life. His early associates in the art field were students and instructors at the San Francisco Art School. He did some work for Bufano in his studio during those early days, and began participating in local art exhibitions.

Sargent's work gained recognition in a local exhibition in 1925. In a review of the exhibition by Gladys Zehnder for the San Francisco Chronicle, Johnson is discussed as exhibiting a ceramic bust of a Chinese girl with colour glaze which was said to be "after the manner of Bufano." This piece was later shown in tile Harmon Foundation 1928 Exhibit as Elizabeth Gee (fig. 4). Elizabeth was a neighbor's child, as were several of his models.

In 1925, he came in contact with tile Harmon Foundation of New York, and in 1926 began showing with them. The Harmon Foundation began its activities in 1925 with Negro artists to consider the achievements and recognition of outstanding creative work by American Negroes. Mr. William E. Harmon, a New York philanthropist, felt that as the mass of American people knew of the important contributions to the progress of our country that Negroes were making as individuals in their respective fields of effort, credit would naturally reflect upon tile race as a whole. He also knew that people didn't just want to hear about art, they wanted to see it. The Negro art validated the visual aspects of the Black experience. The exhibitions opened in New York City and soon developed into major national shows, traveling to colleges, museums, galleries, and art centers in major areas throughout the U.S.A.

In 1930 and 1931 the Harmon Foundation exhibit came to our own Oakland Municipal Art Gallery. Delilah L. Beasley, a Black Oakland Tribune columnist, reported in 1931 that thousands poured in to see the exhibits. Due to her efforts as president of the "Far Western Inter-Racial Committee," a painting by Eugene Alexander Burkes, titled The Slave Mother was purchased from the 1931 show for the Oakland Municipal Art Gallery collection. Sargent Johnson's work, because of its force and strength, was shown in these two exhibits. He was the star of the show for Northern California viewers, as they were familiar with his name and his works, and he was the only California artist exhibiting with the shows.

Sargent's work was shown in Harmon Foundation exhibits from 1926 to 1935. His works are pictured in all of their catalogues. He seems to have been a favorite among the active Black artists, the judges, and the Harmon Foundation. He won a number of awards in these shows, among them the Otto H. Kahn $250.00 prize in 1927. He was awarded the Harmon bronze medal in 1929, a prize of $100.00, and the Robert C. Ogden prize of $150.00 in 1933 for the most outstanding work in the exhibit. The three pieces shown in 1933 were the porcelain with bronze blue-green glaze figure of a seated baby, his daughter, titled Pearl; a drawing of a mother and child; and another drawing called Defiant, this latter drawing was of a mother with a small girl and a small boy by her side. The award stated that it was for outstanding artistry in combination of materials.

The Harmon Foundation in 1935 presented Sargent Johnson in a three-man exhibition with Malvin Gray Johnson, a painter, and Richmond Barthe, a sculptor, at the Delphic Studios in New York. In this exhibition Johnson's feature piece was a wood polychrome Forever Free (fig. 5). Forever Free was taken from his famous drawing Defiant. It is a redwood sculpture covered with several coats of gesso and fine linen, sanded between layers, and painted black and white. It is highly polished, having a very high luster and smooth surface. The flesh areas of this beautiful sculpture are a rich copper brown in colour. He has used the technique of the ancient Egyptians, Orientals, and experienced frame makers in a significant way. This sculpture was Johnson's greatest work. He has used the most cherished physical characteristics of the Black person, creating a powerful American Black image. For me Forever Free has the greatness and strength of any of the more famous works of art created around this theme found throughout the world. There is a relationship to sculpture of African origin found in this work through the static position of the head, arms and feet, as well as the quality of inner tension (fig. 6a & 6b).

Johnson was at his highest peak stylistically during the Harlem Renaissance era which coincided with the Harmon Foundation Exhibitions. His works became nationally and internationally known through the sales and shows of this organization. Most of his work during this period reflected the ideas of the Harlem Renaissance, making him one of the most outstanding artists producing Black subject matter. Black portraits, masks, and mother-and-child themes were repeated often in his drawings and sculpture (figs. 6c). I can't help feeling that he knew he had an appreciative audience in the Harmon Foundation Shows and created much of this Black subject matter especially for them.

Sargent was aware of other Blacks in the arts during the Harlem Renaissance period; he was aware of their writings and their music, as well as the works of other artists. He was influenced by a piece of music written by William Grant Still; and Still was influenced by Forever Free. This was a time of cross and counter influences.

One of the many awards won by Johnson through the Harmon Foundation was for his piece called Sammy. It is fashioned after NAACP member Walter Gordon's son, Edwin (Dr. Edwin Gordon), who is now a resident of Richmond, California.

Although Johnson seemed isolated here on the West Coast, he was participating in a number of activities with other Blacks where information on the arts was available to keep them all abreast of the achievements of others. He won an award in 1935 from the Alameda County Branch of the NAACP. He worked on murals in Black churches in Oakland; and he participated in various activities with other Black artists promoting black art in the area.

During these early years, Sargent was elected to membership in the San Francisco Art Association in May of 1932, and to its Council Board in 1934. He served on tile jury of tile S.F.A.A. annuals in 1936, 38, 40, 42, 47 and 48. In the San Francisco Art Association exhibition. Johnson received awards in 1925 for Pearl; in 1931 for his terra cotta head entitled Chester (figs. 7a & 7b); in 1935 for his sculpture Forever Free; and in 1938 for his lithograph Black and White; and in 1939, the San Diego Fine Arts Gallery acquired his terra cotta head Ester. In the mid-1930s the San Francisco Museum of Art acquired the collection of the local philanthropist, Albert M. Bender, which included a number of works by Johnson.

From 1925 to 1933, Johnson established a studio in his backyard in Berkeley at 2777 Park Street; lie worked there evenings in his spare time. He worked in wood, ceramics, oils, watercolors and graphics with equal facility. In 1935 Johnson is quoted as saying:

I am producing strictly a Negro Art, studying not the culturally mixed Negro of the cities, but the more primitive slave type as existed in this country during the period of slave importation. Very few artists have gone into the history of the Negro in America, cutting back to the sources and origins of the life of the race in this country. It is the pure American Negro I am concerned with, aiming to show the annual beauty and dignity in that characteristic lip and that characteristic hair, bearing and manner; and I wish to show that beauty not so much to the white man as to the Negro himself. Unless I can interest my race, I am sunk, and this is not so easily accomplished. The slogan for the Negro artist should be 'Go South, young man.' Unfortunately for too many of us it is 'Go East, young man.' Too many Negro artists go to Europe and come back imitators of Cezanne, Matisse, or Picasso; and this attitude is not only a weakness of the artists, but of their racial public. In all artistic circles I hear too much talking and too much theorizing. All their theories do not help me any, and I have but one technical hobby to ride: I am interested in applying color to sculpture as the Egyptian, Greek, and other ancient people did. I try to apply colour without destroying the natural expression of sculpture, putting it on pure and large masses without breaking up the surfaces of the form and respecting the plains and contours of sculpturesque expression. I am concerned with colour, not solely as a technical problem, but also as a means of heightening the racial character of my work. The Negroes are a colorful race; they call for an art as colorful as they can be made." -- San Francisco Chronicle October 6, 1935.

Sargent was employed with the massive Federal Arts Project here in the Bay Area. The positions he held were those of artist, senior sculptor, assistant supervisor, assistant State supervisor, and finally, unit supervisor. His first large project was a carved redwood organ screen in low relief, 8 feet by 22 feet, at the California School for the Blind in Berkeley, placed there in 1937.

The Golden Gate International Exhibition of 1939 which was held on the newly created Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, gave the artist another great chance to display his skill on a large scale. Sargent created for the Court of Pacifica, two cast stone eight-foot high sculptures of Incas seated on llamas (which are still standing on the site today). He also created three statues symbolizing Industry, Home Life, and Agriculture for the Alameda-Contra Costa County building at the Fair.

Another of Sargent's projects in San Francisco is at the Maritime Museum in Aquatic Park. An incised relief of green Vermont slate, forms the exterior entrance of the museum and depicts men of the sea and marine life. Sargent's mosaic mural, also depicting marine life, is on the promenade deck facing the Bay. The colors of the ceramic tile are various shades of green and black and white.

The Federal Arts Project gave Johnson the chance that he needed to express himself in new materials, and allowed him to work in a massive scale in well-equipped studios. Johnson was one of the artists of the Bay Area who benefited greatly by these projects, and was very much in favor of them. In my discussion with him late in his life, he stated that he wished that there were such a thing today for artists, particularly to aid the Black artist in his progress in the field. Many of his close friendships and relationships with artists developed during this period. He worked with Ralph Stackpole, Hilaire Hiler, Jacques Schnier, Ruth Cravath, Antonio Sotomayer and Robert Howard, to name a few, and with most of the other prominent artists who were in the Bay Area during those years. Two of his Black artist friends on the projects were Thelma Jackson Streat and Lester Mathews.

In 1939, lie created a camel, a burro, a grasshopper, a duck, a hippopotamus, an elephant and a squirrel of green and gray cast terrazzo. Each was approximately 26 inches long by 24 inches high. This project was for a childcare center playground at the Sunnydale Housing Project in San Francisco. Johnson, a friend and co-worker of Bufano, was careful not to use any animals that Bufano used. He wanted people to know his work from Bufano's.

A controversy arose with the selection of Bufano to design an athletic frieze to be placed at George Washington High School, and Sargent was awarded the job by the San Francisco Art Commission in 1940 after a long public battle. This ended a long friendship that had existed from student days between Bufano and Johnson. Bufano never got over the fact that Johnson was given the job. This tremendous frieze, executed in 1942, covers the entire retaining wall across the back of the football field, and still stands today.

Johnson's interest in lithographs grew during this period, and he created Singing Saint in 1940. One hundred and fifty copies were made of this print which sold to museums as well as collectors. It has truly a lyrical feeling; the full tone of the voices and guitar are felt through simple sincerity of line. The triangular forms in the bench and floor serve to break and compose the movement developed in the figures as well as to give space and dimension. This theme was used in later years for several of his polychrome enamel steel panels.

Sargent taught art classes for the Junior Workshop program of the San Francisco Housing Authority in 1947. That same year he taught sculpture during the summer at Mills College. Over the years Sargent had a few private students in his studio.

A benefactor of his aided him in financing his many trips to Mexico, and, in 1958, a long trip to Japan. Sargent had desired to go to Japan for years to visit the shrines and to see first hand the beauty of the people, the country, and the arts.

His interest in music had grown over the years and he learned to play the guitar. The reading of art and technical books and of African and Afro-American subjects, especially African Art, was another of his favorite pastimes. Sargent Johnson received the Abraham Rosenberg Scholarship in 1944 and 1949 which allowed him to travel and continue his study of sculpture and ceramics.

Beginning in 1945, and continuing through 1965, Johnson made a number of trips to Oaxaca and Southern Mexico. While there he lived in a small hotel room several blocks from the main plaza in the city of Oaxaca. His interest in this area was in the people and their life styles, and in the many archaeological sites found in that area of Mexico, among them Monte Alban and Mitla. He became close friends over the years with several American archaeologists working there, and they would invite him to the openings of new areas and tombs.

Another famous archeological site that he visited was Chichen-Itza in Yucatan. He was especially interested in the decorative borders and patterns found on these buildings and in the Chelula polychrome pottery of the period with its mythological animals, personages, and simple designs of flowers and decorative borders. While in Oaxaca, Sargent became acquainted with the Zapotec Indians and Mexicans living in the village of San Bartolo Coyotepec, where the famous black clay pots are made. This location is just outside the city of Oaxaca, and Sargent would acquire some of this black clay and work on it in his hotel room in late afternoons, making grotesque and interesting black clay figures. This is a very low-fired clay, using a wood reduction firing process which creates the black smokey colour of the clay body.

Sargent would work long hours on his pieces, polishing and burnishing them with pumice before firing. Most were hollow forms. A favorite theme of his for these pieces is "the Politician," the do-nothing politician was a recurring theme of his. A number are of Indian women, the family, others are abstract forms. They range in size from three inches to not more than 10 inches high. No more than two dozen were ever brought back from any one trip to Mexico. The people of the village are not interested in letting outsiders use this material or their facilities; therefore, Sargent had to sneak to perform miracles with this material. Through friends he had acquired in the area, he was able to get small amounts of clay at a time and to have only a very small number fired at any one time. The Indians felt that this clay had uranium in it, and, therefore, refused to allow outsiders to have any. It is believed that Sargent is the only outside person they allowed to work with the clay. He didn't speak Zapotec or Spanish, and this hampered him in sharing his knowledge with them. Through sign language and smiles Johnson made his way around Mexico. His additional quest for information on the blackware pottery sent him at one time to New Mexico, to San Ildefonso where he visited Maria Martinez, the famous potter of that area.

Sargent was always interested in advanced techniques. Shortly after World War 11, about 1947, he met Mahoney from the Paine-Mahoney Company, a company that generally produced porcelain enamel signs on steel. In his spare time he would visit their shop and experiment with this technique on small steel panels. He produced from 1947 to 1967 about 100 panels and plates. The scenes depicted were abstract, surrealistic and impressionistic. Some were of animals, musician, mother and child, multi-racial subjects, children, religious subjects, the atom bomb, and geometric designs - all in vivid bright colors and exciting in movement (figs. 8b - 8f).

The porcelain enamels used were Farro brand enamels which were fired for several minutes at a temperature of 1500 degrees Fahrenheit in kilns at the shop. The enamel was mixed with gum and oil base materials to the consistency of a slip and painted onto a steel panel that had had a ground coat of white fired onto it. Many of these steel pieces were done as reliefs. Oftentimes Sargent worked the pictures in his own studio and carried them to Oakland to the shop for the firing.

Sargent received several commissions to produce porcelain enamel panels. His first commission was for Nathan Dohrmann & Company. It was a semi-abstract of pots and pans, 14 feet wide and 25 feet long - a mural over the entrance of the Dohrmann store on Geary Street at Union Square; it was installed in 1948. The building has since been torn down and the panels destroyed. The second commission Johnson received was for a porcelain enamel mural using a map theme which covered a wall in the Richmond, California, City Hall Chambers in 1949, and it remains today.

In 1949, Paine-Mahoney Company received a commission to do an enamel mural (the largest, they say, in the United States), for Harolds Club in Reno, Nevada. Sargent was employed to work on this mural with a number of other men, his part being to do the very fine touches in the mural such as features of the figures. This mural depicts the Western wagon train pioneers coming through the mountains with hostile Indians peering at them. The mural is 38 feet high and 78 feet long. A similar mural was done for the Western Club in Las Vegas. It is 25 feet long and 50 feet high. That particular mural now stands in the Salt Lake Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mahoney says that Sargent loved working in porcelain enamel and liked it so much he didn't care whether he was paid for his services or not. Every spare moment he had he would produce another porcelain enamel for himself.

The shaping and forming of the metal was either done in his studio or at the Architectural Porcelain Company. This was the company that Sargent used to mount and set the porcelain enamel murals that he made over the years. The enamels are now in the hands of many individual friends and buyers around the United States and in Mexico.

In 1948 Sargent produced a large mahogany panel for the Matson Navigation Company ship, the SS Lurline, which is now owned by a Greek shipping firm. The panel depicts Hawaiian leaders and warriors. In 1956, the Matson Navigation Company commissioned him to do two large painted tile walls, 8 feet by 15 feet high, for the SS Monterey which still makes the trip from San Francisco to Hawaii as a pleasure ship. This appears to be the last large piece that he worked on. He was assisted by John Allan Ryan on the latter ship.

In 1950 Johnson states his interest in bringing color back to sculpture. "Sculpture," Johnson said, "was never meant to be colorless. There is no reason why it should be; most ancient sculpture with the exception of the late Greek, was polychrome." In the late '50s and '60s Sargent continued to work on polychrome wood pieces, wherein he reflects upon universal themes boldly stylized (fig. 9). Totem pole effects are used and multi-racial themes. Shaped diorite rocks, which Sargent and his friends picked up on their visits to the Big Sur seashore, became a favorite material of his as well as the cast rock for animals and abstract forms.

He studied metal sculpture for a short time with Clair Van Falkenstein and in his later years produced a small number of cast bronze works as well as welded sculptures of forged enameled wire forms. Johnson was employed in later years during busy seasons by Flax Framing and Art Supply Company as a framer.

Sargent moved from Berkeley to Telegraph Hill in San Francisco and then (from 1948-1964) to 1507 Grant Avenue where he lived very simply and frugally-by choice-in two rooms. He shared a studio at this address with ceramist John Magnani, his close friend from the early '30s. William Abbsensenth, another friend from W.P.A. days, had a photography studio in the same building. During this period he produced a great number of clay objects and collaborated with Magnani on glazes and clay bodies at cones four and five. After Johnson's illness in 1965 lie moved a number of places, ending up finally in a small downtown San Francisco hotel room. Clay Spohn, a painter and contemporary of Sargent's says:

"He was one of the few persons I have ever known who seemed perennially happy, joyous; exuberant in living, working - being with people and being a help to people regarding his knowledge of the artistic crafts, or in any other way he could. For he really had the love of life and was always willing to share his enthusiasm with others. Consequently, he received the same in return. Neither can I recall an occasion when he was not happy or joyous in spirit, thereby making others feel the same."

"His fine art and craftsmanship was most impressive, original, and respected by all the artists who, at the time of which I speak (i.e. during the 1930s, 1940s, and from then on), saw it and became familiar with it. They regarded it in the highest terms from the very beginning when it was first shown in and about the Bay Area; and I think this was one of the reasons for his elated spirit which had such a life-effect on the other, both younger and older, artists of that time, the fact that he had received recognition fairly early in life."

"I had first met Sargent Johnson during the so-called depression of the 1930s, around the time of the early part of the Art Project days; but, in Sargent's case there was no depression, only wonderful opportunities to do his best work, opportunities to allow the spirit to be free to soar wherever it might, but with the restraint and compassion for his craft and subject matter that he felt these things needed most.">

My first meeting with Sargent Johnson was early in 1967 at Julian Richardson's Black book- store. It was there that we sat and talked about Black artists and what they were doing. He began sharing some of his memories as an artist active over a long period in the San Francisco Bay Area. At a later meeting he shared technical information on porcelain enamels, knowing that this was a great interest of mine, and then he showed me in his scrapbook a number of articles about his life and works. At my last meeting with him, he offered to give a local Black artist organization, A.W.A.N., the last etched zinc plate he worked on of a "mother and child" to benefit its activities. This he failed to complete. Johnson passed away October 10, 1967 in San Francisco, California after suffering a heart attack. He had been afflicted by severe angina pectoris for over twenty years.

Looking at Johnson's work today, I feel he was addressing his work to fellow artists. He was concerned with quality of workmanship, viewing the world and its art, absorbing all that lie saw and read, applying the ideas and techniques in a unique and fresh way. His works have a gentleness, an inner fire and a great spiritual calm. There is a relationship in his work to West African tribal art. Dan, Ife, Benin; Mexican, Art Deco and Synthetic Cubism. His sympathetic approach to materials, subject matter as well as design made him one of the outstanding artists in the Bay Area during the 30s and 40s.

When I first met Sargent Johnson, I said to myself, "Here is a person and an artist of great magnitude." That feeling has been relived over and over as I have talked with his relatives, his patrons, and his many friends while studying his inspiring works and visiting his favorite haunts in order to prepare this exhibit.

References

Yvonne Greer Thiel, Artists and People, Philosophical Library, Inc. New York 1959, Sargent Johnson, pp 109-115.

Jacques Schnier, Sculpture in Modern America, University of California Press 1948, Tiger pictured p. 98.

Alain Locke. The Negro in Art, Hacker Art Books, 1440, 1968, pp. 33, 34, 35, 133; work pictured.

James A. Porter, Modern Negro Art, Arno Press and New York Times 1943, 1969, pp. 93, 118, 137, 140, 252; work pictured.

Cedric Dover, American Negro Art, New York Graphic Society 1960, pp. 31, 40, 54, 73, 74; work pictured.

Jehanne Teilhet, ed. Dimensions of Black, La Jolla Museum of Art 1970, p. 99, Forever Free pictured.

The American Magazine of Art, Sept. 1931, May 1930, 1931.

Art Digest, March 1, 1933, 57 Negro Artists presented in 5th Harmon Foundation Exhibit; March 15, 1939.

Life Magazine, July 1946, "Artists: Top U. S. Honors," Chester pictured.

San Francisco Art Association Bulletin, 1934, 1935, 1936, Sept. 18, 1938; Dec. 1938; 1952, work pictured.

San Francisco Museum of Art, Opening Exhibition catalogue, Jan. 1935.

San Francisco Museum of Art, catalogue "Art of Our Time," Jan. 18- Feb. 5, 1945, Negro Woman also called Praying pictured, p. 54.

M. H. de Young, Memorial Museum catalogue, "The San Francisco Collector," Sept. 21-Oct. 17, 1965.

San Francisco Museum of Art, Quarterly Bulletin, Series 11, Volume 11, November 4, 1954.

Western Arts, March 1926, Pearl pictured.

San Francisco Housing Project, July 1946.

Our World, "Sargent Johnson Sculptor" 1949.

American Artist, Jan. 1949, The Cat pictured.

Opera & Concert, Jan. 1949, "Sargent Johnson: We Call Him Ours," Jehanne Bietry Salinger Harmon Foundation catalogues 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1933, 1934; "Two Sculptures," 1935, pp 10 & II; work pictured.

The Negro Comes of Age catalogue, Jan. 1945, Albany Institute of History and Art.

California Art Today, catalogue, 1940, Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco.

California Arts and Architecture, May 1931, work pictured.

Bayviewer, Aug. 1967, p. 3.

Black Dialogue, issue #3, 1968, work pictured.

Cosmopolitan, Dec. 1963, Jean Varda.

San Francisco 7th Annual Art Festival, work picture.

Eric Locke Galleries, Second Annual Outdoor Exhibition, catalogue, Oct. 1959; work pictured.

U.S.I.S, Topic 1966, #5 "The Negro in American Art," work pictured.

San Francisco, April 1964, "The Walls They Left Behind," Robert Hagan.

The Negro in American Art catalogue, Sept. 1966-March 1967, exhibition co-sponsored by The California Arts Commission and U.C.L.A.

Fifty-first Annual Exhibition of San Francisco Art Association, 1929, San Francisco School of Fine Arts.

Fifty-third Annual Exhibition of San Francisco Art Association, 1931, Palace of Le- ion of Honor.

Fifty-sixth Annual Exhibition of San Francisco Art Association, 1936, San Francisco Museum of Art.

Seventy-first Annual Exhibition of San Francisco Art Association, 1952, San Francisco Museum of Art.

NEWSPAPER ITEMS

Sunday Mirror, San Diego, Aug. 2, 1935, pg. 4, Amon.

Washington Post, June 1, 1930.

The Post, Berkeley, Nov. 6, 1965, "Sculptor at 2 Cadell Place."

People's World, S.F., Feb. 2, 1950, "Artist in Touch with the People."

San Francisco Chronicle,
January 5, 1930, pg. 7, col. 8
April 20, 1930, pg. D5, col. 7
March 12, 1933, pg. D3, col. 7
October 6, 1935, pg. D3, col. 4
March 17, 1940, pa. 8, col.. 2
March 18, 1940, pg. 25, col. 3
June 12, 1940, pg. 12, col. 4
June 26, 1940, pg. 14, col. I
November 14, 1940, pg. 1, col. 2
November 19, 1940, pg. 1, col. 3
November 20, 1940, pg. 12, col. 1
November 23, 1940, pg. 9, col. 7
November 25, 1940, pg. 12, col. 6
November 27, 1940, pg. 7, col. I
November 16, 1944
November 30, 1944, pc,. 9, col. 4
February 27, 1948, pg. 17, col. 5
October 12, 1967 (Obituary).

Essay first published in 1971.

© Copyright 2000 Africa Resource Center

Citation Format

Montgomery, Evangeline J.. (2000). SARGENT CLAUDE JOHNSON: A RETROSPECTIVE. Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World: 1 , 2.