Winold Reiss, 16 Sep 1886 - 29 Aug 1953 - Jean Toomer - c. 1925 - T-Shirt

Winold Reiss's c. 1925 pastel portrait of the writer Jean Toomer shows a seated man in a dark jacket and striped tie, his head turned slightly and his eyes lowered in thought.

Visual Elements & Composition

The figure fills a vertical, bust-length frame and dominates the design. A dark jacket and deep black tones take up much of the image, balanced by a white collared shirt and a striped tie in mustard yellow and black. The hands rest folded at the lower edge, which keeps the eye moving up to the face. Warm flesh tones are built up in soft, layered strokes, while the background is pale grey hatching that fades toward cream edges. The artist's signature sits in the lower right corner.

Meaning & Symbolism

The quiet pose and downcast gaze present Toomer as a writer in thought rather than a figure posed for display. Toomer's book Cane (1923) blended poems, short stories and sketches drawn from the African American experience in rural Georgia and urban Washington. Reiss gave his sitters dignity and seriousness, a deliberate counter to the caricatures common in the popular imagery of the period. The portrait reflects the intellectual self-presentation that the Harlem Renaissance cultivated. Reiss, a German-born painter and illustrator known for his pastel and crayon portraits, made this drawing in the mid-1920s for a series of Harlem Renaissance figures published with Alain Locke's anthology The New Negro (1925). It remains one of the most widely reproduced images of the movement's writers and artists.

Wearing the Portrait

A portrait this carefully observed rewards a closer look, and a tee puts it at chest height where the viewer meets it face to face. The sitter's downcast eyes and folded hands read clearly across the front of the shirt, so the pose and its restraint carry the message without any added text. The soft grey hatching and cream edges of the original sheet give the print a quiet, paper-like presence on the garment.