Queer Places:
The Art Students League of New York, 215 W 57th St, New York, NY 10019, Stati Uniti
Corcoran Gallery of Art, 500 17th St NW, Washington, DC 20006, Stati Uniti
17 Chalmers St, Charleston, SC 29401, Stati Uniti
Prentiss
Taylor (December 13, 1907 – October 7, 1991) was an American illustrator,
lithographer, and painter. Born in Washington D.C., Taylor began his art
studies at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, followed by painting classes under
Charles Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts, and training at the Art
Students League in New York City. In 1931, Taylor began studying lithography
at the League. Taylor interacted and collaborated with many writers and
musicians in his time in New York in the late 1920s and early 30s. This was in
the emergence of the Harlem Renaissance. Among his close friends and
colleagues were
Langston
Hughes and
Carl Van
Vechten.
Taylor's work is in the collection of numerous institutions such as: the
Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American Art; The Phillips
Collection; Gibbes Museum of Art; Museum of New Mexico; the Metropolitan
Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art Fisk University Galleries and
Greenville County Museum of Art.[1]
Born on December 13, 1907 at home to John Eastlack Taylor and Beatrice
Hottel. His birth assisted by his grandmother's cook, known as Cookie Belle.
In high school, Prentiss graduated from McKinley "Tech" High School, where he
had studied art under Mary P. Shipman, Alexis Manny and Charles Lamb. He
graduated from Sidwell Friends School in 1925.
[2]
In the 1920s, Taylor studied painting with Charles W. Hawthorne in
Provincetown, Massachusetts, but turned to lithography in the late 1920s to
early 1930s during his enrollment at the Art Students League in New York City.
He received further training in that medium at the George C. Miller workshop
in New York. During this period, he also designed costumes for the
American-Oriental Revue, as well as designed scenery for plays at the Arts
Club of Washington.[3]
by Carl Van Vechten
Carl Van Vechten. Gladys Bentley, Prentiss Taylor, and Nora Holt, 1932 Feb. 27. Prentiss Taylor papers, 1885-1991. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
At age twenty, Taylor met Charleston novelist,
Josephine Pinckney, at the MacDowell artists' colony in Peterborough, New
Hampshire. Their new friendship prompted Taylor to visit Charleston, South
Carolina in 1933, because Pinckney asked friends to loan Taylor the Pink
House. (book-southern life) Prentiss stated "I arrived on the Clyde-Mallory
Line Steamer about the end of May 1933…I was lent the Pink House on Chalmers
Street and I was able to stay until Labor Day. I spent most of my time
sketching, up one side of the street and down the other." Taylor returned to
the city in 1934 under the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP), a predecessor
to the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project.
[8]
Prentiss established the Washington Wheat Press as a means for publishing,
and within the paper were various poems and illustrations by the artist as
well as poems and prose by Josiah Titzell, Rachel Field and Laura Benet. After
Taylor discovered lithographing in 1931, he worked primarily in the
printmaking medium for the rest of his life, experimenting with various
techniques and compositions and ultimately achieving a status as one this
country's great lithographers. Taylor depicted mostly realistic and narrative
scenes of subjects and themes that reflected his personal interests in music,
architecture, religion and social justice.[4][5]
In 1990, Taylor had his last exhibition while still alive at Georgetown
University in their Lauinger Library called "The Art of Prentiss Taylor",
which included lithographs, watercolor paintings and book jacket designs. In
1991, Taylor's health began deteriorating. In April, (age 83) he was put in a
nursing home and was hospitalized in September due to a pneumonia and a heart
infection. Prentiss Taylor died on October 7, 1991.[4]
My published books:
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