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above: 171 .^Hale Woodruff. Forest Fire. 1936. Watercolor, 16 X 22}". Courtesy the artist.
left: 172. Richmond Ba.rth?. Birth of the Spirituals (Singing Slave). Early 1940s. Bronze, height 12". Schomberg Collection, New York Public Library (Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations).
tion with interesting and amusing ?vignettes? scattered through the canvas. Some critics consider Woodruff an artist of uneven ability. Hilton Kramer, art editor of the New York Times, thought his watercolor Forest Fire (Fig. 171) at the Studio Museum in Harlem was modest but competent, and that it would not have been out of place in the controversial 1969 Whitney exhibition. The artist?s other prints and paintings on display were of lesser quality.11
Richmond Barthe (b. 1901)
Few Afro-American artists were more prolific or accepted during the thirties and forties than Richmond Barth6 (Figs. 128, 129, 133). His figures of Blacks at work and play, such as Birth of the Spirituab (Fig. 172), have a strength and quiet dignity that must have captured the imagination of a Black audience seeking to improve its image. Porter honored him with four plates
The First Black Masters ol Modernism 129