Oil on linen canvas, 1961.
1016 x 508 mm
40 x 20 inches.
Signed, dated and inscribed "Haiti" in oil, lower right recto.
Provenance: Max Robinson, Washington, DC; the artist, Washington, DC; private collection, New York (early 1990s). With the artist's hand-written 1220 Quincy Street, NE, Washington, DC address on the stretcher bars. Max Robinson was a co-anchor on ABC News World Tonight and a broadcast journalist - he was the first African-American anchor on network television news.
Exhibited: Sixty-Ninth Annual Exhibition, Washington Society of Artists, National Museum of Art, Washington, DC, 1962. For Peasants on Parade, Jones received the 1st Award for oil painting, the Franz Bader Award for Oil Painting, 1963, with a painted plaque on the frame edge recto.
Illustrated: Romare Bearden and Albert Henderson. A History of African-American Artists, p. 382; Samella Lewis and Ruth Waddy. Black Arts on Art, Volume 1 p. 97.
This impressive scene is an excellent example of the modern paintings from Loïs Mailou Jones' Haitian period, when she made a dynamic breakthrough away from her earlier Impressionist style of painting. Jones took her first trip to Haiti in the summer of 1954 with the invitation of President Paul E. Magloire for his portrait commission, and made subsequent annual trips with her husband Pierre-Noël through 1969. Beginning in 1961, she focused on the abstract forms found in the busy outdoor markets using flattened areas of pattern and color. Today, these striking early 1960s paintings are some of the artist's best known and distinctive works. Bearden/Henderson p. 328; Benjamin p. 127.
