{"data":{"id":"1192","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":1192,"topgoose_id":9798,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":1192,"title":"Tombstones","display_artist_text":"Jacob Lawrence","display_date":"1942","accession_number":"43.14","dimensions":"Sheet (Irregular): 30 7/8 × 22 13/16 in. (78.4 × 57.9 cm)","medium":"Opaque watercolor on paper","department":"collection","classification":"Drawings","credit_line":"Purchase","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":null,"edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eJacob Lawrence, \u003cem\u003eTombstones\u003c/em\u003e, 1942. Opaque watercolor on paper, sheet (Irregular): 30 7/8 × 22 13/16 in. (78.4 × 57.9 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase 43.14. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eCharacteristic of Jacob Lawrence’s work in the 1940s are subjects drawn from the streets and interiors of Harlem. Although he believed that you cannot “tell a story in a single painting,” Lawrence occasionally worked outside the series structure for which he is best known. In uninflected areas of bold color, \u003ci\u003eTombstones\u003c/i\u003e pictures neighbors and residents in front of an apartment building. It encapsulates the full sweep of life within the African American community, from the cradle—the baby carriage at left, the Madonna-like mother and child at right—to the grave, marked at center by the tombstone seller’s wares. Painted a year after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and a year before the artist would be inducted into the United States Coast Guard as a steward’s mate, \u003ci\u003eTombstones\u003c/i\u003e displays Lawrence’s unflinching realism regarding the cycle of life and death, in his own community and beyond.\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"People move on a stoop above a small graveyard with tombstones and a mourning mother.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:31:37.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-02-06T12:00:25.326-05:00","images":[{"id":92716,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/1192/43_14_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"759","type":"artist"}]}}}}