{"data":{"id":"141","type":"artwork","attributes":{"id":141,"topgoose_id":9809,"portfolio_id":null,"tms_id":141,"title":"War Series: Casualty - The Secretary of War Regrets","display_artist_text":"Jacob Lawrence","display_date":"1947","accession_number":"51.16","dimensions":"Overall: 24 1/4 × 16 3/16 in. (61.6 × 41.1 cm)\r\nImage: 20 1/16 × 15 7/8 × 1/8 in. (51 × 40.3 × 0.3 cm)","medium":"Tempera on composition board","department":"collection","classification":"Paintings","credit_line":"Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger","is_virtual":false,"is_portfolio":false,"portfolio_tms_id":null,"portfolio":"War Series","edition":null,"publication_info":"","description":"\u003cp\u003eJacob Lawrence, \u003cem\u003eWar Series: Casualty - The Secretary of War Regrets\u003c/em\u003e, 1947. Tempera on composition board, overall: 24 1/4 × 16 3/16 in. (61.6 × 41.1 cm)\r\nImage: 20 1/16 × 15 7/8 × 1/8 in. (51 × 40.3 × 0.3 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger 51.16. © The Jacob and Gwendolyn Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York\u003c/p\u003e","object_label":"\u003cp\u003eJacob Lawrence’s \u003ci\u003eWar Series\u003c/i\u003e describes first-hand the sense of regimentation, community, and displacement that the artist experienced during his service in the United States Coast Guard during World War II. Lawrence served his first year in St. Augustine, Florida, in a racially segregated regiment where he was first given the rank of Steward’s Mate, the only one available to black Americans at the time. He befriended a commander who shared his interest in art, however, and he went on to serve in an integrated regiment as Coast Guard Artist, documenting the war in Italy, England, Egypt, and India. Those works are lost, but in 1946 he received a Guggenheim Fellowship to paint the \u003ci\u003eWar Series.\u003c/i\u003e The fourteen panels of the series present a narrative which progresses from \u003ci\u003eShipping Out\u003c/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eVictory\u003c/i\u003e. In the panels, Lawrence adopted the silhouetted figures, prominent eyes, and simplified, overlapping profiles that are typical of Egyptian wall painting. And like the ancient painters, he transformed groups of figures into surface patterns, eschewing modeling and perspective in favor of the immediacy of bold, abstracted forms. In their alternation between vertical and horizontal formats, single figures and groups, and intense action and contemplation, the fourteen panels of the \u003ci\u003eWar Series\u003c/i\u003e testify to Lawrence’s belief that one cannot “tell a story in a single painting.”\u003c/p\u003e","ai_alt_text":"Person in a dark cloak leans over a table with a framed photo, surrounded by floral patterns.","alt_text":null,"visual_description":null,"on_view":false,"created_at":"2017-08-30T16:31:41.000-04:00","updated_at":"2026-04-06T06:00:01.789-04:00","images":[{"id":91841,"url":"https://whitneymedia.org/assets/artwork/141/51_16_cropped.jpg"}]},"relationships":{"artists":{"data":[{"id":"759","type":"artist"}]}}}}