Winold Reiss: The Librarian Notecard

Winold Reiss made numerous portraits of Harlem residents in the 1920s, including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Paul Robeson, Alain Locke, and other well-known cultural figures. But he also painted anonymous sitters and created composite portraits such as The Librarian. The image was reproduced as part of the series “Four Portraits of Negro Women” in the landmark March 1925 issue of Survey Graphic, titled “Harlem, Mecca of the New Negro”—an important publication of the Harlem, or “New Negro,” Renaissance. The portraits precede the educator Elise Johnson McDougald’s article “The Double Task: The Struggle of Negro Women for Sex and Race Emancipation.”