Allan Crite

{{Infobox artist

| name = Allan Rohan Crite

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1910|3|20}}

| birth_place = North Plainfield, New Jersey, United States

| death_date = {{death date and age|2007|9|6|1910|3|20}}

| death_place = Boston, Massachusetts, United States

| nationality = African American

| education =

| alma_mater = School of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Harvard University (ALB)

| notable_works =

| style =

| movement =

| awards = Harvard University Anniversary Medal

| known_for = Oils, prints; drafting; author, publisher, and librarian

}}

Allan Rohan Crite (March 20, 1910 – September 6, 2007) was a Boston-based African American artist. He won several honors, such as the 350th Harvard University Anniversary Medal.{{cite web| url=http://www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/alum/1998/04.html| publisher=Harvard Extension School| work=Alumni Bulletin| title=Allan Crite at Home| year=1998| access-date=March 20, 2008| archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20080421043231/http://www.dce.harvard.edu/pubs/alum/1998/04.html| archive-date=April 21, 2008 | url-status= dead}}

Biography

File:School’s Out SAAM-1971.447.18 1.jpg

Crite was born in North Plainfield, New Jersey, on March 20, 1910.{{cite web|url=http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=81|title=Allan Crite Biography|work=The HistoryMakers|access-date=March 20, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070213002647/http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/biography.asp?bioindex=81|archive-date=February 13, 2007|url-status=dead}} The family relocated to Massachusetts and from the age of one until his death Crite lived in Boston's South End. Crite's mother, Annamae, was a poet who encouraged her son to draw. Showing promise at a young age, he enrolled in the Children's Art Centre at United South End Settlements in Boston and graduated from the English High School in 1929. His father, Oscar William Crite, was a doctor and engineer, one of the first black people to earn an engineering license.{{Cite web|url=https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-allan-rohan-crite-11458|title=Oral history interview with Allan Rohan Crite, 1979 January 16-1980 October 22|last=|first=|date=September 19, 2002|website=Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Art |access-date=}}

Though he was admitted to the Yale School of Art, he chose to attend the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and graduated in 1936.{{cite news| work=Boston Globe| url=http://www.boston.com/news/globe/obituaries/articles/2007/09/08/allan_rohan_crite_97_dean_of_ne_african_american_artists/| date=November 8, 2007| access-date=March 20, 2008| first=Mark |last= Feeney| title=Allan Rohan Crite, 97, dean of N.E. African-American artists}}

Recognition came early as well. His work was first shown at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1936.

Crite then attended Harvard Extension School, where he earned an ALB degree in 1968.{{cite web|url=http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/bios/crite-bio.htm |publisher=Phillips Collection |title=Allan Rohan Crite |access-date=March 20, 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071013004004/http://www.phillipscollection.org/american_art/bios/crite-bio.htm |archive-date=October 13, 2007 |url-status=dead }}

Crite was among the few African-Americans employed by the Federal Art Project. In 1940, he took a job as an engineering draftsman with the Boston Naval Shipyard; it supported his work as an artist for 30 years. He later worked part time as a librarian at Harvard University's Grossman Library.

In 1986, Boston named the intersection of Columbus Avenue and West Canton Street, steps from his home, Allan Rohan Crite Square.{{cite news | url = https://patch.com/massachusetts/southend/famous-works-from-south-end-artist-found-in-storage-n233f3ece96 | access-date = August 26, 2020 | date = June 11, 2013 | title = Famous Works from South End Artist Found in Storage, Now Up for Auction | publisher = Patch Local News}}

In 1993, Crite married Jackie Cox-Crite. Together they established the Crite House Museum in their home at 410 Columbus Avenue in Boston's South End.

Suffolk University awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1979.{{cite web | access-date = August 26, 2020 | url = https://www.suffolk.edu/academics/libraries/mildred-f-sawyer-library/about-us/artwork-in-the-library | website = Suffolk University | title = Artwork in the Library}}

He died in his sleep of natural causes on September 6, 2007, at age 97.{{cite web| url=http://www.askart.com/askart/artist.aspx?artist=21037| publisher=AskArt| title=Allan Rohan Crite|access-date=March 21, 2008}}

His widow established the Allan Rohan Crite Research Institute to safeguard his legacy, which Crite never thought important, by authenticating and cataloging his many scattered works.

Artwork

Image:American-cities-145.jpg]]Crite hoped to depict the life of African-Americans living in Boston in a new and different way: as ordinary citizens or the "middle class" rather than stereotypical jazz musicians or sharecroppers.{{Cite web|url=http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artist/?id=1047|title=Allan Rohan Crite |website= Smithsonian American Art Museum|language=en|access-date=March 11, 2017}} Through his art, he intended to tell the story of African Americans as part of the fabric of American society and its reality. By using representational style rather than modernism, Crite felt that he could more adequately "report" and capture the reality that African Americans were part of but often unaccounted for.

Crite explained his body of work as having a common theme:

{{blockquote|I've only done one piece of work in my whole life and I am still at it. I wanted to paint people of color as normal humans. I tell the story of man through the black figure.}}

His paintings fall into two categories: religious themes and general African-American experiences, with some reviewers adding a third category for work depicting Negro spirituals. Spirituals, he believed, expressed a certain humanity. Crite was a devout Episcopalian, and his religion inspired many of his works.{{cite web|url= https://aaregistry.org/story/allan-crite-an-innovative-painter/ |title=Allan Crite, an innovative painter|work=The African American Registry|access-date=August 26, 2020}}{{cite web|url=http://www.3d-dali.com/Artist-Biographies/Allan_Crite.html|title=Allan Crite|publisher=3D-Dali|work=Painters Biographies|access-date=March 21, 2008|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080409172211/http://www.3d-dali.com/Artist-Biographies/Allan_Crite.html|archive-date=April 9, 2008 |url-status=live}} His 1946 painting Madonna of the Subway is an example of a blend of genres, depicting a Black Holy Mother and baby Jesus riding Boston's Orange Line. Other pieces such as School's Out (1936) reflect on the themes of community, family, society.{{Cite web|url=http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=5965| title=School's Out by Allan Rohan Crite| website= Smithsonian American Art Museum|access-date=March 11, 2017}} On his faith and the role of liturgy in his pieces, Crite said in an interview:

{{Blockquote|It was very useful, because it gave me a framework of discipline within which to do my work. So I used that, for example, as the frame of discipline to illustrate the spirituals, by making use of the liturgy, the vestments, and everything like that — using the vestments and appurtenances as, you might say, a vocabulary.}}

His work is recognizable in its use of rich earth tone colors. According to one biographer, his favorite color was "all colors" and his favorite time of year was "anything but winter." According to one reviewer, "Crite's oils and graphics, even when restricted to black and white, are bright in tonality, fine and varied in line, extremely rhythmic, dramatic in movement, and often patterned."

Crite's works hang in more than a hundred American institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and Washington’s Phillips Collection. The Boston Athenaeum holds the largest public collection of his paintings and watercolors, a bequest from Crite in gratitude for his long tenure there as a visiting artist.{{Citation needed|date=May 2021}}

Books

Crite's illustrated books include:{{cite web | url = https://pffcollection.com/artists/allan-rohan-crite/ | access-date = August 26, 2020 | title= Allan Rohan Crite, 1910-2007, Works in the Collection | website = Petrucci Family Foundation | date = July 28, 2016 }}

Were You There When They Crucified My Lord. A Negro Spiritual in Illustrations (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1944)
All Glory: Brush Drawing Meditations On The Prayer Of Consecration (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Society of Saint John the Evangelist, 1947)
Three Spirituals from Earth to Heaven (1948), in which he illustrated religious stories from such African-American spirituals as "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen"

Exhibitions

Crite's major exhibitions included:

1920s Harmon Foundation Exhibitions
1930s Museum of Modern Art, New York
1936 Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
1939 Boston Museum of Fine Arts
1978 the Boston Athenaeum
1999 Frye Art Museum, Seattle{{cite news | work= National Catholic Reporter | access-date = August 26, 2020 | url = http://natcath.org/NCR_Online/archives2/2007d/121407/121407r.htm | date= December 14, 2007 |first = Rachelle | last = Linner| title = The Spirit of the Spiritual }}

His works were shown in a coordinated series of posthumous exhibitions in 2007-08, at the Boston Public Library, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists.{{cite web|url=http://www.bpl.org/crite2.pdf |title=The life and art of Allan Rohan Crite: 1910-2007 |publisher=Boston Public Library |access-date=March 21, 2008 |date=November 17, 2007 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071220145949/http://www.bpl.org/crite2.pdf |archive-date=December 20, 2007 }}

Notes

External links

[https://web.archive.org/web/20080916094712/http://americanart.si.edu/images/1971/1971.447.18_1b.jpg "School's Out"] at Smithsonian American Art Museum
[http://dla.library.upenn.edu/dla/pacscl/detail.html?id=PACSCL_SMREP_AAMP08 Allan Rohan Crite papers] at the [https://www.aampmuseum.org/ African American Museum in Philadelphia]

Category:1910 births

Category:2007 deaths

Category:Harvard Extension School alumni

Category:20th-century American painters

Category:American male painters

Category:21st-century American painters

Category:People from North Plainfield, New Jersey

Category:Painters from Boston

Category:School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts alumni

Category:African-American Episcopalians

Category:Painters from New Jersey

Category:English High School of Boston alumni