Allan Randall Freelon Sr. (September 2, 1895 – August 6, 1960), a native of

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

, US, was an

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

artist, educator and civil rights activist. He is best known as an African American

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

-style painter during the time of the

Harlem Renaissance The Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, theater, politics and scholarship centered in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, spanning the 1920s and 1930s. At the t ...

and as the first African American to be appointed art supervisor of the Philadelphia School District.

Personal life

Born in Philadelphia on September 2, 1895, to Douglas Freelon and Laura E. (Goodwin) Freelon, a "middle-class family of notable academic achievement", Freelon was the oldest of three children. On September 4, 1918, he married Marie J. Cuyjet, and they had one child, Allan Randall Freelon Jr. At some point Freelon and Cuyjet divorced; Freelon was married to Mary Kouzmanoff at the time of his death, August 6, 1960. He died while at his art studio in Telford, Pennsylvania. Architect

Philip Freelon Philip Goodwin Freelon (March 26, 1953 – July 9, 2019) was an American architect. He was best known for leading the design team (with J. Max Bond Jr. of Davis Brody Bond, and David Adjaye) of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of A ...

is his grandson.

Education

Freelon attended the South Philadelphia High School for Boys, followed by a four-year scholarship (1912–1916) to the

Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art The Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art (PMSIA), also referred to as the School of Applied Art, was chartered by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania on February 26, 1876, as both a museum and teaching institution. This was in response to t ...

, now the

University of the Arts (Philadelphia) The University of the Arts (UArts) is a private art university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its campus makes up part of the Avenue of the Arts in Center City, Philadelphia. Dating back to the 1870s, it is one of the oldest schools of art o ...

, from which he graduated in 1916 with a diploma in normal art instruction (what would be called art education today). From there he attended the

Philadelphia School of Pedagogy Central High School is a public high school in the LoganLogan Redevelopment Area ...

, an upper division of Central High School created to prepare men for teaching careers. Following a stint in the Army from 1917 to 1919, where he served as a second lieutenant, he attended the

University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...

and graduated in February 1924 with a BS in education. Further studies ensued at the

Barnes Foundation The Barnes Foundation is an art collection and educational institution promoting the appreciation of art and horticulture. Originally in Merion, the art collection moved in 2012 to a new building on Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia, Pen ...

(1927 through 1929), followed by private studies with

Emile Gruppe Emile Albert Gruppé (1896–1978) was an American painter, known for impressionistic landscapes and Massachusetts coastal and marine paintings.Hugh Breckenridge Hugh Henry Breckenridge (1870-1937), was an American painter and art instructor who championed the artistic movements from impressionism to modernism. Breckenridge taught for more than forty years at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, becomin ...

(1870–1937), and printmaker

Dox Thrash Dox Thrash (1893–1965) was an African-American artist who was famed as a skilled Drafter, draftsman, master printmaker, and painter and as the co-inventor of the Carborundum printmaking process.Donnelly, Michell"The Art of Dox Thrash" The Encycl ...

(1892–1965), and the earning of an MFA in 1943 from

Tyler School of Art The Tyler School of Art and Architecture is based at Temple University, a large, urban, public research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Tyler currently enrolls about 1,350 undergraduate students and about 200 graduate students in a wid ...

of Temple University.

Artistic career

Carolina magazine (serial) (1921) (14589564829)

One of Freelon's earliest documented exhibitions also happened to be the first exhibition of African-American art in Harlem, at the 135th Street Branch of the New York Public Library, now part of the

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is a research library of the New York Public Library (NYPL) and an archive repository for information on people of African descent worldwide. Located at 515 Malcolm X Boulevard (Lenox Avenue) b ...

. He later exhibited from 1928 to 1932 and in 1934 with the

William E. Harmon Foundation The Harmon Foundation was established in 1921 by wealthy real-estate developer and philanthropist William E. Harmon (1862–1928). A native of the Midwest, Harmon's father was an officer in the 10th Cavalry Regiment. The Foundation originally su ...

, whose exhibitions traveled widely in the United States. Other exhibition venues included the Albright-Knox Gallery (Buffalo, NY), the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

(Washington, DC), Howard University Gallery of Art (Washington, DC),

New Jersey State Museum The New Jersey State Museum is located at 195-205 West State Street in Trenton, New Jersey. It serves a broad region between New York City and Philadelphia. The museum's collections include natural history specimens, archaeological and ethnograph ...

(Trenton, NJ), Arthur U. Newton Gallery (New York, NY),

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is an art museum in the Meatpacking District and West Village neighborhoods of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (1875–1942), ...

(New York, NY), Lincoln University, and Lehigh Art Alliance (Lehigh, PA). Freelon was one of seven African-American artists who participated in the exhibition ''Art Commentary on Lynching'', organized by the NAACP in response to deaths such as that of Claude Neal. The exhibition was held February 15 to March 2, 1935, in New York. Freelon's work, ''Barbecue – American Style'', portrays a naked man, tortured and in flames, encircled by the feet of spectators. He wrote: Freelon was a member of

Alpha Phi Alpha Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc. () is the oldest intercollegiate historically African American fraternity. It was initially a literary and social studies club organized in the 1905–1906 school year at Cornell University but later evolved int ...

fraternity, Philadelphia Art Teachers Association, Philadelphia Art Week Association, Artists' Equity, Tra Club, Pyramid Club, Society of New Jersey Artists,

North Shore Art Association The North Shore Art Association of East Gloucester, Massachusetts is one of the oldest art associations in the United States. Founded in 1922, it was the gathering place of some of the great American artists of the 20th century. Childe Hassam, ...

of Gloucester, MA,

American Federation of Arts The American Federation of Arts (AFA) is a nonprofit organization that creates art exhibitions for presentation in museums around the world, publishes exhibition catalogues, and develops education programs. The organization’s founding in 1909 w ...

, and was the first person of color elected to the Print Club of Philadelphia. He served as an editor of and contributor to the literary and art magazine, '' Black Opals''. Formed in 1937, the Pyramid Club provided prominent African Americans, who were excluded from most clubs, with opportunities to meet and network. From March 2–16, 1941, the Pyramid Club sponsored the first of its annual invitational art exhibits, ''20th Century Negro Contemporary Artists and Memorial Paintings of Henry O. Tanner''. Freelon was asked to speak at the inaugural event, and discussed the role of the Black artist and his influence in current events. Freelon exhibited often with artist Henry B. Jones in shows in Philadelphia. He,

Laura Wheeler Waring Laura Wheeler Waring (May 16, 1887 – February 3, 1948) was an American artist and educator, best known for her paintings of prominent African Americans that she made during the Harlem Renaissance. She taught art for more than 30 years at Che ...

and Henry B. Jones provided artwork for an exhibition by the Negro Study Club at the Berean School in 1930. Coming of artistic age during the time of the "

New Negro "New Negro" is a term popularized during the Harlem Renaissance implying a more outspoken advocacy of dignity and a refusal to submit quietly to the practices and laws of Jim Crow racial segregation. The term "New Negro" was made popular by Alai ...

", Freelon found himself in aesthetic disagreement with fellow Philadelphian

Alain LeRoy Locke Alain LeRoy Locke (September 13, 1885 – June 9, 1954) was an American writer, philosopher, educator, and patron of the arts. Distinguished in 1907 as the first African-American Rhodes Scholar, Locke became known as the philosophical architect ...

, who urged African American artists to take up African themes as the source for their art in ''

The New Negro ''The New Negro: An Interpretation'' (1925) is an anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays on African and African-American art and literature edited by Alain Locke, who lived in Washington, DC, and taught at Howard University during the Harlem ...

'' (NY: Boni, 1925). Freelon "vigorously defended the artist's right to freedom of expression", writing in a 1944 review of James A. Porter's book, ''Modern Negro Art'': Freelon's work was featured in the 2015 exhibition '' We Speak: Black Artists in Philadelphia, 1920s-1970s'' at the

Woodmere Art Museum Woodmere Art Museum, located in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, has a collection of paintings, prints, sculpture and photographs focusing on artists from the Delaware Valley and includes works by Thomas Pollock Anshutz, S ...

Teaching career

Following his 1919 graduation from the Philadelphia School of Pedagogy, Freelon became an art teacher in the Philadelphia public school system. In 1921 he was appointed as assistant director of art education, the first African American to be appointed to the district's Department of Superintendence. In July 1939 he was named "special assistant to Theodore M. Dilliway ic: Dillaway director of art in the Philadelphia public schools, and will supervise art work in vocational and junior high schools. He has been supervising art projects in the elementary schools for a number of years, and his promotion follows competitive examination for the new post, held recently by Board of Education." He placed first in that examination and held that position until his death. Deeply interested in printmaking, Freelon taught etching and lithography at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

from 1940 to 1946. In addition to his public school teaching career, Freelon taught classes at the Telford, Pennsylvania, studio he called Windy Crest.

Political life

Freelon ran for the Pennsylvania state legislature in 1949 on the

Progressive Party (United States, 1948) The United States Progressive Party of 1948 was a left-wing political party in the United States that served as a vehicle for the campaign of Henry A. Wallace, a former vice president, to become President of the United States in 1948. The party ...

ticket. He lost.

References

External links

AAVAD.com (African American Visual Artists Database). Allan Freelon bibliography.

"Allan Freelon (1895–1960)." Michael Rosenfeld Gallery.

* [https://archive.org/stream/negroin00lock#page/132/mode/2up/search/freelon Locke, Alain LeRoy, 1885-1954. ''The Negro In Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art.'' Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1940.]
Weaver, Jim. "Allan Freelon: Pioneer African-American Impressionist."
{{DEFAULTSORT:Freelon, Allan Randall 1895 births 1960 deaths African-American artists Artists from Philadelphia Temple University Tyler School of Art alumni University of Pennsylvania alumni University of the Arts (Philadelphia) alumni 20th-century African-American people