Humbert Howard was a figurative painter turned abstract artist born July 12, 1905, in Philadelphia. He lived in Chicago from ages five to eleven, and, upon his relocation back to Philadelphia, took his first art class at Josephine Widener Grammar School. Attending Howard University on an athletic scholarship in 1932, he studied art under the influential African American artist James Porter. In 1934 Howard returned to Philadelphia to care for his ailing mother and transferred to the University of Pennsylvania in 1937, but was forced to leave his studies in order to bring in a steady income. He applied for a job with the US Postal Service, and while he waited for a response, he began working for the Works Progress Administration as a painter and ceramist alongside Dox Thrash, Raymond Steth, Claude Clark, Samuel Brown, and others.[1]
On June 10, 1938, Howard married Beatrice Wood, great-great-granddaughter of Richard Allen, the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The following year, he exhibited his landscape Bible Stories (1939) at the 1939 New York World's Fair in the same pavilion as Augusta Savage’s The Harp (1939).[2] From 1940 until 1958, he was the promotional director of the Exhibition Committee for Philadelphia’s Pyramid Club, where he curated integrated exhibitions of works by Black and white artists. In 1941 Howard had also begun working at the post office sorting mail, and his income allowed him to rent a studio so that he could continue painting. His first solo exhibition was at Temple University in 1947. After he left the Pyramid Club, he studied at the Barnes Foundation until 1961 and retired from the US Postal Service in 1971.[3]
Howard died February 10, 1990, in a retirement home in Philadelphia.[4]
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Notes
[1] Collier-Thomas 1996; King-Hammond 1996; Panzera 1996.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Collier-Thomas 1996; Panzera 1996.
References
Collier-Thomas, Bettye. 1996. “Creating a Place for Ourselves: The Rise of Humbert L. Howard, Black Art, and the Pyramid Club.” In Humbert Howard: Philadelphia Painter, January 17-February 29, 1996. Curated by Lisa Panzera. Philadelphia: Moore College of Art and Design.
King-Hammond, Leslie. 1996. “Humbert Howard: The Mind and Spirit of an Artist.” In Humbert Howard: Philadelphia Painter, January 17-February 29, 1996. Curated by Lisa Panzera. Philadelphia: Moore College of Art and Design.
Panzera, Lisa. 1996. “Selected Biography.” In Humbert Howard: Philadelphia Painter, January 17-February 29, 1996. Curated by Lisa Panzera. Philadelphia: Moore College of Art and Design.
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