HENRY BOZEMAN JONES (1889 - 1973)
Portrait of a Young Boy.
Oil on masonite board, circa 1945. 609x508 mm; 24x20 inches. Signed in oil, lower left.Provenance: private collection, Philadelphia. Presentation plaque on the front of the frame engraved, "Presented by Susan Parrish Wharton Settlement 1945."Portrait of a Young Boy is a seated portrait of a young boy posed to the right of a sculpture of the same sitter. The painting's plaque shows that it was a gift presented to Susan Parrish Wharton from the Susan Parrish Wharton Settlement in 1945. Susan Wharton Parrish was an advocate of the Settlement movement and early supporter of African American rights. She opened the Whittier Centre for Blacks in North Philadelphia, later renamed the Susan Parrish Wharton Settlement after her death in 1928. The Settlement continued in the twenty-first century as the Wharton Centre.Henry Bozeman Jones studied at the School of Pedagogy and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1908 - 1910. While earning a living as a children's book illustrator, Jones was a painter, printmaker and a contemporary of Allan Freelon. He exhibited his work in the Harmon Foundation exhibitions of 1929, 1930, 1931 and 1933. According to Against the Odds: African-American Artists and the Harmon Foundation, his work changed from an academic style to a more colorful, modern aesthetic in 1937 after a sketching trip to North Carolina and the Bahamas. Reynolds/Wright/Driskell p. 223.