Harleston: Who is E.A. Harleston?

by Thom Pegg

That was the title of an article which appeared in Opportunity in January of 1924.  Sadly, that could be—and in fact, is—the title of a piece written today about an important black artist who was once called “a pioneer in Negro portraiture.” (Cederholm, p. 117)

Edwin Augustus Harleston was born in Charleston, South Carolina in 1882.  He attended public schools and was awarded a scholarship to attend the Avery Institute, an all-black school from which he graduated valedictorian in 1900.  He went on to study at Atlanta University, and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1904.  After graduating, he traveled to Boston to further his art education.  He enrolled in the school of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in 1905, and stayed there for the next eight years, working with the “Boston School” artists William Paxton, Philip Leslie Hale, Edmund C. Tarbell, and Frank W. Benson, all of whom were known for their mastery of portraiture.  While in Boston, Harleston also attended Harvard University.

Paxton was fascinated by the works of the seventeenth-century Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer, and the latter’s system of optics he employed; a system Paxton called “binocular vision”.  In this, the slightly different viewpoint of each eye is considered.  Adopted into his painting technique, the result was that one area of the painting is in focus (typically, but not always, the foreground) and the rest of the canvas is rendered slightly blurry.  The sitter in Paxton’s In the Studio is seen in sharp focus, while the rest of the composition, in contrast, is slightly softer, including the depiction of the artist, the palette and the background.

The similar composition by Harleston reveals Vermeer’s technique as taught to Harleston by Paxton.  Harleston’s version depicts a more modest scene, even though the sitter is clearly well-to-do, which would not be surprising from a young black painter (Paxton was painting Boston’s high society).

Harleston left Boston and returned to Charleston to work at a funeral home run by his father.  He became active in local civil rights organizations, including the N.A.A.C.P., and continued to paint in his free time.  He married Elise Beatrice Forrest in 1920.  The two knew each other from the Avery Institute, although Edwin was nine years her senior.  Elise had traveled to New York when she graduated in 1919 to study at the E. Brunel School of Photography, but like Edwin, had returned to Charleston.  In 1921, Edwin encouraged her to continue her studies at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama.  Together, in 1922, they opened a studio at 118 Calhoun Street in Charleston executing portraits (paintings and photography).  The Harleston Studio existed for 10 years.

Edwin and Elise had no children of their own, but they raised Edwin’s niece, Edwina “Gussie” Augusta Harleston Whitlock.  Edwina’s parents, Marie Isabella Forrest and Robert Othello Harleston died of tuberculosis.  In 1925, Edwin won the Amy Spingarn Award for a portrait of Elise.  He also took classes at the Art Institute of Chicago that year in anticipation of landing a teaching job at Howard University (which never materialized).  Edwin won the Alain Locke Prize for portrait painting at a Harmon Foundation exhibition in 1931.

Edwin frequently gave tutorials locally on portrait painting, and in 1930, assisted Aaron Douglas on the murals at Fisk University (in Nashville, TN).  In a tragic turn of events, Edwin had kissed his deathly-ill father, and died of pneumonia a short time later in 1931.

Elise remarried within a year to a schoolteacher named John J. Wheeler.  She was known as South Carolina’s first female African American photographer.  In 1996, two of her photographs were included in an international exhibition at the New York Public Library, titled, A History of Women Photographers.   She was also featured in Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe’s (see lot 113) book, Viewfinders: Black Women Photographers .