Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet

Elizabeth Prophet, sculptor and teacher (Harmon Foundation)
Born March 19, 1890
Warwick, Rhode Island
Died 1960
Nationality African American, Native American, Narragansett
Alma mater Rhode Island School of Design
Known for Sculptor

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet (March 19, 1890 – 1960) was an American sculptor. She became noted for her work in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. A perfectionist who did all her own carving, her surviving output is small.

Biography

Nancy Elizabeth Prophet was born on March 19, 1890, to William H. Prophet and Rose Walker Prophet, in Warwick, Rhode Island. Her parents were of mixed Native American and African American ancestry; her father was Narragansett.[1]

In 1914, at the age of 24, Prophet, a high school graduate who had worked for several years as a stenographer in a black lawyer's office, enrolled in the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. In 1915 she married Francis Ford, who had briefly attended Brown University. They later divorced and there were no children. While at RISD Prophet studied painting and drawing, especially portraiture.

After her graduation in 1918 she tried to make a living as a portrait painter, but times were hard in Rhode Island at the end of the Great War. There was racial segregation in relatively liberal Providence (which had integrated its public schools in the 1860s), and theaters and restaurants had whites only sections. Although there is no documentary proof of the incident, she later told the poet Countee Cullen that she had exhibited a piece in Providence, which was accepted on the proviso she not attend the opening of the exhibition, so she withdrew the piece.

Prophet moved to Paris in 1922 to study sculpture. Most of the evidence for the twelve years she spent in France comes from her diary, a forty-six page hand written manuscript, in which she portrays periods of intense activity contrasting with periods of extreme depression. Although she claimed to have studied at the École des Beaux-Arts, they have no record of her, and she probably studied at one of the connected ateliers.

She sent for her husband, with whom she had a complex relationship. One of her finest surviving works is Negro Head, a larger than life size wooden sculpture, which a niece of Frank Ford identified as her Uncle Frank.[2]

Returning to the United States in 1932, Prophet saw her work begin to gain attention. She was invited to exhibit her art in galleries located in New York and Rhode Island.

Prophet moved her studies down to Atlanta, Georgia, and began a career as a professor teaching art students enrolled at both Atlanta University and Spelman College,[1] in hopes of encouraging the creative minds of youth, the encouragement she was not presented with during her early years.

In 1945, Prophet returned to Rhode Island to escape the rejection she had once again faced in the south and attempted to regain her status as an artist. Due to lack of networking and contacts, her attempt proved dismal and Prophet was forced into domestic work. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet died in 1960.

Exhibitions

Depictions

In conjunction with a series of events in Providence, RI on Prophet's life and work in April 2014, actress Sylvia Ann Soares performed dramatic readings from Prophet's Paris Dairies, 1922-1934, in a performance titled The Life and Art of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: Calm Assurance and Savage Pleasure.[3] The diaries which served as the source material for the performance, cover Prophet's twelve years in France, and are currently held by Brown University’s John Hay Library.[4]

Later that year, Soares reprised the role of Prophet in "It is Just Defiance": A Living History of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet's Paris Diaries, which covered Prophet's time in Paris during the mid 1930s.[5]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Arna Alexander Bontemps and Jacqueline Fonvielle-Bontemps (eds.), ed. (2001). "African-American Women Artists: An Historical Perspective". Black feminist cultural criticism. Keyworks in cultural studies. Malden, Mass: Blackwell. pp. 133–137. ISBN 0631222391.
  2. ↑ Jane Lancaster, interview with Faith Ramsey, June 1993, in "She looked to me as though she was in another world," in Rosemary W. Prisco, ed., Rhode Island Women Speak, East Providence, RI: Rhode Island Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1997, 42
  3. ↑ The Life and Art of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet: Calm Assurance and Savage Pleasure. RISD Museum Calendar for 13 April 2014. RISD Museum. Accessed 8 July 2014
  4. ↑ Pina, Alisha A. (13 April 2014). "Sculptor Nancy Elizabeth Prophet, RISD’s first black graduate, celebrated at Providence school". Providence Journal (Providence, RI). Retrieved 9 July 2014.
  5. ↑ Maralie. ""It is Just Defiance" - A Living History of Nancy Elizabeth Prophet's Paris Diaries". AS220. Retrieved 8 July 2014.

Bibliography

Books

Online resources

External links