Exhibition Label

Zora Neale Hurston was a writer and anthropologist whose novels and essays revealed the vital ethnic culture of southern African Americans. Raised in the all-black town of Eatonville, Florida, Hurston moved to New York City to study with Franz Boas and became a striking, stylish figure of the Harlem Renaissance. A charismatic raconteur, Hurston was brutally honest in writing and in person. In Mules and Men (1935), she captured the rich voices and mythos of the African American oral storytelling tradition. In Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), her heroine learns independence the hard way and concisely captures the modernist ethos of the self: "You gotta go there to know there." In her essays Hurston analyzed the aesthetics of spirituals, sermon s, juke joints, and African American vernacular English. Alice Walker’s rediscovery of Hurston in the early 1980s—after four decades of neglect—remains one of the great comeback stories in American literary history.

Topic

Costume\Jewelry\Necklace

Interior

Costume\Headgear\Hat

Zora Neale Hurston: Female

Zora Neale Hurston: Literature\Writer\Novelist

Zora Neale Hurston: Humanities and Social Sciences\Folklorist

Portrait

National Portrait Gallery

Restrictions & Rights

1935 negative © Carl Van Vechten Trust Gravure and compilation ©The Eakins Press Foundation

Artist

Carl Van Vechten, 17 Jun 1880 - 21 Dec 1964

Sitter

Zora Neale Hurston, 1891 - 28 Jan 1960

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Medium

Photogravure

Dimensions

Image: 22.5 x 14.9cm (8 7/8 x 5 7/8")

Sheet: 55.7 x 35.6cm (21 15/16 x 14")

Mat (custom size): 61 x 40.6cm (24 x 16")

See more items in

National Portrait Gallery Collection

1935 (printed 1983)

Type

Photograph

Object number

NPG.83.188.24

Culture

Zora Neale Hurston: American\African American