ROSE PIPER (1917 - 2005)
Two Nuns on a Subway Begging Blood Back to Back (Subway Nuns).

Oil on linen canvas, 1947. 406x457 mm; 16x18 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.

Provenance: acquired from Roko Gallery, Leroy and Elaine Bettis, New York (1947); private collection, New York.

Exhibited: Blues and Negro Folk Songs, Roko Gallery, New York, September 28 - October 30, 1947. This important exhibition at the Roko Gallery was the artist's first solo exhibition - this painting was one of fourteen works on display.

This painting is an exciting discovery. Piper's prized 1940s paintings are very scarce - we know of four surviving today. Graham Lock wrote about this painting in his chapter "Blues on the Brush: Rose Piper's Blues and Negro Folk Songs Paintings of the 1940s" in The Hearing Eye: Jazz & Blues Influences in African American Visual Art. He describes how unlike the other paintings in this exhibition, Subway Nuns was not based on music but on lines from a contemporary Myron O'Higgins poem, Nuns on the Subway. The relevant lines read "...this way she listens for the gourd / and waits to join the dead who / wander clockwise / begging blood at corners back to back..."

Rose Piper was one of the most promising painters in the late 1940s; Charles Alston was a friend and mentor. A graduate of Hunter College, she won consecutive Rosenwald fellowships in 1946 and 1947 - the first allowed her to travel to the South to study blues and other African American musical forms.

With critical acclaim for her solo exhibition, and on her second Rosenwald fellowship, Piper travelled to Paris where she took classes at the École des Beaux Arts. She also won first prize in painting at the 7th Annual Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture and Prints by Negro Artist at Atlanta University. Unfortunately, two years later, a number of family crises led Piper to step away from her painting career to become the breadwinner for a family of six. She started her own greeting card company, and then worked as a successful designer in the garment industry. Piper did not returned to painting full time until 1980.

Special thanks to Khela Ransier, the artist's daughter, for confirming the authenticity of this painting. Lock pp. 48-64.