JAMES BRANTLEY (1945 - )
Runway Series #7.

Acyrlic on cotton canvas, 2015. 610x762 mm; 24x30 inches. Signed and dated in pencil, upper right.

Provenance: collection of the artist.

Philadelphia-native artist James Brantley rose to prominence in postwar figurative art in the early 1970s. He graduated from Simon Gratz High School with fellow artist Barkley Hendricks, and they both went on to study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. One of his best known works, the striking 1968 self-portrait Brother James was acquired by PAFA in 1970. After serving in the US Army in Vietnam, Brantley graduated from PAFA in 1971, followed by the Philadelphia College of Art in 1972, and the University of Pennsylvania in 1973. He also exhibited in the influential 1973 exhibition Contemporary Black Artists in America at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Brantley won the Hallgarten Prize from the National Academy of Design, the Louis Fine Purchase Award from the Pennsylvania Academy of Art. He has had numerous solo exhibitions and today his paintings are found in the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Petrucci Family Foundation Collection of African American Art.

Consigned to support the Rush Philanthropic Arts Foundation.