Charles Wilbert White

In this etching by Charles White, a woman looks into the distance, her eyes slightly downcast. By leaving the woman’s brow and cheekbone nearly untouched, White contrasted the creamy color of the paper with the dense circular lines he used to define her head, imbuing his subject with a glowing sense of individuality, monumentality, and dignity.

In a 1965 interview, White explained: “[W]hen I say dignity and I say truth and I say beauty, these are universal kinds of things. . . . [S]omebody’s always asking me, ‘Why don’t you paint whites? You don’t paint anything other than Negroes,’ which indicates a certain lack of understanding and perceptiveness about this.”