About “Builders,” 1980, Lawrence said, “I like the symbolism of the builder. I think of it as man’s aspiration to build harmony.”
courtesy Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Foundation About “Builders,” 1980, Lawrence said, “I like the symbolism of the builder. I think of it as man’s aspiration to build harmony.”

No other American painter has celebrated the building trades quite like Jacob Lawrence. From the 1940s to 2000, he completed more than 60 paintings  and countless studies titled “Builders” that capture, in a style often called “visual blues,” his admiration for “people, forces in the world that build community.”

“Cabinet Makers,” 1946, was Jacob Lawrence’s first attempt to capture what he later described as “a dance to see people moving around, moving tools about."
courtesy Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Foundation “Cabinet Makers,” 1946, was Jacob Lawrence’s first attempt to capture what he later described as “a dance to see people moving around, moving tools about."

The “Builders” works were inspired by Lawrence’s experience as a teenager hanging out at a local cabinet shop. “When I was fifteen or sixteen,” he’s reported saying, “I was exposed to the workshop of these three brothers in Harlem, cabinetmakers ... They worked with tools that were aesthetically beautiful, like sculpture.”

The cabinet shop was one of several workshops and artist’s studios in a building at 306 West 141st St.—a three-story stable converted into shared work space by painter Charles Alston and sculptor Henry Bannarn. Jacob was just a kid in the neighborhood with no formal art training but tons of  enthusiasm to paint what he experienced. He started taking afterschool art classes from Alston at a nearby library. Alston moved the program to “306” after he won a grant from the Works Progress Administration. Once an official WPA Workshop, 306 flourished as a meeting and work space for a wide range of artists and writers, including printmaker Robert Blackburn; writers Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, and William Saroyan; cartoonist William Steig (originator of Shrek); and painters Gwendolyn Knight (who would eventually marry Jacob Lawrence), Romare Bearden, and Norman Lewis.

A year after "The Cabinet Makers," Lawrence painted his first “Builders" (1947).In 2008, the White House Acquisition Trust purchased this painting for $2,504,000.
courtesy Jacob and Gwen Knight Lawrence Foundation A year after "The Cabinet Makers," Lawrence painted his first “Builders" (1947).
In 2008, the White House Acquisition Trust purchased this painting for $2,504,000.

Included in this who’s who of the Harlem Renaissance at 306 were the cabinetmakers Addison, John, and Leonard Bates, who opened their shop to Mr. Lawrence for his first solo show of paintings in 1935. In an interview in 1998, at age 81, he said “I didn’t realize what an impression they were making as cabinetmakers. I didn’t realize at the time that this would be one of my life subjects.”