Cecil Gaylord / the Independent Artists Exhibition

Our tenth February 1922 post to mark Black History Month 2022

One hundred years ago today … Cecil Gaylord’s work went on display at the Anderson Galleries, Park Avenue and 59th Street. The occasion was a sale of art associated with the Society of  Independent Artists, which served as a precursor to the organization’s exhibit planned for the following month. 

The sale of American modernist art at the Anderson Galleries on February 23 counts as evidence of the work which the Society of Independent Artists is doing for art in America.

One of the most interesting features of the work of the independents, whose show opens at the Waldorf-Astoria March 11, is the opportunity which they give unknown and radical artists to show their work. 

(“Notes and Activities In the World of Art.” New York Herald, 26 February 1922, p. 6.)

Gaylord does not make accounts of the sale, but he made a mark at the exhibition, leading to the News’ noting that he worked as an “elevator boy.”

The Kansas City Star said Gaylord’s paintings were of “the roof scenes of lower Manhattan” (“Independents Open their Free-for-All Art Exhibit,” Kansas City Star, 16 March 1922, p. 15). 

The Negro Year Book of 1926-1926, singled out Gaylord’s work at the Waldorf in a section about 1922,

Cecil Gaylord, of New York City, is attracting attention by his picturesque water color drawings of roofs, chimney pots, old back yard scenes, etc. His four water colors of "backs of Houses" and an oil painting of "Still Life" were the center of attraction at the annual exhibit of the Society of Independent Artists held at the Waldorf Astoria. 

(Negro Year Book of 1926-1926. Tuskeegee: Negro Year Book Publishing Company, 1925.)

Gaylord is mentioned by name as part of a movement of young Black artists in Alain LeRoy Locke’s The New Negro (1925). But Gaylord’s life and work are not easy to trace now. 

– Jonathan Goldman, Feb 19, 2022

TAGS: Black history, African American art, painting, modernism, Harlem Renaissance