Jack Johnson

Boston born painter Richard Yarde studied art at Boston University and was a Professor of Fine Art at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for many years. Yarde is perhaps best known for his extraordinary facility with watercolor. This work, a portrait of the first black heavyweight boxing champion Jack Johnson, exhibits several characteristics typical of Yarde's technique: a tendency to divide his backgrounds into irregular tiles of solid color, and a propensity to expand the boundaries of his evolving compositions by collaging on additional sheets of paper.