Allan Rohan Crite

Date of death: 9/7/2007

Allan Rohan Crite (1910-2007)

Raised in Boston’s South End, Crite graduated from the SMFA in 1936, later receiving his A.B. from Harvard Extension School. During the 1930s, he worked for the WPA/FAP and PWAP and exhibited with the Harmon Foundation and in MOMA’s New Horizons in American Art. His straightforward paintings depicted the African American residents of his neighborhood with a frank realism. Employed as technical illustrator for the Boston Naval shipyard from 1940-70, Crite’s work, while still urban in setting, became increasingly religious in subject.

Important Source Material:

Caro, Julie Levin et. al. Allan Rohan Crite: Artist-Reporter of the African American Community. Seattle; London: University of Washington Press for the Frye Art Museum, 2001.

Caro, Julie Levin. “Rooted in the community: Black middle class identity performance in the early works of Allan Rohan Crite, 1935—1948.” PhD diss., The University of Texas at Austin, 2008.

NHS