Girl with Pomegranates

Laura Wheeler Waring was a painter and graphic artist who illustrated several early covers of the NAACP’s Crisis magazine. (The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is an American civil rights organization formed in 1909 as an interracial endeavor to advance justice for African Americans.) Waring's depictions of Black women from across the social spectrum established her as the leading Black female painter of the Harlem Renaissance.

In this work, the unnamed sitter’s face is rendered with portrait-like precision, while her dress is handled with a looser, more suggestive touch. Behind her, a veiled landscape propped against the wall may allude to the artist’s travels in the south of France. Waring’s meticulous treatment of the two pomegranates underscores the fruit’s layered symbolism—associated with prosperity, fertility, and sensuality in Greek mythology and ancient Egyptian texts—and echoes its appearance in works by other Harlem Renaissance artists as well as in the writings of Zora Neale Hurston.

P.S. Learn more about the Harlem Renaissance—the formative period of African American art. 

P.P.S. Celebrate 50 extraordinary women artists, including Laura Wheeler Waring, with our Women Artists 50 Postcards Set. It is ideal for gifting or collecting pieces of art history.