Nationality American Movement Photorealism | Name Betsy Reyneau Known for Portrait painting | |
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Born 1888 or 1889 Battle Creek, Michigan Died 1964, Camden County, New Jersey, United States Education School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston | ||
Betsy Graves Reyneau (1888–1964) was an American painter, best known for a series of portraits of prominent African Americans once owned by the Harmon Foundation. Mary McLeod Bethune, George Washington Carver, Joe Louis, and Thurgood Marshall were among her sitters.
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Early life
Reyneau was raised in Detroit, and although discouraged by her father from becoming an artist on the grounds that it was inappropriate for a woman, she broke ties with the family to pursue that career, and as a young woman attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She later lived in France for a time before returning to the United States and becoming active in civil rights causes. She was later selected by the Circuit Court of Detroit, unbeknownst to her family, to paint a portrait of her grandfather, Michigan Supreme Court Justice Benjamin F. Graves. Reyneau was also a suffragette; she became, in 1917, one of the first woman to be arrested and imprisoned for protesting Woodrow Wilson's stance on women's voting rights.
Legacy
Many of Reyneau's portraits are currently in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. She was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame in 1996.