Partially unrolled scroll revealing a horizontal, black-and-white print of largescale musical notation; below it the artist has written the title, date, edition number, and his signature in pencil

Sons de Mélèze by Giuseppe Penone

Albrecht Dürer’s The Triumph of Maximilian (Triumphal Arch)

A color lithograph depicting a young child playing the piano in a domestic setting, while a woman looks over the child’s shoulder

Romare Bearden (1911–1988)
The Piano Lesson
Color lithograph, 1983
Art and Artifacts Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

The Piano Lesson

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Romare Bearden moved with his family to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when he was a child, then took up residence in New York City. One of several images based on his childhood memories, The Piano Lesson features a music teacher with her student in a Southern parlor. He took inspiration from two paintings by the well-known French artist Henri Matisse (whose later work is shown nearby): The Piano Lesson (1916) and The Music Lesson (1917). Bearden dedicated this work to the great jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams (1910–1981), who, like Bearden, had left the South as a child to live in Pittsburgh.

Holding Division: Art and Artifacts Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

Currently on View at Stephen A. Schwarzman Building

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