Data Source

National Portrait Gallery

Exhibition Label

Bessie Smith was the most influential blues singer in history and the first major feminist voice in American music. With her deep, powerful contralto, Smith foregrounded an individual woman’s experience in her songs: she sang alternately with lusty pride and melancholy of sexual desire, economic hardship, loneliness, and transience. She drank and fought as hard as any man, ran her own vaudeville troupe, and once scared off a bunch of Klansmen by herself. During the Jim Crow era, Smith’s songs mediated the experience of the Great Migration out of the South and evoked intense emotional response from black audiences. A protégé of Ma Rainey, Smith sang of the road as a metaphor for life: "I’m a rambling woman . . . with a rambling mind." Her artistic influence remains vital in artists such as Bonnie Raitt, Erykah Badu, and Lucinda Williams. Janis Joplin put up half the money for Smith’s new gravestone in 1970.

Artist

Carl Van Vechten, 17 Jun 1880 - 21 Dec 1964

Sitter

Bessie Smith, 15 Apr 1894 - 26 Sep 1937

Date

1936

Credit Line

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Dimensions

Image/Sheet: 25.2 x 18.6 cm (9 15/16 x 7 5/16")

Mat: 55.9 x 40.6 cm (22 x 16")

Type

Photograph

See more items in

National Portrait Gallery Collection

Object number

NPG.91.108

Culture

Bessie Smith: American\African American

Topic

Costume\Jewelry\Earring

Interior

Costume\Dress Accessory\Fan

Costume\Dress Accessory\Feather

Bessie Smith: Female

Bessie Smith: Performing Arts\Performer\Musician\Singer\Jazz

Bessie Smith: Performing Arts\Performer\Musician\Singer\Rhythm and Blues

Portrait

Restrictions & Rights

© 1936 Carl Van Vechten Trust