Aaron Douglas is remembered as one of the most influential visual artists of the Harlem Renaissance, who used stylized aspects of African and African-American folk imagery to address social and racial issues in his art. His painting The Judgement Day (1939) is based on his earlier book illustration from 1927, which was created to complement James Weldon Johnson’s poem of the same title. The work is a representation of Judgement Day: the central figure, the archangel Gabriel, plays his trumpet’s call, marking souls as heaven sent, or condemned to hell. The painting is characteristic of Douglas’s unique stylistic language, combining his study of African art with the trends of European modernism, which helped shape the visual culture of the Harlem Renaissance.

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