Gamin

PAFA’s “Gamin” is a smaller version of a prize winning life-sized bronze sculpture by Augusta Savage, a Harlem Renaissance artist whose awards sent her to France, Italy, Germany and Belgium, and a celebrated teacher whose students included Jacob Lawrence and Norman Lewis. “Gamin” is often translated from French as street urchin or imp. The sitter was reportedly Savage’s nephew, Ellis, who’d left Florida with the rest of his family to stay with her in Harlem. In a 1940 Chicago Defender article about “Gamin” Elizabeth Galbreath wrote, “You like him because you think you know him. You have a feeling that he is the one who threw the baseball into your window pane, who recited such a funny little speech in Sunday school at Easter, and who was wrestling with your own youngster and tore his shirt. You like him even more when Miss Savage tells you that it was because of talent shown in this work that she was sent to study in Europe on a Rosenwald Fund scholarship.”