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“Jones was an African American artist whose career, in my view, truly epitomizes Pan-African cultural engagement,” says Byrd. “She traveled to nearly a dozen African countries, studied in Europe, lived in the U.S., and spent lots of time in the Caribbean. She was incredibly cosmopolitan — she absorbed a rich spectrum of creative styles, developed a broad range of aesthetic approaches to artmaking and was exposed to a wide array of social contexts. … You really see all of that come together in this portrait of Jeanne Nardal.”

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“Jones created this portrait after a chance encounter with Jeanne Nardal in Paris around 1937,” explains Byrd. “Nardal was a poet, philosopher and writer from Martinique who was influential in the development of Négritude, a Pan-Africanist movement. What makes this painting so compelling is the sense of mutual respect and admiration it conveys between these two pioneering Black women — the artist and the literary figure. Not only has Jones outfitted Nardal in the colors of the Pan-African flag but she also has placed her before a striated background of skin-tone browns that align Blackness with epidermal diversity. It is a fitting visual tribute to a thinker whose writings — most notably her 1928 essay ‘Black Internationalism’ — helped shape Pan-African discourse.”