Aaron Douglas

Aaron Douglas (American, 1899–1979), The Judgment Day, 1939
Oil on tempered hardboard, 121.92 × 91.44 cm (48 × 36 in.), National Gallery of Art, Patrons' Permanent Fund, The Avalon Fund, 2014.135.1. © 2026 Heirs of Aaron Douglas / Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY.

Aaron Douglas painted The Judgment Day in 1939, more than a decade after creating the book illustration on which the painting is based. In 1927 Douglas had provided eight strikingly original illustrations for a collection of poems titled God’s Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse by James Weldon Johnson. Executed in a style that reflected the influence of German émigré Winold Reiss, Douglas’s artistic mentor, as well as the artist’s own study of African art and European modernism, the illustrations marked the advent of Douglas’s mature style. Over a period of several years, Douglas translated his original book illustrations into large oil paintings. The Judgment Day is the final painting in the series.

At the center of the composition, a powerful Black Gabriel stands astride earth and sea. With trumpet call, the archangel summons the living and the dead to judgment. Recasting both the biblical narrative and the visual vocabulary of art deco and cubism, Douglas created an image as racially impassioned as the sermons of the black preachers celebrated in God’s Trombones.