About This Stamp
One of the country’s foremost African-American artists, William H. Johnson (1901–1970) is recognized as a major figure in 20th-century American art. Known for his colorful, folk-inspired scenes of African-American life as well as his dramatic Scandinavian landscapes, Johnson is honored on the 11th issuance in the American Treasures series with a still-life painting entitled Flowers.
An oil-on-plywood painting dated 1939-1940, Flowers depicts a vase of boldly rendered, brightly colored blooms on a small red table. The two-dimensional, consciously “naive” style in which Flowers was painted was one of the many techniques of modernist abstraction and “primitive” art Johnson employed during his career. The painting, a gift of the Harmon Foundation, belongs to the Smithsonian American Art Museum.
From his childhood in South Carolina, where he copied favorite characters from newspaper comic strips, Johnson’s artistic passion delivered him first to Harlem and then to the wider world, a personal and cultural journey reflected in his wide-ranging experiments in numerous subjects and styles.
During the 1930s, as Johnson traveled in Europe and North Africa, his work began to reflect his interest in primitivism and folk art. Eager to document the African-American experience, he returned to New York. “My travels taught me that to create,” he wrote in 1941, “an artist must live and paint in his own environment.”
Inspired by Johnson’s ambition as well as his art, the William H. Johnson Foundation for the Arts was established in 2001 to provide economic assistance to African-American artists early in their careers.
The William H. Johnson stamp is being issued as a Forever® stamp in self-adhesive sheets of 20. Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate. At the time of issuance, the William H. Johnson stamps are being sold at a price of 45 cents each, or $9.00 per sheet.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Derry Noyes
For more than 40 years Derry Noyes has designed and provided art direction for close to 800 United States postage stamps and stamp products. She holds a bachelor of arts degree from Hampshire College and a master of fine arts degree from Yale University.
Noyes worked as a graphics designer at Beveridge and Associates, a Washington, D.C., firm, until 1979 when she established her own design firm, Derry Noyes Graphics. Her clients have included museums, corporations, foundations, and architectural and educational institutions. Her work has been honored by American Illustration, the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, Communication Arts, Critique magazine, Graphis, Creativity International, and the Society of Illustrators.
Before becoming an art director for the U.S. Postal Service, she served as a member of the Citizens' Stamp Advisory Committee from 1981 to 1983.
Noyes is a resident of Washington, D.C.