Arthur Diggs

Arthur Diggs was an African-American landscape painter originally from Columbia, Missouri who made his career in Chicago, Illinois. He was a part of the Chicago Black Renaissance and belonged to the first generation of well-known African-American artists during the early twentieth century. 

Arthur Diggs was born to Harrison and Sarah Diggs on November 16, 1888. According to Traci Wilson-Kleekamp, a genealogist and instructor at the University of Missouri-Columbia, Harrison Diggs was enslaved by William Wesley Hudson, the third president of the University of Missouri-Columbia, before being freed in the 1860s and going on to fight for the Union Army during the Civil War. 

Arthur Diggs attended Frederick Douglass High School in Columbia, Missouri from 1902-1906. After graduating, he gave a long speech about the importance of education for achieving racial equality, which was published in the Sedalia Weekly Conservator, an African-American owned newspaper.

Diggs remained in Missouri for a few years before enrolling in the Art Institute of Chicago around 1915. In Chicago, he encountered a much different racial environment than he had known in Columbia. He and other African-American artists including William McKnight Farrow, Charles C. Dawson, William Edouard Scott, and Archibald John Motley were actively supported by the creative community rather than isolated from it. Diggs exhibited in the 1927 Negro In Art Week exhibition, the exhibitions of the Harmon Foundation in New York, and the regional exhibitions of the Art Institute of Chicago.

In 1931, Arthur Diggs published an article in Abbott's Monthly titled "Unknown Artists and Their Art: What Has the Black Man Done With the Pen and Brush?" He gave a brief overview of African-American art history including works by Henry Osawa Tanner, Meta Warrick Fuller, Sergeant Johnson, and Laura Wheeler Waring. He stated the importance of organizations like the Art Institute of Chicago, describing how its "school and galleries have an open door to all races; unlike the South where such is closed to black people"  (Abbott's Monthly, May 1931).

During his early career, Arthur Diggs worked as a hospital janitor and a shipping clerk. He later was a printer at the Henry Reinhardt & Sons Gallery in the 1930s and a gallerist at the Findlay Gallery during the 1940s. Artistically, Diggs was influenced by Impressionism. His landscapes are peaceful, focused on capturing the beauty and harmony of nature.

Arthur Diggs died in September of 1967. Many of his paintings are held in private collections today, preserving his legacy as an influential American artist.