An imaginative scene from the rural South shows the fatal boll weevil, a cause for the failure of the cotton crop and thus the poverty in the South, destroying the plant before the viewer’s eyes. The long and pastel cotton crop mimics the long form of the mountains in the background, but contrasts heavily with the ominous black creatures attached to them. When asked about the mammalian nature of his depiction of the insect, Lawrence confessed that he had never even been to the South at the time he painted this, let alone see a Boll Weevil, thus highlighting his heavy use of imagination in this panel.

SKU: 64124
Creator: Jacob Lawrence
Date: between 1940 and 1941
Original Medium: Casein tempera on hardboard
Original Size: 12 x 18 in.
Location: The Phillips Collection
© 2016 The Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation, Seattle / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York