ABSTRACT
Paris was Mecca for a “lost generation” of Americans in the 1920s and 1930s. Hundreds of artists, musicians, and writers from all over the world flocked to the French capital for a sense of community and freedom to be creative. Few members of the “Negro colony” ever associated with white Americans in Paris in the 1920s, which included writers Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Palmer Hayden’s Bal Jeunesse and Archibald J. Motley’s Blues depict African and West Indian dancers and musicians relishing “le jazz hot,” imported by African American soldiers during World War I. Hayden and Motley also painted the famous American hang-outs, Cafe L’avenue, and The Jockey Club, focusing on white American patronage. The peak African American artistic activity in Paris began with Nancy Elizabeth Prophet’s arrival in 1922 and ended with her departure in 1934. For New Negro artists, Paris was irresistible, as an unequivocal muse, and as a place of pivotal significance.
