Ashley Bryan was an eclectic artist who used different mediums to tell stories – from painting to poetry, music, collage, and prose. He worked his magic everywhere.
Now all these mediums seem different, but Bryan had a different approach towards them. He said:
“I try not to accept walls and boundaries and definitions in a strict way. I would hope that everything I do is interrelated.”
This tells a lot about his way of thinking and creative genius.
In terms of writing, Bryan filled his books with Black history and characters and injected rhythm into African folk tales.
In this blog post, we’ll study the life of this amazing award-winning writer.
Born on 13th July 1923 in Harlem, Ashley Frederick Bryan spent his early childhood in Harlem and Bronx in New York City. He was the second among six siblings and spent a good part of his childhood days with three cousins.
His father printed greeting cards and had a deep love for pet birds. He had a massive collection of hundreds of birds at home that Bryan remembered filled their apartment.
Bryan remembered spending a happy and delightful childhood in New York, engaging in a lot of art and music activities during the 1930s. He spent time learning drawing, painting, and playing instruments at his school. Artists and musicians participating in the Work Projects Administration program taught at his school, which inspired his early love for arts.
He also got fond of reading books and often borrowed books from the library to read at home. His favorite genres included fairy tales, folktales, and poetry.
Overall, he was fond of reading short stories that could be covered in a few pages.
Bryan studied at the Cooper Union Art School and was the only African-American student at that time. When he graduated from high school at the age of 16, his teachers encouraged him to apply for art-school scholarships.
Sadly, he was rejected on the basis of his color. In 2014, he revealed to an interviewer what an admission officer told him during the application process, “This is the best portfolio we have seen, but it would be a waste to give it to a colored student.”
But, he was a man of resolve. He applied to the Cooper Union in Manhattan through a blind test and finally got accepted.
Then, at age 19, when he was halfway through his studies, he was drafted into the Army when World War II started in 1943. Bryan got assigned to be a stevedore in an all-Black battalion. He landed at Normandy three days after the Allied invasion of 1944 and spent the rest of the war in France and Belgium.
However, he was so ill-suited to this work that his fellow soldiers often encouraged him to step aside and draw. He always kept a sketch pad in his gas mask.
(Later, he shared his war journey in his autobiography named Infinite Hope.)
Whether he completed his studies at the Cooper Union or not remains unclear as different sources quote different things. However, Bryan enrolled himself at Columbia University School of General Studies after the war and graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1950.
Then, he received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Marseille at Aix-en-Provence. The program included later returning for two years to study at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Bryan returned to the United States three years after completing his education in Germany. He got himself a studio in the Bronx near his family. He also started teaching art at several institutions, including Queen’s College, Philadelphia College of Art, the Dalton School, Lafayette College, and Dartmouth College.
He joined Dartmouth College in 1974 and served here the longest – right until his retirement in 1988.
One day, while working in his studio, Jean Karl, an editor at Atheneum Books, visited Bryan. Impressed by his artwork, Jean offered him contracts to illustrate children’s books.
This kick-started a 40-year-long relationship between the two. Jean sent him a contract to illustrate a collection of poems by Rabindranath Tagore: Moon, for What Do You Wait?
As expected, Bryan exceeded expectations, and the two collaborated on several projects for years to come. Bryan wrote and illustrated unique books for young people and kept impressing everyone.
Ashley Bryan received numerous awards, respect, and recognition for his work.
A few notable mentions include:
However, In 2011, Ashley received what he considered the most incredible honor of his life. The voters of the Cranberry Isles voted at a town meeting to rename the school on his beloved Little Cranberry Island (also known as Islesford): The Ashley Bryan School.
He regarded it as his greatest life achievement and pride!
This is also where Bryan lived after he retired from Dartmouth in the late 1980s.
In 2019, Bryan moved to Sugar Land, Texas, where his niece lived.
On February 4, 2022, Bryan died of congestive heart failure at the age of 98 in his niece’s house.
His art studio in the Bronx, often open to visitors, was filled with toys, paintings, illustrations, and handmade puppets – his legacy lives on.
Click here to learn more about Ashley Bryan .
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