Albert Alexander Smith painting acquired and conserved by Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA) announced on August 18, 2026, its recent acquisition of My Bunk, an oil painting on linen canvas by African American artist Albert Alexander Smith (1896–1940). The painting was purchased at the African American Art sale at Swann Auction Galleries in New York on October 3, 2024. It required thoughtful conservation treatment in VMFA’s Susan and David Goode Center for Advanced Study in Art Conservation to repair minor tears and breakages in the canvas and remove paper remnants adhered to the varnish.

“As the first work by this remarkable African American artist to enter the permanent collection of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the acquisition of Smith’s My Bunk is an exciting addition,” said Director and CEO Alex Nyerges. “Our conservation department has done an excellent job of treating the work so it can be shared with our visitors.”

Born and raised in New York City, Smith was an artist with a wide range of interests; he was a printmaker, illustrator, painter, musician and intermediary for African American art collectors and cultural historians in the United States and France. He was well known for his incisive political cartoons about the disparities of segregated America, which appeared in magazines such as The Crisis and Opportunity. In 1915, Smith enrolled as a student at the National Academy of Design, where he won multiple awards. In 1918, during World War I, he enlisted in the U.S. Army’s American Expeditionary Force (AEF).

As with many Black artists of his generation who served in the U.S. Army during the war, he produced a body of work that concentrated on his personal experiences in the conflict and life in the segregated armed forces. It was during his military service as a member of the AEF’s 807th Pioneer Infantry that Smith first experienced warfare and made the sketches upon which My Bunk is based.

Once his regiment arrived in France in the fall of 1918, his role was two-fold: Smith was a member of the regimental band, playing clarinet and banjo with a troupe that specialized in contemporary American jazz music, and he also served in a non-combatant role as a supportive engineer in the trenches on the frontlines in Nazaire and Clermont.

The painting depicts the bunk in which Smith and his fellow musician-soldiers lived during the final weeks of World War I in France. Dramatically cast in a low light, two soldiers hone the tools of their split role as soldiers and musicians, namely a rifle and a musical instrument. My Bunk expresses a quiet moment amid the chaos of war. Encased in a bunkhouse built by their own hands, the subjects in the painting are removed from the ongoing offensive that would end the war.

The original sketch for this work was produced in Meuse-Argonne near Clermont in northeast France during the final week of the war, during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive that led to Armistice being declared on November 11, 1918. My Bunk combines aspects of at least four graphite sketches that Smith produced onsite between 1918 and 1919. After his honorable discharge from the U.S Army in July 1919, Smith returned to New York to complete his studies at the National Academy of Design. In the 1920s, he returned to the sketches he made in France to create this painting, which he completed by 1927 and exhibited at the Harmon Foundation in New York in 1931.

“My Bunk complements other examples of wartime art in the museum’s collection, such as Winslow Homer’s Army Teamsters, while adding the perspective of an African American artist who served in World War I,” said Dr. Christopher Oliver, VMFA’s Bev Perdue Jennings Associate Curator of American Art.

The museum acquired the painting at auction knowing that it would require extensive conservation treatment, including structural repairs to failing tacking margins and minor tears in the canvas. This work was expertly carried out by VMFA’s Assistant Paintings Conservator Catherine Dussault, who also removed paper remnants that were not part of Smith’s original conception for the painting.

Microscopic analysis showed that Smith added brown and yellow pigments into the painting’s final surface coating, contributing to the work’s deliberately dim, warm, atmospheric lighting that was intended to evoke the ambiance of his living quarters in France during World War I. This artist-applied tinted varnish, which darkened and yellowed with age, further enhanced the glowing scene of the bunkhouse where Smith and his fellow soldiers slept.

Examination at VMFA revealed that the surface of the painting was also obscured in areas by something Smith did not intend – small pieces of newspaper adhered to the resinous varnish. Archival sources indicate that Smith wrapped his paintings in newspaper to protect them during shipping, and that on more than one occasion this practice resulted in damage similar to that found in My Bunk. A letter to Smith from his friend and Crisis editor W.E.B. Du Bois in 1923 informed the artist that his use of newspaper packing had marred the surface of two paintings with paper “splotches.”

“Certain treatment decisions are more straightforward to consider, such as the repair of tacking margins and canvas tears, while others require a more nuanced deliberation,” said Dussault. “In the case of the newspaper remnants, the decision was made to document the sections with technical photography prior to their targeted removal, as well as to retain several discrete areas of the imprinted text on the painting’s surface, as evidence of the physical history of the object.”

The newsprint transfer adds to the understanding of Smith’s practice and his life in Paris at this time. In her technical examination Dussault found that the wrapping for My Bunk was an English-language newspaper, connecting it to the vibrant expatriate community that Smith belonged to while living in France. “Though the remaining text is barely visible to the naked eye, its presence speaks to the narrative of Smith’s life,” said Dussault, “and the life of the painting itself – beyond just the image he aimed to convey in paint.” 

Albert Alexander Smith’s newly acquired and restored My Bunk will be on display in the Sherrill and Joey Smith Gallery for Featured Acquisitions in VMFA’s Cochrane Atrium from August 17 to November 17, 2026.

To learn more about the museum’s American art collection, visit www.VMFA.museum.

About the Artist Albert Alexander Smith

Born and raised in the San Juan Hill neighborhood of Manhattan to Bermudian immigrants, Albert Alexander Smith had an early and extensive education in the arts. He trained at both DeWitt Clinton High School and the Ethical Culture School and was also deeply inspired by the vibrant local culture. Particularly important for his artistic practice were the jazz clubs in the area.

Beginning in 1915, Smith studied at the National Academy of Design under Kenyon Cox, Charles Courtney Curran, and others. His studies were interrupted in 1919 when he served in the American Expeditionary Force in WWI and completed upon his return to New York in 1920.

Later that year, Smith returned to Europe where he spent most of the remainder of his life and where he served as a guide for recently arrived African American artists. Although Smith lived in Paris, he joined several touring bands that spent summers at coastal resorts in France and Spain. During the winters in Paris, he played banjo at prestigious and popular jazz clubs. Upon his death in 1940, Smith was eulogized in the Black publications that had previously published his illustrations, including Opportunity.

About the 807th Pioneer Infantry Band

Formed in New York City in July 1918, the 807th Pioneer Infantry Band, of which Albert Alexander Smith was a musician, was one of the nation’s premiere musical troupes operating in Europe. This achievement was completed by winning a competition against four other, all-white Army bands to achieve the position of Post Band for the First Army Headquarters.

Music historians frequently identify Smith’s regimental band as being one of strongest reasons for the influx of jazz music from America to Europe during and after the war.

About the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, Virginia, is one of the largest comprehensive art museums in the United States. VMFA, which opened in 1936, is a state agency and privately endowed educational institution. Its purpose is to collect, preserve, exhibit and interpret art, and to encourage the study of the arts. Through the Office of Statewide Partnerships Program, the museum offers curated exhibitions, arts-related audiovisual programs, symposia, lectures, conferences, and workshops by visual and performing artists.

In addition to presenting a wide array of special exhibitions, the museum provides visitors with the opportunity to experience a global collection of art that spans more than 6,000 years. VMFA’s permanent holdings encompass more than 50,000 artworks, including the largest public collection of Fabergé outside of Russia, the finest collection of Art Nouveau outside of Paris and one of the nation’s finest collections of American art. VMFA is also home to important collections of Chinese art, English silver, French Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, British sporting and modern and contemporary art, as well as renowned South Asian, Himalayan and African art.

In May 2010, VMFA opened the James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing I after a transformative expansion, previously the largest in its history. The museum is embarking on a new expansion, the McGlothlin Wing II, comprising more than 170,000 square feet. It will be the largest expansion in the museum’s history and will make VMFA the fourth largest comprehensive art museum in the United States.