Charles Henry Alston (November 28, 1907 – April 27, 1977) was an American painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist and teacher who lived and worked in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem.

His father was also good at drawing, having wooed Alston's mother Anna with small sketches in the medians of letters he wrote her.

[1][2][3] In high school he was given his first oil paints and learned about his aunt Bessye Bearden's art salons, which stars like Duke Ellington and Langston Hughes attended.

The couple lived close to family; at their frequent gatherings Alston enjoyed cooking and Myra played piano.

[10] While obtaining his master's degree, Alston was the boys’ work director at the Utopia Children's House, started by James Lesesne Wells.

[1][3][6] Alston's teaching style was influenced by the work of John Dewey, Arthur Wesley Dow, and Thomas Munro.

His travel with Giles Hubert, an inspector for the Farm Security Administration, gave him access to certain situations and he photographed many aspects of rural life.

[3][8][13] Alston became staff artist at the Office of War Information and Public Relations in 1940, creating drawings of notable African Americans.

"[6][14] Alston left commercial work to focus on his own artwork, and 1950 he became the first African-American instructor at the Art Students League, where he remained on faculty until 1971.

In his Girl in a Red Dress (1934) and The Blue Shirt (1935), Alston used modern and innovative techniques for his portraits of young individuals in Harlem.

In Family Group (c. 1950) Alston's use of gray and ochre tones brings together the parents and son as if one with geometric patterns connecting them together as if a puzzle.

which, in a similar style as Christ Head, shows a black man standing against a red sky "looking as frustrated as any individual can look", according to Alston.

[1] Experimenting with the use of negative space and organic forms in the late 1940s, by the mid-1950s Alston began creating notably modernist style paintings.

Alston worked with oil-on-Masonite during this period as well, using impasto, cream, and ochre to create a moody cave-like artwork.

Alston continued to explore the relationship between monochromatic hues throughout the series which Wardlaw describes as "some of the most profoundly beautiful works of twentieth-century American art.

[1][3][6][15] At this time he was awarded Works Progress Administration Project Number 1262 – an opportunity to oversee a group of artists creating murals and to supervise their painting for the Harlem Hospital.

[1][2][6] These paintings were part of a diptych completed in 1936 depicting the history of medicine in the African-American community and Beauford Delaney served as assistant.

In 1959, Alston estimated, in a letter to the New York State Department of Public Works, that the conservation would cost $1,500 but the funds were never acquired.

In 1968, after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Alston was asked to create another mural for the hospital, to be placed in a pavilion named after the slain civil rights movement leader.

One year after Alston's death in 1977, a group of artists and historians, including the renowned painter and collagist Romare Bearden and art historian Greta Berman, together with administrators from the hospital, and from the New York City Art Commission, examined the murals, and presented a proposal for their restoration to then-mayor Ed Koch.

In 1991, the Municipal Art Society's Adopt-a-Mural program was launched, and the Harlem Hospital murals were chosen for further restoration (Greta Berman.

A grant from Alston's sister Rousmaniere Wilson and step-sister Aida Bearden Winters assisted in completing a restoration of the works in 1993.

[1][3] In the late 1940s, Alston became involved in a mural project commissioned by Golden State Mutual Life Insurance Company, which asked the artists to create work related to African-American contributions to the settling of California.

Alston worked with Hale Woodruff on the murals in a large studio space in New York; they used ladders to reach the upper parts of the canvas.

[1][15] The artworks, which are considered "priceless contributions to American narrative art", consist of two panels: Exploration and Colonization by Alston and Settlement and Development by Woodruff.

Images of mountain man James Beckwourth, Biddy Mason, and William Leidesdorff are portrayed in the well-detailed historical mural.

[1][15] Due to economic downturn in the early 21st century, Golden State was forced to sell their entire art collection to ward off its mounting debts.

Head of a Woman (1957) shows his shift toward a "reductive and modern approach to sculpture....where facial features were suggested rather than fully formulated in three dimensions,".

[22][23] In 1990, Alston's bronze bust of Martin Luther King Jr. (1970), became the first image of an African American to be displayed in the White House.

Romare Bearden described Alston as "...one of the most versatile artists whose enormous skill led him to a diversity of styles..." Bearden also describes the professionalism and impact that Alston had on Harlem and the African-American community: "'was a consummate artist and a voice in the development of African American art who never doubted the excellence of all people's sensitivity and creative ability.