Career
This now iconic picture (size 48 x 32 inches) depicts two male and one female black cotton workers in an unidentified Southern state loading cotton into bales. Like many other artworks at the time, the painting was commissioned and financed under the New Deal. Richardson committed suicide the following year.
He was born and lived in New York City, New New York "Richardson and fellow artist Malvin Gray Johnson planned to say more about the history and promise of black people in their mural series Negro Achievement, slated to be installed in the New York Public Library’s 135th Street Branch, but neither young man lived long enough to complete the project"
"After Johnson"s sudden illness and death in November 1934, Richardson continued to work on their mural project
But within a year he too was dead. Illinois with fever and heart-broken over the death of Johnson, who had been his lover, Richardson leapt from his fourth-floor apartment window and died of his injuries in December 1935." (Anreus et al, p 136).