In the late 1980s, when Bryan retired from Dartmouth, he moved to Islesford, Maine, on Little Cranberry Island. He retired as emeritus professor of art at Dartmouth in 1988. Teaching career īryan taught art at Queen's College, Philadelphia College of Art, the Dalton School, Lafayette College, and Dartmouth College. After the war, Bryan received a Fulbright Scholarship to study at the University of Marseille at Aix-en-Provence and later returning for two years to study at the University of Freiburg in Germany.

In 1946, he enrolled at Columbia University School of General Studies to study philosophy. His book, Infinite Hope, is an autobiographical journey during the war. He always kept a sketch pad in his gas mask. He was so ill-suited to this work that his fellow soldiers often encouraged him to step aside and draw. Army and assigned to serve in a segregated unit as a member of a Port Battalion, landing at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Īt the age of nineteen, World War II interrupted his studies. He had applied to other schools who had rejected him on the basis of race, but Cooper Union administered its scholarships in a blind test. University studies and military service īryan attended the Cooper Union Art School, the only African-American student at that time. He particularly enjoyed poetry, folktales, and fairy tales stories that could be told within a brief span of pages. With books he checked out from the library, Bryan made his own, temporary collection at home. He learned to draw, paint, and play instruments at school from artists and musicians participating in the Work Projects Administration program. Bryan recalled his childhood in New York City during the 1930s as an idyllic time, full of art and music. He was born the second of six children and grew up with his three cousins. His father worked as a printer of greeting cards and loved birds, and Bryan remembered their apartment as full of a hundred birds. His picture book Freedom Over Me was short-listed for the 2016 Kirkus Prize and received a Newbery Honor.Īshley Frederick Bryan was born on July 13, 1923, in Harlem and raised in the Bronx, both in New York City. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006 and he won the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his contribution to American children's literature in 2009. Most of his subjects are from the African-American experience. Ashley Frederick Bryan (July 13, 1923 – February 4, 2022) was an American writer and illustrator of children's books.

Beautiful Blackbird by Ashley Bryan