John McCrady holds the distinction of bring New Orleans’s most important artist of the 1930s-1940s and one of the South’s most distinctive painters.

He was born on September 11, 1911 in Canton, Mississippi.  His father, Edward McCrady, was a minister of the local Episcopalian church and married to his loving wife and John’s mother, Mary Ormond Tucker.  After a brief period of moving between towns, the family eventually settled in Oxford, where Edward would teach philosophy at “‘Ole Miss.”  The patriarch held both secular and religious knowledge in high regard, and stressed John to remember the importance of balancing faith and independent thinking.  The painter in his later years would devote much of his work to the relationship between God and man in the everyday, ordinary world thanks to Edward’s guidance.

John eventually enrolled at University of Mississippi as a student, spending the summers in Pennsylvania with his brother.  Inspired by the artwork he saw in the museums there, he took art classes between 1931-1932, before leaving “Ole Miss” shortly afterwards to go to the New Orleans School of Art at the age of 21.  Within one year of classes, he earned a scholarship to the Art Students League of New York.  It was there that he developed his signature style: using layers of transparent glazes to bring more vibrancy and color to his tempera oil paintings.

In 1934, he painted murals under the employment of the Federal Art Project.  In 1935, he was featured in the Boyer Galleries in Philadelphia for the exhibition “Thirty-Five Painters of the South.”  Shortly after, in 1936, the Boyer Galleries in New York gave him his first solo exhibition, where he featured one of his most famous works: Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.  Three years later after that, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.

John was one of many members of the Regionalists, an offshoot of the American Scene artists.  They were disillusioned by the excesses of the European styles and weary of the effects of World War I and the Great Depression, seeking to highlight the beauty and simplicity of life in their native regions.  He founded the John McCrady Art School in 1942 alongside his wife Mary Basso, and thereafter focused more on teaching.  He died of cancer on December 24th, 1968.