Early Life, Family and Training

Charles Sebree was born in 1914 in Madisonville, Kentucky. His early childhood was spent in White City, a community in eastern Kentucky. This period of his life was brief, as a significant shift occurred in 1924 when he and his mother moved to Chicago, Illinois. This relocation placed him in a city that would define his professional trajectory and provide the necessary exposure to diverse artistic influences.

His talent was evident long before he entered formal institutions. At the age of fourteen, the Renaissance Society purchased his drawing, Seated Boy, for twenty-five dollars. This early recognition provided a foundation for his subsequent technical development. He sought formal instruction at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago School of Design. He further refined his skills at the Institute of Design, an institution also known as the New Bauhaus.

Artistic Career in Chicago

Sebree’s presence in the Chicago art scene was defined by a refusal to adhere to academic norms. He became a fixture within a group of artists centered in Chicago's South Side, a community that offered a direct alternative to the established art hierarchies of the time. His involvement with the South Side Community Arts Center placed him at the heart of this movement. Between 1936 and 1938, he secured work with the WPA easel division, participating in the Illinois Art Project, a sub-project of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. This period provided the structural support necessary to refine a style that many found difficult to categorize.

His reputation in the city was bolstered by his connection to a prominent Chicago gallerist and advocate for modernist art. This relationship placed him in a circle of leading European modernists, even as he maintained his own distinct visual language. Sebree was not merely a painter; he was a multifaceted presence in the city's bohemian landscape, contributing to the Cube Theater. His ability to produce work with a specific emotional quality made him a polarizing figure among those trained in traditional academic methods. He sold his pieces at the 1934 Grant Park outdoor art fair, proving that his unconventional approach had immediate commercial viability.

Theater and Playwriting

Sebree’s engagement with the stage was never a secondary pursuit; it was a fundamental component of his creative output. He operated across multiple theatrical disciplines, working as a playwright, director, and set designer. His early involvement in the Chicago scene included dancing and designing both sets and costumes for a local dance company. This practical immersion in movement and physical space was deepened through his close association with Katherine Dunham, whose influence guided his exploration of theatrical production and helped shape his understanding of the stage.

By 1949, Sebree began writing plays in earnest, moving from the visual and physical aspects of performance into structured narrative. His most significant achievement in this field came in 1954 with the Broadway musical Mrs. Patterson, which featured Eartha Kitt. This success demonstrated a capacity to translate his specific sensibilities into the mainstream theatrical landscape. His dramatic body of work includes several notable titles:

• My Mother Came Crying Most Pitifully (1949)
• Mrs. Patterson (1954)
• Dry August (1972)

Technique and Artistic Style

Sebree’s visual language was a calculated fusion of European modernism and the structural weight of African sculpture. He did not merely mimic trends; he synthesized them to create a distinct, individual style. His portraits frequently focused on performers, specifically harlequins and saltimbanques, using these figures to explore the tension between the theatrical and the human. This preference for the performer allowed him to experiment with the expressive, distorted faces and elongated figures characteristic of the work of Picasso and Modigliani.

There is a specific, heavy quality to his compositions that moves beyond simple modernism. His work often evoked a mystical atmosphere, drawing a direct line to the aesthetic of old world Byzantine enamels and Russian icon paintings. This connection provided a sense of spiritual gravity to his subjects, even when they were depicted in secular or theatrical contexts. He managed to balance the avant-garde sensibilities of the early 20th century with a formal, almost ritualistic approach to the human form.

• Harlem Saltimbanques (about 1946)

Later Years and Death

The conclusion of Sebree's career was marked by a series of geographic shifts that mirrored the movement of many artists of his era. Following the end of the Second World War, he relocated to New York. This move placed him within a new circle of creative figures, yet his trajectory was already set toward the capital. By 1947, he had moved to Washington, D.C.

He remained in Washington, D.C. for the remainder of his life. The city provided a stable backdrop for his final decades, a period that saw him maintain his presence in both the visual and theatrical arts. He died in Washington, D.C. in 1985 from cancer.