Item Overview
Description: BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901 - 1979)
Untitled (Portrait of A Gentleman).
Oil painting on board, circa 1940's, signed lower left.
Painting size: 23 x 29 inches. Frame size: 28 x 24 inches.
Condition: Great overall condition.
Provenance: Private collection of New York.

Biography from the Archives of askART

Biography photo for Beauford Delaney
Born in 1901, Beauford Delaney, an expatriate African-American painter, spent his childhood and teen years in Knoxville, Tennessee. He studied at the Massachusetts Normal School in Boston, in 1924, moving to Harlem and other New York City locations in 1929. In 1953, he went permanently to live in France, mainly Paris. He died there on March 25, 1979.

Among many intellectuals Delaney knew as a kindred soul, friend and mentor, were James Baldwin, then a young author, who became a lifelong friend. Writer Henry Miller introduced many people to Delaney in his essay The Amazing and Invariable Beauford Delaney.

Early critics of Delaney's paintings lauded his wit and eye, yet tended to pigeon-hole him as a "Negro artist." A natural draughtsman, he went beyond the rendering of likeness to the search for feelings, states of mind and being, emotional temperatures. He worked in realistic and abstract modes, both characterized by Expressionist freedom of drawing, paint-handling and composition.

Delaney's love of art and life carried him through many economic and spiritual crises. He suffered from alcoholism and its attendant problems. In the early 1960s, he was diagnosed by one psychiatrist as having paranoid delusions aggravated by alcohol. Regardless of this, Delaney was clearly a very sensitive person stressed by slow art sales, the departure of friends, and his own poor nutritional habits. These precipitated depression, followed by heavy drinking.

Charley Boggs, a long-time friend of Delaney's, helped with financial support, lodging and friendship during times that were some of the least graceful in Delaney's life -- when his mind and body were falling apart.

Some exhibition venues of Beauford Delaney's work include the Vendome Gallery, Roko Gallery and Artists' Gallery, New York City, in the 1940s; Gallerie Paul Fachetti, 1960; and Black Master, Studio Museum in Harlem, 1978.

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