American painter of light and portraits who took the teenage James Baldwin under his wing in Greenwich Village, moved to Paris himself in 1953, and remained the person Baldwin credited with teaching him how to see.
Beauford Delaney painted portraits, New York street corners, and finally light itself. He holds two distinctions that turn out to be one: he was among the significant American painters of postwar Paris, and he was the man a fifteen-year-old James Baldwin met in a Greenwich Village studio and called, for the rest of his life, his spiritual father.
Delaney was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 30 December 1901. A local artist, Lloyd Branson, noticed his drawing and gave him his first instruction, and from 1924 to 1929 he studied in Boston — the Massachusetts Normal Art School, the South Boston School of Art, evening classes at the Copley Society — though he later claimed to be largely self-taught. In 1929 he moved to New York, first to Harlem. His first solo show came the following year, at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library.
He settled downtown, in a studio on Greene Street in Greenwich Village, and paid for it with the jobs available: part-time teaching at a Village art school, custodial work at the Whitney Museum. His pastel portraits took W. E. B. Du Bois and Duke Ellington as sitters; the street scenes that followed in the 1940s were thick with paint and high in color. The Smithsonian's biography puts it plainly: Greene Street became to Delaney what Mont Sainte-Victoire had been to Cézanne. His friendships ran to writers, Henry Miller and James Baldwin among them.
In 1940 a DeWitt Clinton High School student named Emile Capouya, who worked with Baldwin on the school's literary magazine, gave his friend the address of a painter he knew in Greenwich Village. Baldwin, fifteen, the stepson of a Harlem preacher, knocked on the door of a working Black artist for the first time in his life. In Delaney's rooms he heard the jazz and blues records his church upbringing had kept from him, and he sat for the first of many portraits — Dark Rapture, painted in 1941.
The first walking, living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist.
Delaney was twenty years older, and what he handed the younger man was not technique. It was evidence that the life was possible, and a way of looking — light on a puddle of water, light on a face — that Baldwin described for the rest of his career. When Baldwin bought a one-way ticket to Paris in 1948, Delaney encouraged the move and promised to join him there.
He kept the promise. After a fellowship year at the Yaddo colony in 1950–51, Delaney left for Europe in 1953, arrived in Paris, and was taken enough with the city to stay for the rest of his life. The work changed with the address: the figures and street corners of New York gave way to abstraction, canvases of color and light that drew on Van Gogh and the Fauves as much as on the American abstract painting of the day. He and Baldwin, both expatriates now, saw each other constantly.
The last decade ran downhill. Delaney suffered from severe mental illness, and Baldwin — the son looking after the father now — cared for him until schizophrenia forced his hospitalization in Paris. In 1978 the Studio Museum in Harlem opened a retrospective of his work, the first in its Black Master series. He died in Paris on 26 March 1979.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on 30 December.
Moves to Boston for five years of study — the Massachusetts Normal Art School, the South Boston School of Art, evening classes at the Copley Society.
Moves to New York, settling first in Harlem.
First solo show, at the 135th Street branch of the New York Public Library.
Meets the fifteen-year-old James Baldwin, sent to his Greenwich Village studio by a school friend.
Paints Dark Rapture, the first of his many portraits of Baldwin.
Leaves for Europe after a Yaddo fellowship year, reaches Paris, and stays.
The Studio Museum in Harlem opens a retrospective of his work, the first in its Black Master series.
Dies in Paris on 26 March, after years of declining mental health.
Mentored · 1940
Baldwin was about fifteen when a school friend sent him to Delaney's room in Greenwich Village. He credited the painter with two things for the rest of his life: proof that a Black person could live as an artist, and his own way of looking at the physical world.
Met
The Smithsonian American Art Museum counts Miller, with James Baldwin, among the close friendships of Delaney's New York years.
An American painter, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1901. He worked in New York from 1929 — pastel portraits of figures like W. E. B. Du Bois and Duke Ellington, then thickly painted street scenes — and moved to Paris in 1953, where his work turned to abstractions of color and light. He died in Paris in 1979.
Mentor, then lifelong friend. They met in 1940, when James Baldwin was a fifteen-year-old high school student and Delaney a working painter of thirty-eight. Baldwin called him his spiritual father and credited him as the first living proof that a Black man could be an artist. Delaney followed Baldwin to Paris in 1953, and Baldwin cared for him at the end of his life.
Many times. The first portrait, Dark Rapture, was painted in 1941, the year after they met, and Baldwin sat for him repeatedly across the following decades.
In 1953, at fifty-one, after a fellowship year at the Yaddo art colony. He had encouraged James Baldwin's own move in 1948 with a promise to join him, and he remained in France for the rest of his life.
He died in Paris on 26 March 1979, at seventy-seven. His final years were dominated by severe mental illness; James Baldwin cared for him until schizophrenia forced his hospitalization. The year before his death, the Studio Museum in Harlem mounted a retrospective of his work.
Mentored · 1940
Baldwin was about fifteen when a school friend sent him to Delaney's room in Greenwich Village. He credited the painter with two things for the rest of his life: proof that a Black person could live as an artist, and his own way of looking at the physical world.
Met
The Smithsonian American Art Museum counts Miller, with James Baldwin, among the close friendships of Delaney's New York years.