A. C. Hudgins' Beauford Delaney Abstract

A.C. Hudgins has a passion for collecting the work of contemporary African-American artists. He owns only a few works by "dead artists." The Beauford Delaney abstract shown below is one of them.

Untitled
(not dated) Oil on canvas
Signed on rear of painting
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Signature at the rear of Untitled
Oil on canvas
Signed on rear of painting
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Given that Beauford indicated his Vercingétorix address beneath his signature at the rear of the painting, it must date from at least 1962.

Hudgins acquired this work from a dealer on the upper east side of NYC - a woman who handles Paul Jenkins' estate. She was once on the board of the Studio Museum of Harlem.

Hudgins saw the painting and liked it. He had a MoMA conservator evaluate it and was told that the work was in pristine condition. Based on that assessment, he purchased it.

Hudgins marvels at how this painting "reads differently" in various areas of his home, depending on the lighting that is present in the room.

It is likely that Beauford gave this work to Paul Jenkins. The two men met in New York a short time before Beauford left his Greene Street studio in 1952, and they remained friends after Beauford moved to Paris. Their work was shown in a group exhibition at the Galerie Arnaud in Paris in March 1965.

Jenkins wrote about Beauford in an article entitled "A Quiet Legend." Published in Art International, Volume 6, No. 10, December 20, 1962, it begins as follows:

Beauford Delaney's role in the painting of today has been that of a quiet legend. He lived for many years in New York, on Greene Street in Greenwich Village, where his loft drew people like a magnet...

Beauford's biographer, David A. Leeming, quotes Jenkins as writing the following about Beauford's early Paris works:

The way he painted, moved into a certain radiant generalization. In the paint he let go of a specific personal identity and moved closer and closer toward the constant, the original light coming from the canvas. ... These paintings could be churches of no denomination.