(1939) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
When Beauford met W. C. Handy at a party hosted by composer Luke Theodore Upshure in Greenwich Village in August 1930, it was the beginning of a long and influential friendship.
Already an accomplished musician and composer when he moved to NYC, Handy and his partner Harry Pace operated a successful music publishing business from an office on Times Square. By the time he and Beauford met, he had already rebounded from a severe reversal of fortune and was enjoying renewed interest in his greatest recordings.
Beauford immersed himself in jazz and embraced Handy's suggestion that he begin sketching jazz musicians and other notables in New York City's 1930s black community. He painted the oil portrait of his friend in 1939; it was used for the poster announcement of Beauford's solo show at the Vendome Gallery in midtown Manhattan in 1941.
Beauford's biographer, David Leeming, reports that a review of the show by New York Sun journalist Melvine Upton describes Beauford's portrayal of Handy as "personal and peculiarly understanding."
Beauford's pencil sketches of celebrated black Americans illustrate Handy's 1944 book entitled Unsung Americans Sung.
Unsung Americans Sung book cover
Several of these sketches are posted in two Les Amis articles that feted Women's History Month in 2021:
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