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Saturday, December 16, 2023

Beauford and Negro Music

In an article about Beauford published by Tennessee State Museum, author Matthew Gailani quotes from Beauford's 1948 application for a Rosenwald Fund grant as follows:

I would like to make a mural and other smaller paintings using Music as my subject. It has not yet been started as I feel I will need a year to make the necessary research into the history of Folk, Indian, Mountain (1600-1947), and Negro Music.... I feel that I especially adapted to this subject as I have always been close to American Negro, Folk, and Jazz music.

Though Beauford had experience working on murals (he contributed to the WPA Harlem Hospital mural in 1935-36) and had already produced works with a jazz theme, his application was unsuccessful.

Today, I'm sharing images of some of the "Negro music"-themed works Beauford created over the course of his life.

W. C. Handy
(1939) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator 
 
Ethel Waters
(1940) Pastel on Paper © Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Jazz Quartet
(1946) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Rehearsal
(1952) oil on canvas
36 1/8" x 30 1/8" / 91.8 x 76.5 cm
signed and dated
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery LLC, New York, NY

Charlie Parker Yardbird
(1958) Oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the James F. Dicke Family
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Marian Anderson
(1965) Oil on canvas
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Jazz
(1966) Oil on canvas
French Embassy of Taipai, Taiwan
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Photo courtesy of France's Fonds national d'art contemporain

Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald
(1968) Oil on canvas
Permanent collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah
Gift of Dr. Walter O. and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
 

To see additional images with a jazz theme, see the article entitled "All That Jazz."

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