Beauford at the Smithsonian Institution - Part 2

Last week's posting presented works by Beauford and papers relevant to Beauford at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American Art and Archives of American Art, respectively. This week, we'll look at the holdings of the National Portrait Gallery.

I've written several times about Beauford's portrait of James Baldwin that is held by the National Portrait Gallery. The Gallery owns two additional portraits by Beauford - one of Ethel Waters and one of poet May Swenson.

The Waters portrait is a pastel on paper, dated 1940. Acquired in February 2011, it is listed as a "prominent work" in a fact sheet published by the Smithsonian in September 2011. There is no image of the portrait displayed on the Gallery's Web site; however, the grayscale image below can be found in Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, David A. Leeming's biography of Beauford.

Ethel Waters
(1940) Pastel on Paper
Leeming indicates that Beauford began creating a series of charcoal and pastel drawings of "jazz musicians and other important figures" in the late 1930s at the urging of W. C. Handy. Waters, Duke Ellington, and Louis Armstrong were among them.

There is an image of the May Swenson portrait online at the Catalog of American Portraits Web site:

May Swenson
(1960) Pastel and chalk on paper

Swenson and Beauford met at the Yaddo Art Colony in Saratoga Springs in 1950. Swenson and her daughter visited Beauford in Paris in 1954.

The National Portrait Gallery also owns one of Georgia O'Keeffe's masterful pastel portraits of Beauford, which I wrote about in the August 2010 issue of this blog.

Beauford Delaney
Georgia O'Keeffe
(1943) Pastel on paper
Click here to listen to the audio recording that the National Portrait Gallery has posted about the portrait.

Beauford at the Smithsonian Institution - Part 1

As part of my mission to provide you with information about where Beauford's works can be found in the U.S. and around the world, I am bringing you a two-part accounting of works by and about Beauford that are held at the Smithsonian Institution.

Earlier this year, I published a guest posting by Jason Steiber of the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art about the museum’s acquisition of Darthea Speyer's papers, which contain several items related to Beauford. This article lists nine additional collections of archives that are relevant to Beauford's life and art.

The American Art Museum and the Renwick Gallery hold two of Beauford's paintings, neither of which is currently on display. One is an undated abstraction - a gouache on paper that was donated to the museum. The other is Can Fire in the Park, dated 1946 and painted in oil on canvas. It was purchased by the museum.

Can Fire in the Park
(1946) Oil on canvas
In a brief biography of Beauford written by Lynda Roscoe Hartigan and formerly posted on the museum's Web site, the following description of this painting can be found:

In Can Fire in the Park, [SAAM 1989.23] anonymous men gather near a source of heat, light, and camaraderie. This disturbingly contemporary vignette conveys a legacy of deprivation linked not only to the Depression years after 1929 but also to the longstanding disenfranchisement of black Americans, portrayed here as social outcasts. At the lower left and upper right, objects that suggest street signs also function as arrows symbolically pointing the way up and out of desolation. Despite its sober subject,the scene crackles with energy, the culmination of Delaney's sharp pure colors, thickly applied paints, and taut, schematic patterning. Abandoning the precise realism of his early academic training, Delaney developed a lyrically expressive style that drew upon his love of musical rhythms and his improvisational use of color. Works such as Can Fire in the Park hover between representation and abstraction as that style evolved during the 1940s.

In another brief biography currently found on the Web site, Regenia A. Perry indicates that Beauford earned the title "dean of American Negro painters living abroad" during his Paris years.

Next week, I'll present the works held by the National Portrait Gallery.

(Article updated on October 22, 2017)

Where to find Beauford's Art: Swann Galleries

Swann Galleries launched its African-American Fine Art department in 2007. It is the only major auction house conducting regular sales of African-American fine art today. The works that it sells are consigned by individuals, libraries, schools, museums, and dealers the world over.

Since 2007, Swann Galleries has put twenty-eight (28) of Beauford’s paintings up for auction. Over 60% of them sold, with prices ranging from $8,400 to $102,000. Here are a few images of works that sold:

Street Sweeper (Le Balayeur)
(1968) Oil on canvas
Photo courtesy of Swann Galleries
Swann Galleries describes this painting as “poetic and modernist,” and says that it is a “culmination of Beauford Delaney's important work in both figurative and abstract painting in Paris, and an outstanding example of his later work.” The author of this description considered that Beauford portrayed himself metaphorically in this work as “an isolated man of African descent working in a foreign place, with the broom representing the artist's paint brush.”

Street Sweeper (Le Balayeur) was auctioned in February 2011. The sale price was $96,000.

The painting below was auctioned this month (October 2011). It sold for $9600.

Untitled (Gray, Red and Yellow Abstraction)
(1962) Gouache and watercolor on cream wove paper
Photo courtesy of Swann Galleries
Swann Galleries' Web site indicates that the auction house acquired this work directly from Beauford’s brother, Joseph. The date of acquisition was not mentioned.

The work below is an abstract expressionist painting in which Beauford’s favorite color – yellow – predominates. The sale value from its auction in February 2008 was $102,000.

Untitled
(ca. 1958) Oil on canvas
Photo courtesy of Swann Galleries
Additional images of the Beauford Delaney paintings auctioned by Swann Galleries can be found on their Web site. Look for them in the online auction catalogs for February 2007, February 2008, February 2009, February 2010, October 2010, February 2011, and October 2011. In addition, see the catalog for an auction held in June 2010 entitled Out of the Blue: Modern Art and Jazz, where Beauford’s Untitled (Composition in Blue) sold for $19,200.

The prices that you see will see in the catalogs for the works discussed above are lower than those quoted in this article. Swann Galleries' Hillary Brody explained why:

At auction, there are two prices--the hammer price, or the price at which the item sells during the auction, and the price with the buyer's premium. All auction houses have a buyer's premium that the buyer pays to the auction house on top of the hammer price. Swann's premium is 20%.

Swann Galleries reports the "hammer price" for each painting in its catalogs, while prices that include the buyer's premium can be found on its sales results page.

Swann Galleries’ African-American Fine Art auctions are generally held in February and October of each year. Items that are up for sale can be viewed at the auction house for several days prior to each auction. The auction house encourages any and all interested parties to come to their facility to visit the preview exhibitions.

Swann Galleries
104 East 25th Street
New York, NY 10010
Telephone: 212-254-4710

Where to Find Beauford's Art: New England

If you live in New England, or are planning a visit there, note that you can see works by Beauford at the following museums:

Worcester Art Museum - Worcester, Massachusetts
Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art - Hartford, Connecticut
Bowdoin College Museum of Art - Brunswick, Maine

The Worcester Art Museum holds a portrait entitled Portrait of Gaylord. It is on view in the Rose Gallery on the fourth floor of the museum.

Portrait of Gaylord
(1944) Oil on canvas mounted on artist board
Here is the description of the painting furnished by the museum:

When Beauford Delaney moved to New York City in 1929 he quickly fell in with the writers and artists of the time including Charles Alston, Henry Miller, James Baldwin, and musicians Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Marian Anderson. Throughout his life he painted portraits of the friends he had made, though the identity of some, including Gaylord in this painting, remains a mystery. Gaylord is thought to have been a musician, a pianist with two fingers missing on one hand, who played at a club that Beauford frequented. To the right of Gaylord’s face is an image of a piano player, perhaps Gaylord himself, while on the left is a figure, possibly Delaney, standing in front of an easel. This work, with its bright colors and swirled brushstrokes is reminiscent of one of Delaney’s main influences: Vincent van Gogh.

The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art owns an abstract expressionist painting by Beauford that it currently holds in storage.

Untitled (Green)
(1961) Oil on canvas
This work was selected to be shown in the exposition The Color Yellow, mounted by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia in 2002. The exhibit traveled to the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Anacostia Museum and Center for African History and Culture at the Smithsonian, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. The Wadsworth Atheneum museum describes it as “an abstracted composition of pink and green swirls.”

Those wishing to see this painting should contact Patricia Hickson, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Wadsworth Atheneum museum.

The work owned by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art is an abstract expressionist painting that was given to the museum by halley k. harrisburg (alumma of Bowdoin, Class of 1990) and Michael Rosenfeld. It is not currently on view.

Untitled
(1960) Oil on canvas
I will update this posting when I am able to obtain further information about the paintings at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art.