The Greene Street Paintings

In Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, biographer David Leeming states that

"In May [1950] one of Beauford's Greene Street paintings was seen by Henry McBride in Art News as one of the few 'bright spots' in a show at the Whitney Museum."

I presumed that the painting shown was the oil on canvas called Greene Street that Beauford created in 1950.

Untitled (Greene Street)
(1950) Oil on canvas
signed and dated lower left: B. Delaney. 1950
© Estate of Beauford Delaney, by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery
But there are at least three additional paintings called Greene Street that predate the exhibition and might have been shown there.

Greene Street
(1940) Oil on canvas
Private collection
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Photo by André Morain from the Artsmia Web site

Greene Street
(1940) Oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Greene Street
(1946) Oil on canvas
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
During a Google search for more information about this show, I learned that the exhibition McBride saw was the 1950 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings, which ran from April 1 - May 28, 1950.

1950 Annual Exhibition of Contemporary American Sculpture, Watercolors and Drawings
Exhibition catalog cover
Fair use claim

An online archive of the catalog shows Beauford's name and address, along with his assigned catalog number (88) in the index.

It also shows his name listed in the section entitled "Watercolors, Gouaches, and Pastels."

Beauford's listing in 1950 exhibition catalog
Fair use claim

Because all the works shown above are oils, we can be assured that none of them were displayed at the Whitney exhibition.

Unfortunately, the online archive of the catalog contains only six images of works, none of which represent Beauford's Greene Street.

We may never know how many paintings and works on paper of this street exist!

Larry Calcagno and Dante Pavone - A Curious Resemblance

In preparation for this post, which was originally conceived to present the results of Black Art Auction's offer of Beauford's portrait of Larry Calcagno during its inaugural sale on May 16, I stumbled across a serendipitous side-by-side presentation of the portraits of Calcagno and Dante Pavone on the Entrée to Black Paris Facebook page (shown below):

Left:
Portrait of a Young Man (Larry Calcagno)
(1953) Oil on canvas
31.75 x 25.5 inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Right:
Dante Pavone as Christ
(1948) Pastel on paper
23.25 x 19.75 inches
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Knoxville Museum of Art,
2016 purchase with funds provided by the KMA Collectors Circle with additional gifts from Barbara Apking, June and Rob Heller, Donna Kerr, Alexandra Rosen and Donald Cooney, Ted Smith and David Butler, Mimi and Milton Turner, John Cotham, Jan and Pete Crawford, Cathy and Mark Hill, Florence and Russell Johnston, John Z. C. Thomas, Donna and Terry Wertz, Jayne and Myron Ely, Sarah Stowers, Robin and Joe Ben Turner, and Jacqueline Wilson

I was struck by the similarity of the proportions of the eyes (left eye slightly larger than the right) and the hand gesture in these works, and was inspired to ask two colleagues to comment on this curious resemblance.

Rachel Cohen, Professor of Practice in the Arts at the University of Chicago and author of A Chance Meeting, commented as follows:

"I saw this pastel, Dante Pavone as Christ, in Knoxville this past February, and was struck by the intensity the artist evidently felt in making it – the colors are almost lurid, and the hand is almost medieval in the way it holds the Christ-like gesture. Standing with the work, and thinking about what I know of Beauford Delaney’s relationship with Dante Pavone, I had an intimation of how religious feeling and erotic feeling were near to each other for the artist.

"It is then extremely interesting to see the shadow of that same gesture in the oil Portrait of a Young Man (Larry Calcagno). The hand in the oil has opened and become more like an ordinary gesture, or one that might be characteristic of Calcagno, but also – in the way the fingers overlap, and the way the small finger bends – seems distinctly to remember the earlier hand. I haven’t seen this painting, but in the photo, the hand looks tender to me, and like the kind of gesture one might make in sculpting, or in touching someone else’s face with tenderness. The significance, and tenderness, of Delaney’s relationship with Calcagno has been well written about in this blog and in David Leeming’s biography, Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney. To my mind, the presence of the gesture here, reinforces my hesitant thought about the way erotic and religious feelings were overlaid for Delaney.

Larry Calcagno and Dante Pavone - detail (left hand)
"The eyes in the two portraits also bear a similarity. It is not unusual for painters to paint two very different eyes – this creates expressiveness and avoids common problems of amateur painting (if eyes are too similar in a painting they may seem rote and lifeless or demonic, and if their positions are too closely aligned, they seem to follow the viewer around the room). But it is interesting here that the two pairs of eyes are different in a similar way, the two eyes to the viewer’s left are almost identical in shape, and the two eyes on the right have a larger circle of iris. I find it hard to say what the effect of this is by studying reproductions, but I notice that if I cover the eyes in turn, the overall quality of expressiveness goes away and the expression changes in the remaining eye.

Larry Calcagno and Dante Pavone - detail (eyes)
"The last thing I would say is that I feel heartened by the sequence. The pastel of Dante Pavone in 1948 makes me worry a little for Delaney, that the object of his passionate feeling holds him at bay with something that might approach indifference. But the 1953 painting seems very open – the light of the earth and the light of the heavens more mingled, less harsh – and I feel glad that he felt this beneficence in his Paris years."

Stephen Wicks, Barbara W. and Bernard E. Bernstein Curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art, had the following to say:

"... these are two of the rare instances in which the artist includes this sort of gesture. While Dante’s blessing gesture makes sense given that Delaney has depicted him “as Christ,” I have always been interested in the artist’s choice to use the subject’s left hand rather than the traditional right hand in earlier portraits of Christ. I also find it interesting as a possible farewell gesture given that by the time the Calcagno painting was created in 1953 Beauford perhaps had learned of his friend’s decision to leave Paris for America the following year. Since Leeming casts Calcagno as a social/personal “replacement” for Pavone, whom Delaney left behind when he set off for Paris in 1953, perhaps it seems not so surprising that he used this blessing/farewell gesture (also with the left hand) in his depiction of Calcagno."

By the way, Black Art Auction estimated that Portrait of a Young Man (Larry Calcagno) would sell for $25,000 - $35,000. It sold for $40,000.

Beauford on Pinterest

Beauford's work is well represented on Pinterest!

Woman in White
(1964-65) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Photo from Bill Hodges Gallery Web site
While those wanting to honor him may have inadvertently included images of non-authenticated works, the majority of the images I've seen on these pages present works that have been authenticated by the Beauford Delaney estate or other expert authorities on his oeuvre.

Some boards present photos of Beauford in addition to images of his works. Some include an occasional image of a work attributed to another artist.

The following links will take you to a few of the many sites that celebrate Beauford:

Clarence Mayo - 60 images

Art Lover - 106 images

Helen Cargile - 150 images

Nathan A - 94 images

FGE Food & Nutrition Team Consulting - 228 images

Enjoy!

Beauford's Portrait of Larry Calcagno for Sale

Black Art Auction is the only auction house in the world that is solely dedicated to the sale of African-American fine art. Located in Indianapolis, Indiana, it will hold its inaugural sale on May 16.

Among the 153 works available for acquisition is Beauford's 1953 portrait of Larry Calcagno.

Portrait of a Young Man (Larry Calcagno)
(1953) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
This painting was shown in the Beauford Delaney: From New York to Paris traveling exhibition mounted by the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in 2004.

Beauford and Calcagno became friends in Paris in 1953, the year that Beauford painted this portrait. The two men developed a deep and residing friendship that is poignantly expressed in letters they exchanged for almost twenty years.

In one of these letters, Beauford's comments about changing times might just have easily been written today, given the upheaval in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic:

"These days are so full of change - mondial and personal.... [O]ne tries to keep in contact with the veriations [sic] and constant looking back[,] looking into the future[,] and utilizing every possible in the unique marvel of the present."

Portrait of a Young Man (Larry Calcagno) has been assigned Lot Number 29. Its estimated value is $25,000-35,000.

To learn more about the work, click HERE.

Rachel's Musings: Three Articles about Beauford

Rachel Cohen is the author of A Chance Meeting, a book in which she examines Beauford's relationship with James Baldwin and also describes Beauford's encounter with W. E. B. Du Bois. She was one of the invited speakers at the recent University of Tennessee Knoxville symposium on Beauford and James Baldwin entitled "In A Speculative Light."

When she was a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, Cohen granted Les Amis de Beauford Delaney an exclusive interview:

Rachel Cohen's Tribute to Beauford

Cohen has recently published three articles in which she examines one or more aspects of Beauford's work.

In "'Here is a man who could do whatever interested him in paint’ – on the paintings of Beauford Delaney," she discusses Through the Unusual Door, the Knoxville Museum of art exhibition that opened this February.

Exhibition room for Through the Unusual Door
© Les Amis de Beauford Delaney
In "Beauford Delaney Close Looking," she marvels over the 1965 green and yellow abstract held by the Art Institute of Chicago.

Untitled
(1965) Oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago
And in "Delaney and Morisot Ochre: This Week in Self-Portraits," she comments on the use of ochre pigment in Beauford's work and the work of Berthe Morisot.

Self-Portrait
(1962) oil on canvas
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire
Court Appointed Administrator
Image courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York , NY
Each article is rich with photos and observations. Enjoy them!