On April 6, 2023, Swann Auction Galleries auctioned the abstract work shown below.
(1956) Gouache on illustration board
724x540 mm; 28 1/2x21 1/4 inches
Signed and dated in ink, lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Beauford painted this work when he lived in the Paris suburb of Clamart. Hues of blue predominate, which makes me recall a statement James Baldwin made about the window of the Clamart apartment that Beauford's biographer, David Leeming, quoted in Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney:
... a kind of universe, moaning and wailing when it rained, black and bitter when it thundered, hesitant and delicate with the first light of morning, and as blue as the blues when the last light of sun departed.
Leeming described works that Beauford showed at the Galerie Arnaud and the Galerie Prisme in early 1956 as "abstractions marked by large areas of paint applied thickly in swirls and various colors--blues, pinks, softer colors than those of the Greene Street period." This work "matches" that description.
Swann's Website indicates that Beauford worked on board in the mid-1950s for only a short time and that his later gouaches were typically done on paper. The estimated sale price for this work on illustration board was $35,000 - $50,000.
The abstract sold for $60,000, including Buyer's Premium (the hammer price was $48,000).
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