Untitled (Greenwich Village Street) up for Auction at Swann

Swann Auction Galleries will auction a magnificent oil from Beauford's New York years during its African American Art sale on October 3, 2024.

Lot 16 - Untitled (Greenwich Village Street, New York)
(circa 1945-46) Oil on linen canvas
457x546 mm; 18x21½ inches.
Signed and dated (indistinctly) in oil, lower right recto.
Signed (three times) and inscribed "181 Greene St" (twice)"
and "NY" in oil on the stretcher bars, verso.
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

Swann lists the provenance for this piece as follows: acquired directly from the artist, Professor Kenneth Lash, California and Iowa; thence by descent, private collection, Washington (2006).

Beauford's biographer, David Leeming, indicates that Kenneth Lash made Beauford's June 1946 visit to Vinalhaven, Maine possible.

(According to Leeming, Beauford spent part of each summer between 1936 and 1953 with Dante Pavone in Vinalhaven.)

The current owner of the painting sent me some biographical information on Kenneth Lash. Reading it, I learned that Lash lived in New York City from 1938 to 1943. Frequenting jazz clubs, he learned of and attended after-hours sessions at trumpeter Frankie Newton’s Greenwich Village loft. 

Beauford and Newton were friends, and Beauford's Greenwich Village abode was a few blocks away from Newton's.

Lash served in the Navy from 1943-46. It is thought that Beauford created Untitled (Greenwich Village Street, New York) during this time.

There is a gap in Lash's timeline from 1955 to 1959. But a reference that Lash made to a Paris experience “some twenty years ago” in his December 1977 North American Review column entitled "Another Man's Poison: Oh Britannia! II" would seem to indicate that he was in Paris around 1957.

Lash’s wife, Jan, remembers the Delaney painting being on the wall of their home in Bolinas, California in the early-to-mid 1960s.

Even with the information provided by the current owner, we do not know exactly when Lash acquired this painting.

Untitled (Greenwich Village Street, New York) bears a striking resemblance to another Beauford Delaney oil entitled Street Scene.

Street Scene
(1968) Oil on canvas
Signed and dated "BEAUFORD DELANEY 1968" lower right
© Estate of Beauford Delaney,
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator

In the Les Amis blog post entitled "Beauford's Street Scenes," I commented that I believed the landscape represented the elevated train (metro) that serves the south and southwest parts of the city of Paris.

In comparing the two works, it is easy to accept Swann's statement that Beauford "revisited" the 1945-46 painting when he created Street Scene.

The estimated sale price for Untitled (Greenwich Village Street, New York) is $250,000 - $350,000.

For information about Swann's African American Art Sale, click HERE.