More on Beauford's Still Life with Idol

Last week, Les Amis published an article about Sotheby's sale of a Beauford Delaney work entitled Still Life with Idol.

Lot 336
Still Life with Idol
signed (lower center)
oil on Masonite in artist's chosen frame
36 by 21 in.
91.4 by 53.3 cm.
Executed in 1945.
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

In that post, we discussed the differences in title, media, and year of creation ascribed to the work on Sotheby's Website and in the biography entitled Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney.

Sylvain Briet worked alongside his brother, Philippe, at the Philippe Briet Gallery in New York.  He graciously provided us with additional information about this painting.

He told us that the gallery sold the painting to Jean de Gunzburg and that de Gunzburg already owned it when the gallery displayed it at the Beauford Delaney: The New York Years [1929-1953] exhibition in April - May 1994. He confirmed that it is an oil on masonite.

Briet also told us that neither his brother nor Jean de Gunzburg knew of the title Still Life with Idol and that the work was listed in the exhibition as Untitled, circa 1945. He mentioned that many of the works shown during the gallery's 1994 show also hung in the Seventh Annual Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture at the Pyramid Club in Philadelphia in 1947.