BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901 - 1978) Untitled (Portrait of a Young Man).
Pastels on pale green wove paper, circa 1940. 625x480 mm; 24 1/2x18 7/8 inches.
Provenance: acquired directly from the artist's brother Joseph Delaney, with a letter of authentication; private collection.
Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, Beauford Delaney moved to Boston in 1923, and studied art at the Massachusetts Normal School, the Copley Society and the South Boston School of Art. In 1929, Delaney moved to New York City and, like his brother Joseph, studied briefly at the Art Students League with John Sloan and Thomas Hart Benton. His paintings of the 1940s and early 1950s consist largely of portraits and landscapes from his New York surroundings. Delaney was very much a part of the bohemian Greenwich Village scene, and was friends with writers James Baldwin and Henry Miller, and artists Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O'Keefe, and Al Hirshfeld.
