Oct 05, 2017 - Sale 2456

Sale 2456 - Lot 26

Price Realized: $ 15,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 15,000 - $ 25,000
BEAUFORD DELANEY (1901 - 1979)
Greenhouse at Yaddo.

Color pastels on wove paper, 1950. 457x610 mm; 18x24 inches. Signed, dated and inscribed "Yaddo" in pastel, lower right.

Provenance: gift from the artist; May Swenson, New York; Rozanne R. Knudson, New York; private collection, Connecticut (1998). Beauford Delaney met the American poet May Swenson at Yaddo where they attended a two month fellowship at the artist and writer's colony near Sarasota Springs. Beauford befriended Swenson and another poet Elizabeth Bishop there. According to Leeming, the artistic camaraderie Delaney enjoyed at Yaddo influenced his decision to leave New York and follow James Baldwin to Paris in 1953.

This striking, modernist drawing is a scarce example of Beauford Delaney's work in color pastels from the late 1940s. We found records of only two other pastels that are not portraits from this New York period at auction. Leeming pp. 98-100.