Oil on linen canvas, 1941. 394x493 mm; 15 1/2x19 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection, New York.
This painterly view is the earliest oil painting by Beauford Delaney to come to auction. By 1938, Beauford Delaney enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity after being featured as an artist in a Life magazine article on African-Americans - including a large photograph of him seated in front of his paintings at the Washington Square outdoor show. In this photograph there is another similar waterfront landscape visible from this period.
In his 1941 exhibition at the midtown Vendome art gallery, Beauford Delaney had just began to show his more modernist scenes of Greenwich Village and the environs of his Greene Street studio. This Impressionist painting shows the apparent influence of John Marin. Delaney was inspired by the modernists led by his friend Alfred Steiglitz and often frequented his gallery An American Place where he was introduced to Marin, Arthur Dove and Georgia O'Keefe. Canterbury pp.21-22, 125; Leeming pp. 62-65.
