Oil on linen canvas, 1968. 647x552 mm; 25½x21¼ inches. Signed and dated, lower right recto. Signed and dated in graphite, verso. Signed and titled in ink, the crossbar.
Provenance Acquired directly from the artist by John-Franklin Koenig. By descent to private collection. Sotheby's, New York, March 9, 2011, lot 315. Private collection, New York.
A friend of Beauford Delaney during his Paris period, painter and collagist John-Franklin Koenig was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and spent most of his career in France. He worked as a painter and collagist in a modern, non-representational style. Koenig served in the Second World War and moved to Paris in 1948 to study under the GI Bill. In 1950, he and Jean-Robert Arnaud opened the Galerie Arnaud in the basement of Arnaud's bookstore at 34, rue du Four. Delaney, part of the same artistic expatriate community, exhibited at their gallery in the late 1950s.
