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Portrait of James Baldwin

Artist Beauford Delaney (American, 1901 - 1979)

Date1965

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensions25 1/2 × 21 1/4 in. (64.8 × 54 cm)
Overall, Frame: 32 1/4 × 28 1/4 × 3 in. (81.9 × 71.8 × 7.6 cm)

ClassificationsModern art

Credit LineMuseum purchase

Object number2015.28

Collections

Modern and Contemporary

On View

Not on view

DescriptionPortrait of American novelist and Civil Rights advocate James Baldwin (1924-1987). Oil on canvas painting, 25 1/2 x 21 1/4 inches in size. It is framed in a plain brown wooden frame with dimensions of 26 3/4 x 22 3/4 inches, 1 1/2 inches deep. The painting is signed and dated in red paint in the lower left corner: BEAUFORD DELANEY 1965. There are exhibition labels on the backing board from the Studio Museum in Harlem and art handlers André Chenue and Ollendorff Fine Arts. The verso of the canvas is inscribed in red: 53 rue Vercingétorix.
Label TextBeauford Delaney American, 1901–1979 Portrait of James Baldwin, 1965 Oil on canvas Intense yellow brings a sacred and redemptive light to Beauford Delaney’s portraits of people he admired, as seen here framing the writer and Civil Rights activist James Baldwin (1924–1987). Though Delaney often exhibited with Harlem Renaissance artists, he preferred the company of intellectual circles in New York’s Greenwich Village. His abstract, colorful, and highly textured paintings found many admirers, including Alfred Stieglitz, Stuart Davis, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Baldwin, who was only a teenager when they first met in 1940. Delaney became a spiritual mentor to the budding writer based on their mutual struggles against poverty, racism, and homophobia, and this portrait, created 25 years later, celebrates their lifelong creative friendship. Museum purchase 2015.28