Skip to main content
Artist/Maker
Beauford Delaney
(American, 1901 – 1979)
Date1965
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsCanvas: 16 × 13 in. (40.6 × 33 cm)
Frame: 17 3/4 × 14 3/4 × 1 3/4 in. (45.1 × 37.5 × 4.4 cm)
Credit LineGift of Peter B. Fischer, Class of 1963
Object number2026.13
Not on view
DescriptionBeauford Delaney was always interested in the visualization of light. While he had become well-known for his colorful, soulful portraits while living in New York City, Delaney began to explore abstraction in earnest after his move to Paris in 1953. Delaney’s friend and mentee James Baldwin noted that the artist found inspiration for his abstractions in looking out of a large window in his Clamart studio. His paintings, then, are like a portal, which Delaney himself compared to the gospel song, “Lord, Open the Unusual Door.” These images, like Untitled (1965), often feature vibrant yellows and an ecstatic sense of motion. Fellow painter Paul Jenkins noted that Delaney’s abstractions were “more of a veil than a grid…as if he had cut hundreds of flowers and crushed them. Stems and all.”
Additional Details
Exhibition History
"Beauford Delaney: Liquid Light, Paris Abstractions, 1954-1970," Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY, September 9 - October 30, 1999.
Provenance
2026: Hamilton College (Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art), by gift of Peter B. Fischer
2011: from the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
?: Collection of Addie Herter, New York, NY
1965: from the artist
2011: from the Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY
?: Collection of Addie Herter, New York, NY
1965: from the artist
Published References
David Leeming. "Beauford Delaney: Liquid Light, Paris Abstractions, 1954-1970," Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY, September 9 - October 30, 1999. Illus. p.39.
Signature
Verso, top center of canvas (black paint): "Beauford / Paris 1965"
Dorothy Shakespear
Date: 1919
Medium: Watercolor on paper
Object number: 1994.94
Dorothy Shakespear
Date: 1937
Medium: Watercolor on paper, mounted on cardboard
Object number: 1996.10
Dorothy Shakespear
Date: c. 1914-1919
Medium: Watercolor and graphite on paper
Object number: 1994.200
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Date: c. 1913-1914
Medium: Seravazza and Sicilian marble
Object number: 2005.6.2
William H. Beard
Date: 1878
Medium: Oil on canvas, mounted on masonite
Object number: 1971.1
Yashua Klos
Date: 2021
Medium: Stained and charred maple
Object number: 2022.2