James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney in Paris, ca. 1960 [Grey Art Museum, New York University, New York, NY. © Estate of Beauford Delaney, via Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, New York, NY]

Beauford Delaney, Untitled (Jazz Club), 1950

The writer James Baldwin and Beauford Delaney in Paris circa 1960.

Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Postwar France, 1946-1962

Grey Art Museum, NYU

Beauford Delaney, Dark Rapture (James Baldwin), 1941

Beauford Delaney portraits of James Baldwin

Connie Williams (seated) and a dancer at the Calypso on Macdougal Street in Greenwich Village, ca. 1945.

The Calypso was a Caribbean establishment run by Williams, a Trinidadian restaurateur, where musical performances, soul food, and intellectual banter mixed with a steady flow of liquor. It was a spiritual home of sorts for James Baldwin in his first years in the Village. He got a job there as a waiter, and when he wasn't working he'd be drinking with the artist Beauford Delaney or Marlon Brando, a lifelong friend and supporter. It was a space where races mixed freely, which was still unusual at the time, and on a given night you might have seen Paul Robeson or Henry Miller eating side by side with Burt Lancaster or, later, Malcolm X.

Text: NY Times Photo: Berenice Abbott via the NY Times

Artist Beauford Delaney completed this portrait of James Baldwin in 1963. After completing Go Tell It On the Mountain in Switzerland, Baldwin quickly became an internationally recognized voice for issues of race in America. Their friendship inspired his work.

National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution© 2016 Estate of Beauford Delaney, by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator.

Beauford Delaney, Untitled, 1967, oil on canvas, 31 ¾ x 23 ¾ in (80.6 x 60.2 cm)

Portrait of James Baldwin -- Beauford Delaney

Portrait of James Baldwin, 1965 by Beauford Delaney (1901-79)

View On WordPress

by Beauford Delaney

Beauford Delaney, Untitled (Yellow, Red, and Black Circles for James Baldwin, Istanbul), (watercolor and gouache on paper), 1966 [The Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN. © Estate of Beauford Delaney]

Exhibition: Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin: Through the Unusual Door, The Knoxville Museum of Art, Knoxville, TN, February 7 – October 25, 2020

Beauford Delaney

Portrait of James Baldwin (1945) Oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art © Estate of Beauford Delaney by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator

Beauford Delaney

Portrait of a Young Musician, 1970

The Studio Museum in Harlem

Beauford Delaney

Untitled (Trees)

c. 1945

Beauford Delaney Composition Bleu

Signed, inscribed and dated ‘Beauford Delaney 68 Rue Paul Couturier Clamart Siene 60’ (on the reverse); titled and dated again ‘Composition Bleu 1960’ (on a panel affixed to the stretcher). Oil on canvas. 51 x 38 1/4 in. (129.5 x 97.1 cm.). Painted in 1960.

Beauford Delaney