Marian Anderson (Primary Title)

Beauford Delaney, American, 1901 - 1979 (Artist)

Educational
1965
American
Oil and egg tempera emulsion on canvas
United States
Framed: 66 3/16 × 53 1/2 × 1 7/8 in. (168.12 × 135.89 × 4.76 cm)
Unframed: 63 15/16 × 51 5/16 × 1 1/2 in. (162.4 × 130.33 × 3.81 cm)
Travel Frame: 66 × 53 1/4 × 3 1/4 in. (167.64 × 135.26 × 8.26 cm)
2012.277
Not on view

Delaney painted this iconic portrait of the acclaimed contralto Marian Anderson, whose operatic talent and integrity inspired a generation. In this “memory” portrait—produced in Paris but with an awareness of the civil rights struggles underway in the United States—Delaney expressed his ongoing admiration for Anderson’s sensitive brilliance as a performer and person. The visual harmony of the work epitomizes his exploration of painterly abstractions, with the color yellow symbolizing perfection and transcendence.

Modern; Civil Rights
Signed and dated, lower left: Beauford Delaney 1965
Signed "Beauford Delaney. 1965" in red paint in lower left corner of image.
J. Harwood and Louise B. Cochrane Fund for American Art
2019-2020: "One Life: Marian Anderson", Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, June 28, 2019 - May 17, 2020.

2018: Collecting for the Commonwealth Preserving for the Nation, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 1919-2018, Winter Antiques Show, Park Avenue Armory, New York City, NY, January 18 - 26, 2018.

The Art of Music, The San Diego Museum of Art, September 26, 2015 - February 7, 2016 (not lent to the second venue, Mexico City).

Beauford Delaney: The Color Yellow, High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Anacostia Museum and Center for African History and Culture; Smithsonian Institution, Washington; Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, 2002-2003

Beauford Delaney: A Retrospective, The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, 1978

Beauford Delaney, Galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris, 1973
©artist or artist’s estate

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