Bauford Delaney Controversy

William H. Johnson was a successful painter who was born on March 18, 1901 in Florence, South Carolina. Johnson began exploring his level of creativity as a child, and it only amplified from there because he discovered that he wanted to be an artist. After making this discovery he attended the National Academy of Design in New York which is where he met his mentor Charles Webster Hawthorne who had a strong influential impact on Johnson. Once Johnson graduated he moved to Paris where he was exposed to different artists, various artistic abilities, and evolutionary creations. Throughout Johnson’s time in Paris he grew as an artist, and adapted a “folk” style where he used lively colors and flat figures. Johnson used the “folk” style to express the experience of most African-Americans during the years of the 1930s and 1940s.

It wasn’t until 1822 that his family allowed him to study the arts. They let him work under Alexander Lenoir, an artist and architect, that introduced him to some of the classic sculptors and artists like Titian and Rubens. He was pushed in a healthy direction by Lenoir, and soon began formal study at the Academie Suisse.

Zora Neale Hurston, a novelist, folklorist, and Ethnographical Anthropologist was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama but raised in Eatonville, Florida. Eatonville was one of the first all-black communities in the United States of America. Hurston had the benefit of being brought up in a thriving society that fostered prestige and education. Hurston became immersed

His preferred style of painting was Romanticism. The first studio of his was set up in Boston, Massachusetts. He went to England during the War of 1812 to study art with Washington Allston, and preserved in museums both in America and in England when he became a trained painter. He became associated with Marquis de Lafayette and James Fennimore Cooper. Some of his famous paintings were Dying Hercules, Jonas Platt, The Gallery of the Louvre, and The Chapel of the Virgin at Subiaco.

One of his major works was the beginning of the Migration of the Negro or better known as “The migration series”. This is a 60 -panel painting that depicted the life of the Southern Negros migrating the urban cities in the North in the 1900’s straight up to world war l in search of work. The migration series had many pieces to it; however the cohesiveness of this work made it into a mural-like piece of art. This series of painting captured the

Boyd comes from an artistic family. This had an affect on his artwork as both of his parents, Merric and Doris Boyd, were potters and painters while his brothers were both artists, one a sculptor and the other a painter. This artistic influence helped lead him into becoming an artist as he was exposed to art from a young age. His humanitarian influences and social conscience came from writers such as Dostoyevsky and Kafka. Boyd was exposed to these writers by Jewish immigrant artist Yosl Bergner who was his teacher at Melbourne night classes, which Boyd started attending at age 14 after leaving school. After this time his talent was nurtured by his grandfather who was a landscape artist.

His first job was working as a clerk for a nearby import-export store. He worked there for a while then started to grow a love with writing. His education soon became something he thought was important. He first didn’t get into a church school because his parents were not married. After being denied he didn’t give up, he started the brilliant idea of self-educating himself. Reading everything he could get his hands on is what made him a genius. The library he went to only had thirty-four books some including Roman and Greek classics. He didn’t stop at just reading he started to learn other languages. His mother taught his some French but he became fluent by himself. After all that hard work he was accepted into a all grammar school in New Jersey. After studying there for about a year with Francis Barber he then went to King’s College. It was in New York City and he got his Bachelor’s of Arts degree in just the short time span of one year. (Alexander

He was so dedicated that he was even assigned to the highest class. Later, he sailed off with Thomas Gallaudet (a former student of his) to finalize a school for the Deaf in America. They finally accomplished this when they created the School for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut. His incredible ability to teach and relate to the students did not go unnoticed. Even today he is still known as a renowned “master teacher.” His love for teaching made him stay in America longer than he desired. He never did return to his family in France.

While he was in Arizona he became fascinated by the Native American culture. He wrote about what he called the “True Colors” of the West. He stated that horses shadows were blue or a shade of Carmine. After a few months out West engulfing his life with Native and horse culture Harper's Weekly sent him out too South Carolina to focus on the Earthquake in 1886. 4 years later in 1890 he had acquired and made enough art to make his own show. It featured 21 of his own art pieces. By this time he had also created a reputation for himself that helped make his art pieces sell. His popularity got to him so much, he became extremely gluttonous and obesity became a major problem. He battled many health problems which in turn led to his early death on December 26, 1909 at the age of 48. Before his death though he was constantly on the move throughout the Wild West getting to know the natives and becoming engulfed into their culture. After he married his wife Eva they moved immediately to Kansas City where Frederic tried to make his way with a hardware business but it eventually failed. Eva moved back out East because she couldn’t handle the the rough and wild lifestyle the West had to offer. In 1890 after the one man art show Frederic out on his missed his beloved more than anything. So the couple decided to move to New Rochelle, New York in order to have nicer galleries and more living space for

Besides his mother Anna he had several siblings and a father named Theodorus. He used pastels and mainly did portraits in his art. Van Gogh made his best art when he was in an asylum. He put himself in the asylum with his brother because one night he tried to commit suicide and he wanted to be restrained from doing so. The asylum is also where he died supposedly, his death is partial mystery. It is believed he either died in the arms of his brother, or he was killed by his brother or an assassin.

Baldwin described men like Delaney as “disturbers of the peace,” an imaginative and non-conformist painter splitting from the known to the unknown. He saw Delaney as a mirror of himself, therefore, he too was a disturber of peace. Both creative minds had lived in a known legacy of discrimination and criminalization of Black people, especially men. My research delves deeper into the transforming aspects of their artistic disciplines when they coalesced in France

When he was given his inheritance he began to become a dandy and spent his leisure time in art galleries. He was eventually given a limit on his allowance and in order to maintain his lifestyle he began writing art critiques and

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born October 25, 1881 in the city of Málaga, Spain on the Mediterranean Sea. His parents, José Ruiz Blasco and Maria Picasso, were both from Spain. His father from northern Spain and his mother from Picasso’s birthplace. It was not unusual for people to take both parents family names. At the time of Picasso’s birth, his was was an art teacher in Málaga, which obviously greatly influenced Picasso. It was when the family moved to Barcelona when Picasso was 15 years old and his father took a job as a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts that really blossomed his interest in painting. He was an exceptional artist at a very young age, as displayed in A Man In a Cap, 1895 (Picasso, Pg. 14). He painted this painting when he was only 14 years old, and it depicts a beggar on the street. I particularly like this because he painted something that caught his eye as a young boy.

Vincent then attended preparatory classes with intense lessons of Dutch, German, French, and English along with the traditional array of math and science courses. Yet for reasons unknown, in March of 1868, Vincent returned to his home in Zundert. His boyhood came to a close in July of 1869 when he joined the art business as a dealer for Goupil & Co. This was a family tradition, as three of his uncles, including one also by the name of Vincent, were also art dealers. Vincent’s brother Theo would also become an art dealer four years after him. As a young child, Vincent was not known for his own creation of art. Though his family made a great impact on his view of dealing art, he was not an art prodigy like other famous arts such as Henri de Toulous-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso were. While a handful of his drawings between the ages of eight and ten have survived, he did not truly take a serious interest in creating art until he was twenty-seven. (Hulsker & Miller, 5-14)

Alfred Sisley was an Impressionist painter that was born in Paris, France in 1839. He was an influential painter of the 1870s all the way to the time of his death in 1899. Even though in his lifetime his artwork was never admired, success of his paintings started one year after his death. Sisley was known for his landscape paintings and animate portrayal of village streets and Parisian rivers. However, his lack of progress outside the realm of landscape is a key factor for his shortage of success. He made many friends within the artist community and encompassed himself in the world of art. The arrival of the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune forced many changed in his life. His family also had a monumental impact on his childhood, that is visible in his artwork. Alfred Sisley had many inspirations, deeply influenced the world around him, and created paintings of adoration, especially three.