This dreamy outdoor setup by celebrated Harlem Renaissance artist Beauford Delaney shows the painter himself, guitar in hand, accompanied by “odalisque” (that much-exoticized figure of Western art history, stemming from the chambermaids of Turkish seraglios). Delaney’s chosen companion has long baffled art historians—was he deliberately subverting a trope, nodding to the work of modernist artists he admired like Matisse and Picasso, or simply conducting an exercise in painting the elusive nude female figure? We’ll never know—but the sun-kissed scene is a masterclass in delicate colours and lyrical brushwork.
