Joseph Delaney

Joseph Delaney (1904-1991) was a Black artist born to a Methodist minister father in Knoxville, Tennessee. Joseph and his brother Beauford revealed artistic inclinations early on, drawing while they were bored in Sunday school and taking art lessons with local artist Lloyd Branson. The brothers set out on their own in the 1920s — Joseph spent several years wandering and working odd jobs, and served a three-year stint in the Illinois National Guard. He eventually landed in New York City in 1930, where he enrolled at the Art Students League, taking classes with Thomas Hart Benton — who would have a profound influence on his art — in the same cohort as Jackson Pollock. Delaney spent the next fifty years in New York City. He was part of the Harlem Renaissance movement, a recorder of ordinary urban life who made quick sketches that captured the movement and dynamism of the city, later developing them into portraits of individuals and crowds — in the streets, on parade, in parks, on trains, and in bars and clubs. Delaney was employed with the WPA for several years in the 1930s illustrating and painting murals. He exhibited yearly at the Washington Square Outdoor Art Show, and showed his work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Academy of Design. Delaney returned to Knoxville in 1986 as an artist-in-residence at the University of Tennessee, which held his first retrospective.