Brer Rabbit, back in his own briar patch

by Jack Neely

Almost 75 years ago, a bon-voyage party appeared on a passenger-train platform in downtown Knoxville. Most were members of a black East Knoxville family, a preacher's widow in her late 50s and four young adults, most of whom resembled the older woman. The shortest was a roly-poly kid with a loony grin that made him look even younger than he was. Standing with the family was an elderly white man, elegantly dressed in spats and a beret, carrying a silver-headed cane.

If you'd been waiting for a train that day, you'd recognize him. For 50 years, Lloyd Branson had been Knoxville's most prominent artist, painting portraits of the wealthy in his Gay Street studio, occasionally winning an award for a more serious study. His work was all over town; he'd even carved the model for the Confederate statue that towered over East Knoxville. Branson was on the platform with this black family to say goodbye to his most remarkable apprentice, Beauford Delaney.

Known as much for his gleeful spirit as for his art, Delaney had worked in Branson's studios in the Burwell Building since he was a teenager. Branson taught him what he could. When Delaney wasn't helping Branson, the young artist tried his hand on portraits of local people he admired, like black high-school principal Charles Cansler, and riverside landscapes. Branson himself had studied art in Europe during the high noon of impressionism, but he suspected this preacher's kid who lived with his family in back of a Vine Street barber shop had talents that might stretch beyond his own. Branson arranged to send Delaney to study at art schools in Boston.

As he rode north on the train, Delaney probably didn't know he wouldn't see his home town again for 10 years. When he returned in 1933 to visit and paint portraits of his family, Delaney was a respected New York artist who'd had notable showings at the Whitney and the New York Public Library. He'd painted important portraits of Duke Ellington, W.E.B. DuBois, Marian Anderson, Louis Armstrong. He'd been complimented in The New York Times. But Delaney's old mentor never knew how true his hunches about the kid were; Branson died in 1925, while Delaney was still studying in Boston.

At the Knoxville Museum of Art this week, there's an exhibit of the work of this artist who left town in 1923. It heralds the publication of a book called Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, by David Leeming, published this month by Oxford University Press in New York. An authority on world mythology, Leeming is best known for a recent biography of his former employer, author James Baldwin. Leeming will be at the KMA on the 20th to sign copies of his newest book.

Chapter One is called "Knoxville." Delaney was born here and spent most of his youth here, learned to paint here. The book brings out things I didn't know, like the fact that one of Delaney's early drawing teachers was Hugh Tyler, professional artist and uncle of James Agee. (Tyler was the model for the character "Andrew" in Agee's A Death in the Family.) Proportionally, the Knoxville section is pretty thin; this book focuses on the ups and downs of Delaney's remarkable adult career, following him from portraitist to abstract expressionist, from New York to Paris, where he died in 1979. It details the many paradoxes of Delaney's character, his puritan attitudes and his sometimes profligate homosexuality, his artistic intuition and a clear reasoning expressed in letters and diaries, his love for his home and family and his lengthy exile from America. He impressed everyone he met; some were convinced Delaney was a diviner who could see into people's souls. His charismatic personality drew nearly everybody. He may be the only mortal who knew W.C. Handy and Georgia O'Keefe and Jean Genet. Even if he were not a genius, his life would make a fascinating read.

Some authors write biographies of people they didn't know; some write memoirs of people they knew intimately. Few biographers break into the first person three-quarters of the way through, as this one does. In 1966, Leeming was 29 and living in Istanbul as an assistant to James Baldwin, who was at work on a novel. Leeming was driving a car across Europe running errands when his boss asked him to stop in Paris and pick up an old friend named Beauford Delaney. As if to prepare Leeming for Delaney, Baldwin said, "He's a cross between Brer Rabbit and St. Francis of Assisi."

Leeming describes his first image of Delaney in his apartment at 53 rue Vercingetorix in Paris beside a "Zolaesque courtyard guarded by an ancient female concierge dressed in black." Upon entering, Leeming says, "the vision that greeted me can only be called mysterious. There was whiteness everywhere—the walls and furniture were covered with sheets...in the midst of all that whiteness was a round, dark, quizzical but smiling face illumined by the yellow sunlight that poured through the large window. I thought of Baldwin's description, and of St. Francis in his hermitage...."

The last time Delaney visited Knoxville physically was during the Christmas holiday of 1969-70, when he returned to America for the first time in 16 years to celebrate his 68th birthday at the Delaney home on Dandridge Avenue. The trip was, according to Leeming, a "happy blur." Delaney enjoyed elaborate feasts with his family and spoke at a service down the street at Lennon-Seney Methodist. Some noticed he seemed confused; not long after, in Paris, Delaney was institutionalized for insanity.

Knoxville appears on the first page of this biography and on the last. Months after Delaney's death, his Knoxville brother Emery claimed to feel his presence in his garden. Members of his family say he still visits them today, cheering and consoling them. This month, he visits the rest of us, too, through his art and his story.