REMEMBER: A PORTRAIT OF JAMES BALDWIN CIRCA 1945

Harlem Bespoke: A portrait of James Baldwin at the age of 21 by Harlem Renaissance artist Beauford Delaney painted in 1945 is one of the many that would be made over the years by the mentor of the great author.  Most think fondly of the life of the great black cultural leaders of the early half of the 20th century but James Baldwin probably had the most tragic start until a fellow artist showed him the way.  Unlike a vast majority of the historic figures that flocked to Harlem in the 1920s from elsewhere, James Baldwin was actually born uptown facing extreme poverty.  Renaissance luminary Countee Cullen was teaching French at DeWitt Clinton High School and noticed that one of his only black students at the Bronx institution was also gifted in writing and took on the adolescent as a protégé. 

Soon after in 1940 was an introduction to friends Langston Hughes and Beauford Delaney who were also established names from the roaring twenties.  Out of iconic trio, Delaney was a modernist painter and not a writer but Baldwin ended up seeing him as a life-long father figure in the arts.  His guidance showed a young Langston it was possible to make a living in the creative genre and also that there was another life outside of the teen's history of hardships uptown.  

James Baldwin in 1943 would move to Greenwich Village where the atmosphere was more liberal for a young, gay, 19-year-old aspiring writer and also to be near to Delaney who was living a hidden life from the heteronormative mainstream society of uptown.  In a way the Renaissance was diminishing over the years of the great depression and the creative culture of downtown was thriving at this point in time.  This period of freedom would eventually help provide an early draft of Go Tell It On The Mountain which would be the first novel published by the author years later. 

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