Beauford Delaney, pictured here with Baldwin, was an American modernist painter. He is remembered for his work with the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as his later works in abstract expressionism following his move to Paris in the 1950s. James Baldwin met Delaney’s 1940 at age 15 and immediately, the two recognized each other as kindred spirits whose personal circumstances were strikingly similar.

"Baldwin found in Delaney a father figure, muse and model of perseverance as a gay man of color who broadened his creative vision and opened for him the transformative possibility that a black man could become an artist. Baldwin, in turn, inspired Delaney with his fearless social conscience and commitment to civil rights causes." Source: https://www.seegreatart.art/james-baldwin-and-beauford-delaney/