On January 21, 2017, Les Amis published an article about Beauford’s magnificent portrait of Irene Rose.
Portrait of Irene Rose
(1944) Oil on board
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
Photo courtesy of ACA Galleries, New York
Yesterday, while reviewing one of the 64 sketchbooks in the archival collection Beauford Delaney Papers, MS-3967 at UTLibraries in Knoxville, TN, I noted that Rose’s name was written five times in various lists throughout the book. A sixth notation included the mention of her husband, Billy.
One can only imagine how many times Beauford mentioned her in other books in the collection.
The library attributed the date “circa 1960s” to the book I reviewed. We know from David Leeming’s biography, Amazing Grace: A Life of Beauford Delaney, that Irene visited Beauford in Paris in 1955 and that Beauford wrote letters to Irene and Billy well into the 1960s.
Because I find Beauford’s portrait of Rose to be so powerful, and because she was clearly not far from Beauford’s mind during the time he was using this particular notebook, I decided to learn more about her.
As I feared, I found scant information available online.
Yale University’s Beineke library holds the Irene and William R. Rose papers, 1941-2000 (bulk 1945-1969), an archival collection that includes photos of Irene and Billy and family and friends, including Beauford. Though it has been partially digitized, access is restricted to Yale’s network due to copyright and other concerns.
Many Web resources incorrectly list Irene as being married to entertainment impresario William Samuel Rosenberg, who was also known as Billy Rose.
Most (somewhat generically) indicate that she and her husband were prominent members of Philadelphia’s art and literary community during the 1940s and that their social lives were intertwined with that of Dorothy Gates (Rose and Gates drove Beauford to Yaddo for his 1950 residency there).
Leeming refers to Irene as having been “active in the Schackmanite [sic] movement, a breakaway group from the Trotskyist wing of Communism.” He says that during her 1955 visit, she and Beauford enjoyed “outings to Versailles and Chartres and evenings on the town.”