Remembering Ella

Ella Fitzgerald died just over 30 years ago on June 15, 1996.

She was one of Beauford’s favorite performers, and he honored her with an extraordinary portrait.

Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald
(1968) Oil on canvas
Permanent collection of the SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah
Gift of Dr. Walter O. and Mrs. Linda J. Evans
© Estate of Beauford Delaney
by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire,
Court Appointed Administrator
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY

Descriptions of the painting invariably include commentary on Beauford’s use of the color “yellow” to capture Fitzgerald’s essence.

Many have intrigued me.

I am sharing excerpts from a few of these below.

It would have been easy for Delaney to create a standard portrait of Lady Ella, but that would have been an incomplete rendering of the power and the light she made possible through her voice and her music …. The way in which the yellow dominates the painting, almost like the way light pushes itself into a dark room to illuminate it, is just the way Fitzgerald’s voice moves into the ears and hearts of her listeners.

I think it is this dynamism of Fitzgerald’s voice and message that Delaney wished to capture in his painting of her. His use of the color yellow is not solely about an obsession with light, but also an opportunity to look into the internal landscape of a person, and he takes full advantage of this opportunity with Ella.

Sojourner Ahébee, “A New Sight: Light & the Color Yellow in Beauford Delaney’s Portraits”

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It is often said, and is written on the SCAD Museum website entry for Delaney’s Portrait of Ella Fitzgerald, that yellow to Delaney meant “illumination and healing.” But I think there may be some difference in the yellows he uses when they run through and around a face, and when they are in one of the purely abstract paintings. When I look at the yellows in which there is a face, I often feel that I am squinting, that there are edges and injuries. It is a yellow connected to bodies, browns, roses, greens, not only to light and landscape.

Rachel Cohen, “Beauford Delaney and Ella Fitzgerald: In Yellow”

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Ella’s portrait is one of the more abstract ones Beauford created during his career. This is not a painting where the main goal was to capture her likeness. Instead, Beauford created a visual representation of the power and light that existed as a result of her music. Only certain details of her face are visible; the rest is shrouded in clouds of yellows and oranges. Ella Fitzgerald was a force – she illuminated any room her voice was being projected in. Beauford captured the feelings of chaos and tenderness you feel simultaneously when listening to her.

Maija Brennan, Beauford Delaney: A Study in Portraiture

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One thing I did not know about Ella Fitzgerald was that she was horribly shy and extremely meek when it came to recognizing her own talent ….

That blew me away.  I look at this painting of Beauford Delaney and listen to Ella Fitzgerald with this new knowledge of her shyness and hear something very different in her music …. I have a deeper, more profound appreciation for what Delaney conveys in this portrait of her.

Colony Little, “Artist a Day Challenge No. 24: Beauford Delaney x Ella Fitzgerald”

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He depicts the First Lady of Song not in sweaty performance … but in a state of high-priestess contemplation—”the quiet place” from which, as [Toni] Morrison has said, all art truly emerges.

Robert O’Meally, “Baldwin and Delaney Tell the Story Using Yellows and the Blues” in Speculative Light: The Arts of Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin