African-American artist Joseph Delaney was a folk-expressionist painter who loved New York City, both as a subject for painting and the spectacle and experience of ever-changing life and vitality. Of the city, he said: "The curtain goes up on the stage of life every time we walk into the street. In spite of New York's being the most congested city I have been in, and know about, by and large, it's just people on the move. I have enjoyed more than I can say seeing people and hearing them speak about things they love and enjoy."

Delaney, the son of a Methodist minister, was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1904, the ninth of ten children. It was in church that Delaney and his older brother, Beauford, began to express their art talent b...