Taking in city life

“City Hall Picket Line” (pencil and gouache), by Joseph Delaney (1936), in the show “Joseph Delaney: Taking Notice,’’ at the Bates College Museum of Art, Lewiston, Maine.

The museum says:

“African American artist Joseph Delaney (1904-1991) took notice of life around him. He was drawn to figurative art and lively scenes of urban life, and his work focused primarily on the people and environment of New York City, the place where he lived much of his adult life. Delaney was an acute observer of people and their activities, and he recorded them, sometimes in paintings, but more often in works on paper—drawings, pen and ink washes, watercolors, and in the notebooks that he carried and drew in everywhere he went.

“Delaney, who created thousands of works in a life spanning every decade of the twentieth century, was recognized but never celebrated during his life. Since that time, institutions and collectors have increasingly taken notice of his work, which is now in collections including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

“Taking Notice’’  is the first exhibition in New England devoted to the work of Joseph Delaney. Drawn primarily from the extensive holdings of the University of Tennessee and complemented with several works from private collections and the Bates Museum of Art, it features paintings and many works on paper, representing a breadth of subjects about life in the city that fascinated Delaney during his prolific life, including parades and protests, figure drawings and portraits, and monuments and parks in Manhattan.’’