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Palmer Hayden
"Road Trip" Ethnic, Urban, Genre, Oil, Regionalism, African American, Signed L/L
1930s

Price:$7,000

$8,700List Price

About the Item

"Road Trip" is a charming depiction of a scene from perhaps the 1930s or 1940s of three men traveling across country and stopping alongside the road to rest, have lunch, or stretch before continuing on their journey. The overloaded car with packed luggage, boxes and bags suggests the movement from one place to another. One package on top of the car looks like a bass fiddle. Were these jazz musicians, or workers moving from the south to the north during the Great Migration which was the mass movement of about five million southern blacks to the north and west between 1915 and 1960. During the initial wave the majority of migrants moved to major northern cities such as Chicago, Illiniois, Detroit, Michigan, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and New York, New York. The scene is beautifully painted in bright colors with the atmosphere of blue skies and sun and the aura of good times just ahead. Palmer C. Hayden was an American painter who depicted African-American life, landscapes, seascapes, and African influences. He sketched, painted in both oils and watercolors, and was a prolific artist of his era. In a 1969 interview he described The Janitor Who Paints, created around 1930, as “a sort of protest painting” of his own economic and social standing as well as that of his fellow African Americans. Hayden said his friend Cloyd Boykin, an artist who, like Hayden, had supported himself as a janitor, inspired this piece: “I painted it because no one called Boykin the artist. They called him the janitor.” Details within the cramped apartment—the duster and the trashcan, for example—point to the janitor’s profession; the figure’s dapper clothes and beret, much like those Hayden himself wore, point to his artistic pursuits. Hayden’s use of perspective was informed by modern art practices, which favored abstraction and simplified forms. He originally exaggerated the figure’s facial features, which many of his contemporaries criticized as African American caricatures, but later altered the painting. He maintained the janitor as the protagonist as it represented larger civil rights issues within the African American community. Palmer Hayden was an artist whose association with the Harlem Renaissance was more spiritual than stylistic. Born on January 15, 1890, in Widewater, Virginia, to Nancy and John Hedgeman, Hayden was christened Peyton Cole Hedgeman but later changed his name to Palmer Hayden, the name he signed on all of his works. Hayden’s interest in drawing began during his childhood. His first formal contact with art did not occur, however, until his enlistment in the army during World War I, when he enrolled in a drawing correspondence course. Hayden’s military duty took him to West Point and the Philippines. Following his discharge from the army, Hayden moved to New York and worked part-time while studying art with Victor Perard at the Cooper Union School of Art. Although Hayden received thorough academic training in New York, Maine, and Paris, his works always retained a flat naïve character, which he developed independently during his youth. One of Hayden’s best-known early works is Fétiche et Fleurs of 1926, which clearly linked Hayden with the African-Cubist tradition of Harlem and Paris. The small still-life composition depicts a vase of lilies, an ashtray, and a Gabonese Fang head on a table covered with a Kuba textile from Zaïre. This painting was one of the earliest by an African-American artist to incorporate actual African imagery, and was awarded Mrs. John D. Rockefeller’s prize for painting in the Harmon Show of 1933. Following his return from Paris in 1932, Hayden worked on the United States Treasury Art Project and the W.P.A. Art Project from 1934 to 1940, and painted scenes of the New York waterfront and other local subjects. During the late 1930s Hayden developed a consciously naïve style, which represented various aspects of African-American life. One of the first paintings that heralded Hayden’s new style was Midsummer Night in Harlem, 1938, in which he effectively evoked the mood of Harlem’s residents congregating outside to escape the heat inside the tenements. Despite the flat forms and stylized figures, the compositional arrangement and treatment of perspective reveal Hayden’s academic training. African-American art historian James Porter apparently misunderstood Hayden’s objectives when he criticized Midsummer Night in Harlem as a talent gone astray,” and compared the painting to “one of those billboards that once were plastered on public buildings to advertise black face minstrels.” Hayden insisted, however, that he was not striving for satirical effects in his African-American folk paintings, but that he wanted to achieve a new type of expression. By 1940 Palmer Hayden was known for his narrative scenes of New York’s urban life and the rural South. Like a photographer taking snapshots, he depicted black subjects during unguarded moments in their daily routine. His characterizations, sometimes humorous, sometimes unflattering, are nonetheless caring and proud. Described by Hayden’s compelling use of line, they possess the immediacy of popular illustrations. In 1944 Hayden began painting the Ballad of John Henry series that would occupy him for the next ten years. The series comprises a group of twelve paintings depicting scenes from the life of the legendary African-American folk hero who inspired the ballad named after him. An exhibition of these paintings and others dealing with African-American folklore was held at the Countee Cullen Library in Harlem in 1952. Hayden was also represented in the large exhibition, The Evolution of the Afro-American Artist, sponsored by the City University of New York, the Urban League, and the Harlem Cultural Council and presented in the fall of 1967 in the great hall of the City University. From the late 1960s until his death in 1973, Hayden continued to paint subjects based on African-American themes, but in a more cosmopolitan manner than his earlier works. Painting measures without frame: 9" h x 12" w.

Creator:
Palmer Hayden
Creation Year:
1930s
Dimensions:
Height: 15.25 in (38.74 cm)Width: 18.25 in (46.36 cm)
Medium:
Oil,Board
Movement Style:
American Modern
Period:
Mid-20th Century
Condition:
Gallery Location:
Detroit, MI
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU128616761802

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