PALMER COLE HAYDEN (American, 1890-1973)
sailboats, Concarneau Harbor, Brittany
sgn. l.l. Palmer Hayden
o/c, 16 by 20 in., framed
Craquelure through out, some scattered inpaint.
A prominent African-American artist, Hayden, born in Virginia, was a self-trained artist. As a young man he moved to Washington DC to find work becoming an errand boy and porter. It was then he started to draw fishing and sailboats. He later worked as a laborer for both the Buffalo Bill and Ringling Bros. Circus; then joined the Black Infantry stationed in the Philippines from 1914-1918. Upon his discharge he moved to Greenwich Village, again taking on menial jobs. There, he started to pursue an art career, but ran into his first encounter with racism. Placing an ad in the local paper for an artist's assistant, he was rejected when he showed up for the interview because he was black. In 1926, when Hayden was 36, he won the Harmon Arts Foundation gold medal award and $400 for his painting Schooners. A New York Times headline read, "Negro Worker Wins Harmon Art Prizes: Gold Medal and $400 Awarded to Man who Washes Windows to Have Time to Paint". Opportunities for a black man at the time were extremely limited, and this award launched his career as an artist. Hayden studied at the Boothbay Colony, Maine in 1925, and from 1927-32 he worked in Brittany, Normandy and Paris, having been given a private grant for $3,000 to study at Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris. This painting reflects Hayden's time in France. His later paintings were primarily based on the Afro-American experience, both urban and rural. In 1967 his work was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Estimate: $7,000 - $9,000
Realized: $3,750 - Excluding Buyer's Premium

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