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In the 1950s, the white artist A.E. “Bean” Backus would take on a young African American artist Alfred Hair and train him to paint landscapes and would unknowingly help start an artistic movement that would become known as “The Highwaymen.”
The Jim Crow era of the South is as much a part of the Highwaymen’s story as their work. The system in which they lived limited African Americans to work in the fields and factories. There were few ways to escape this system. Painting was one of the ways; allowing the Highwaymen a chance to earn a living without resorting to backbreaking manual labor.
While not a structure group, Alfred Hair is considered the leader and founder. He was also the only one who was traditionally trained. The rest of the Highwaymen were self-taught, improving their techniques from studying one another, while also developing their own style. Soon the Highwaymen would grow to include 26 members, including one woman.
Resourcefulness and resilience would come to define the Highwaymen. Due to segregation, African Americans were barred for showing their works in galleries and art shows. So, another way would have to be found for the Highwaymen to make a living.
The Highwaymen relied on a high-quantity sales, requiring paints to be made quickly and cheaply. Solving the former, the Highwaymen developed a method of “fast painting,” a type of assembly line system that allowed for similar scenes to be painted. While also allowing for the Highwaymen to add in their own touches making each piece unique. As to the latter, the paintings were made from cheap materials, such as fiberboard and crown molding. To lower further, the Highwaymen would also create and decorate frames they made themselves. These homemade frames had the added benefit of allowing the works to be stacked on top of each other, allowing the pieces to be transported while the paint had yet to dry. This system of “fast painting” and cheap materials allowed the Highwaymen to create an estimated an estimated 200,000 works between the mid-1950s to 1970.
With their works in hand, the Highwaymen would gain their name from their sales method. They would be most famous for selling their works on the side of the roads, Harold Newton, the co-leader of the Highwaymen, was known to sell his art on his bicycle along Florida’s U.S. Highway 1, but the Highwaymen would also travel door-to-door while selling at churches and offices. Buyers included doctors, lawyers, real estate agents and motel owners. The works of the Highwaymen also became vacation souvenirs, as they were cheap at $25 and relatively small. But the Highwaymen didn’t always take cash, on occasions they would barter for gas to fuel their indispensable automobiles.
Between the 50s and early 60s, the Highwaymen were a relatively small bunch. Including Alfred Hair there were only six artists, and they would be known as the first generation of Highwaymen. But by the late 60s and early 70s, a second generation would join, and the group would grow to the recognized 26 artists.
One member of the Highwayman's second generation was Robert Butler.
Butler was different from other the Highwaymen as he took a greater interest in the wildlife, and many of his works would depict Florida wildlife in their natural habitats. This 1976 print of ducks exiting a marsh, is a work from Robert Butler, showing the key highwayman trademarks, which included:
The use of found object framing.
The use of a strong central dividing lines across the image to bleed color into other areas.
The use of colors which were close to but not often found in natural settings. The trees are greens but not that shade of green.
Description: Robert Butler painting.
Credit: Christy Beegle
The beginning of the end of the Highwaymen would come on August 9, 1970. What exactly happened that night is debated, but while at Eddie's Place in Fort Pierce, Florida, a grove worker by the name of Julius Funderburk got into an altercation with Alfred Hair. Hair attempted to escape the fight by fleeing into the street, but Funderburk chased after Hair and would shoot him twice killing Hair at the age of 29.
Description: Harold Newton’s painting of Eddie's Place, Harold was one of the cofounders of the highwayman movement in Florida.
Credit: Harold Newton - "Eddie's Place"
With the loss of their leader the Highwaymen’s work pace would start to stall and the group would begin to drift apart. There’s no official date for when the Highwaymen disbanded, but by 1980 the group was all but over. This would’ve been the end of the Highwaymen, but for a twist of fate. In 1994, Jim Finch, a Florida art collector and historian, was planning on writing an article about a group of 26 African American artists who had driven up and down Florida selling their works to whoever would buy them. An avid collector, Finch had crossed paths with these artists before, and one his friends, Robert Butler, was once a member. Finch had started calling these artists “Highwaymen” due to their sales method but was unsure of the name. After conferring with Butler, Finch would call them the Highwaymen, coining the name that would come to define the artists and their works. All 26 of the highwaymen were inducted into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame in 2004, showing how far both art and society had come since 1950's.
Here are a few links to help you dive deeper into the story of the Highwayman
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