Lot 167033
Hair, Alfred (1941-1970) Florida Highwaymen Painting. Oil on cheese cloth applied to card board and lined with notebook paper - signed lower right. Executed in brushwork. Board measures 12x16 framed to overall size of 32x38. The present, historically important, example is the earliest known work of Alfred Hair. It is an essentially honorable blend of Thomas Moran, George Inness and A.E. Backus with authentication and joyful provenance from his first mentor Zenobia Jefferson. Simple cheese cloth, glued to cardboard and primitively framed - stands as a testament to a child’s innocent simplicity and the emerging complex foresight needed to inspire an artistic movement. In the early 1950s, Zenobia Jefferson became acquainted with the parents of Alfred Hair. Ms. Jefferson, a teacher by trade and formally educated at Fisk University, began teaching the subject of art by parental arrangement to Alfred who was scarcely a teenager at age 13.This caring mentorship included influences extended from her academic life, her passion for painting, as well as the ascendancy of sway from her close friend Albert E. Backus. The present, historically important, example is the earliest known work of Alfred Hair. It is an essentially honorable blend of Moran, Inness and Backus with authentication and joyful provenance from his first mentor Zenobia Jefferson. Simple cheese cloth, glued to cardboard and primitively framed - stands as a testament to a child’s innocent simplicity and the emerging complex foresight needed to navigate his future. In the early 1950s, Zenobia Jefferson became acquainted with the parents of Alfred Hair. Ms. Jefferson, a teacher by trade and formally educated at Fisk University, began teaching the subject of art by parental arrangement to Alfred who was scarcely a teenager at age 13. This caring mentorship included influences extended from her academic life, her passion for painting, as well as the ascendancy of sway from her close friend Albert E. Backus. Ms. Jefferson was a regular visitor at the Backus home and together they re-traced the steps and explored the early development of the St Augustine School of Art movement. In the shadow of the St. Augustine Lighthouse an art colony formed in the late 1800s, drawing artists to the city’s Spanish-colonial architecture and Atlantic vistas. Winslow Homer Journeyed south along the Florida East Coast Railway in1904 to Homosassa Springs where his passion for fly fishing inspired one of his most celebrated watercolors “Foul Hooked Black Bass”. He was preceded by a host of Americas most notable artists who championed the northern art markets with panoramas of New England harbors and majestic Hudson River Valley scenes. Thomas Moran rendered subtle sub-tropical examples of Florida’s rivers and valleys. George Inness spent his final winters in Tarpon Springs blending the luminous aesthetic of Florida’s costal scenes with soft light and muted colors. Martin Johnson Heade relocated to St. Augustine in 1884 where he remained until passing in 1904. Backus, often referred to as the “Dean of Florida Art,” studied works of these great artists briefly in New York before settling in Fort Pierce Florida. In his tropical hamlet, he cultivated a luminescent, impasto-driven style depicting marshes, mangroves, and tropical skyways, which came to define the Indian River School’s core aesthetic. There, he mentored Alfred Hair, Harold Newton and other budding artists while Zenobia Jefferson influenced their young minds at Lincoln Park Academy. The European influence from the Hudson River School masters taught by Zenobia blended with an avantgarde zesty new look from Backus and perhaps even a touch of Harlem Renaissance ignited and transformed into what now graces the walls of Museums and Institutions as Highwaymen Art. Tokens of testimony to their mentors abound in their works tracing directly back to Ms. Jefferson. Exemplified by symbolism of broken branches and tree trunks, which proceed from European technique to underscore impermanence and the suggestion of inevitable mortality and decay. These techniques blended with Backus’s illustration of focus on landscape and lesser attention to people or elements and the use of weather components to anchor negative space. We invite you to visit “Tropical Lights” The art of AE Backus- pp; 60-64 to experience a few select examples of works cited above with striking resemblance to this Historic Alfred Hair treasure.
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