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South Gallery
Highwaymen Paintings:  A Premiere Exhibition
From the George Algernon Speer, Jr. Collection

Members Opening Reception
Saturday, Jan. 26, 7 – 9 p.m.

Presenting Sponsor:  Raymond James
Media Sponsors:  Tampa Bay Illustrated and Tropical Breeze

The Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art is proud to present two exhibitions featuring the work of Florida’s Highwaymen artists.  The Highwaymen, is a national touring exhibition from the collection of Geoff Cook being circulated by the Orange County Regional History Center, Orlando, Florida, and Highwaymen Paintings is a premiere exhibition of 22 paintings from the family collection of George Algernon Speer, Jr.  Speer was a prominent prosecuting attorney in Sanford, Florida and one of the early collectors of Highwaymen art. 

The Highwaymen were a group of 26 African-American self-taught artists who lived and painted in Fort Pierce and Brevard County, Florida.  Most notably the group included Alfred Hair, the artist who developed the fast method of oil painting that came to define the style of the Highwaymen, and Harold Newton, an artist who specialized in painting landscapes.  A.E. (Beanie) Backus, a southern white and well-known Florida landscape artist, is credited with teaching and encouraging Hair and Newton to paint.  The other 24 Highwaymen, including Mary Ann Carroll, the only female in the group, were apprentices to either Newton or Hair and each developed their own distinctive style, brush strokes and trademarks. 

The Highwaymen started painting in the 1950s and enjoyed successful artistic careers throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s.  A renewed interest in the Highwaymen began in the 1990s when collectors came to recognize their contribution to Florida’s artistic and natural history.  The value of their work has increased dramatically from the $25 - $35 originally paid.  Today the paintings are worth thousands of dollars and are receiving national acclaim.

The Highwaymen painted many of their landscape scenes in an hour or less and sold their art to motels, banks, doctors’ and lawyers’ offices, restaurants and the general public.  Many paintings were sold out of the trunks of their cars, often before the oils had time to dry.  For many of the Highwaymen, painting and selling landscape art was an escape from their laborious jobs in factories, orange groves and fields.