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THE FLORIDA HIGHWAYMEN (FLORIDA HISTORY MUSEUM)
A.E. “BEAN” BACKUS
ZORA NEAL HURSTON
In Fort Pierce, nationally-known Florida landscape artist A. E. “Bean” Backus influenced and encouraged several of these young artists, including Harold Newton and Alfred Hair. Backus adapted impressionism and the American landscape painting tradition to the bright sky and lush landscapes of tropical Florida. Hair and the other Highwaymen took these elements further, using bright, bold, and sometimes exaggerated colors. They painted landscapes with flaming orange-red skies, glowing rose-tinted clouds, goldenrod-colored moonbeam reflections on rivers and lakes, and a wide array of Florida greens. The Highwaymen often reduced the landscape to minimal characteristics—silhouetted palm trees, rolling waves, white sand beaches, and tropical rivers lined with verdant moss-laden trees. Their landscapes expressed an unspoiled, peaceful, and accessible Florida, one that often was painted from the viewpoint of one standing on the ground, inviting the viewer to walk into the scene.
The Highwaymen painted and sold throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the period considered to be their heyday. By the 1980s, the American art world had embraced the postmodern movement and its non-representational forms of art. The Highwaymen fell out of style. In the mid-1990s, Florida art expert Jim Fitch started looking for regional artwork. Fitch kept finding landscape paintings created by African American artists from Florida’s central Atlantic coast. He named them the Highwaymen because they traveled the highways to sell paintings from the trunks of their cars. His writing brought them to the attention of the art world. Their fame continues to grow as art collectors now recognize the significance of the Highwaymen as a genre that captured an idealized vision of Florida’s past. The twenty-six original artists of the Highwaymen were inducted into the Florida Artist Hall of Fame in 2004.
The artists biographies are taken from the collection catalogue, Florida Highwaymen: A Museum’s Collection, which is available for purchase at Florida’s History Shop.
Al Black
(1945−2025)
Florida Landscape, Fort Pierce Area
Untitled Florida Landscape, Fort Pierce area
Oil on Masonite board, 2007
H: 22 ½” W: 28 ½”
Acquired from the artist in 2008
In the 1950s, a group of young Black artists emerged in the then agricultural communities of Fort Pierce and Gifford, Florida. This group eventually grew to include twenty-five men and one woman, who later became known as The Highwaymen. In the latter days of the Jim Crow South, African Americans of Fort Pierce lived in the segregated neighborhood known as “Blacktown.” Less than twenty miles up the road from Fort Pierce, Gifford was an African American town just north of Vero Beach. Although some African Americans were able to go to college, most were limited to a life of manual labor in local orange groves, tomato fields, or packing houses. To expand their opportunities, these young artists became entrepreneurs. They began painting prolifically and took to the road selling their creations to businesses, tourists, and new homeowners in the postwar boom years. In the process of making a living through painting, they made a significant contribution to the genre of Florida landscape painting, helped to form an idealized vision of the state, and crossed racial divides.
Harold Newton
(1934−1994)
Untitled Florida Landscape
Oil on Upson board, undated
H: 27 ¾” W: 39 ¾” (all measurements include frame)
Acquired in 2005
Harold Newton is considered to be the original Highwayman. One of seventeen children, Harold was born in Gifford, Florida, but grew up in Tifton, Georgia. Like his father, Harold labored hard in cotton, tobacco, and peanut fields to provide for his brothers, sisters, and his own children. A naturally talented artist, Newton taught himself how to draw. He supplemented his income by selling black velvet religious paintings out of his car. In the 1950s, Harold moved back to his birthplace of Gifford.
In 1954, Newton met one of Florida’s preeminent landscape artists, A. E. “Bean” Backus, who encouraged him to change from religious subjects to landscapes. With his photographic memory, Newton could reproduce one of Backus’s paintings after viewing it for a few minutes. Backus taught Newton how to use a palette knife to apply paint quickly to the canvas. Painting with a palette knife and traveling the highways to sell paintings were two methods that the other Highwaymen later emulated. Harold mentored not only his brothers Samuel and Lemuel Newton, but also inspired other future Highwaymen, including Alfred Hair, Roy McLendon, and Mary Ann Carroll.
Alfred Hair
(1941−1970)
Untitled Florida Sunset
Oil on Upson board, undated
H: 27” W: 51 ½”
Acquired in 2003
In 1955, Alfred Hair’s high school art teacher, Zanobia Jefferson, at Lincoln Park Academy in Fort Pierce, noticed his talent and introduced him to artist A. E. Backus for painting lessons. Hair was an able and talented student, but he rejected Backus’s formal style in favor of a faster method that enabled him to create more paintings and make money more quickly. His style of fast painting included using a wash of paint for a sky or a river, a few brush strokes for what became known as “fast grass,” and the suggested outlines of trees and other objects instead of detailed renditions. To increase his output even more, Hair lifted weights so he could paint faster and longer.
Hair was the true creator of what became the cottage industry of the Highwaymen. A charismatic and outgoing person, he recruited friends and neighbors to assist him in his new venture. Hair entertained his helpers with beer and barbecue long into the night. Some created frames, some primed canvases, some painted, and some hit the road as salesmen. Word spread as they made more money painting than they did as laborers. To this day, many think of Hair as the spiritual leader of the Highwaymen. He tragically was killed outside a Fort Pierce bar in 1970 at the age of 29. His death was considered a pivotal event by some of the Highwaymen, which diminished the group’s drive to paint and market their works.
James Gibson
(1938−2017)
Untitled Set of Florida Landscapes
Set of Florida Landscapes
Oil on canvas board, 2007
H: 19 ¼” W: 16 ¼”
Acquired from the artist in 2008
James Gibson grew up in Fort Pierce, where he was friends with Alfred Hair. After graduating high school, Gibson studied biology at Tennessee State for three years, until he had to withdraw from college for financial reasons. When he returned to Fort Pierce, Alfred Hair taught him how to paint landscapes. The two men painted together, challenging and motivating each other in friendly competition. They then headed off on the highway in different directions to sell their paintings.
From the beginning, Gibson was an able and charming salesman, catering to the tourist trade. In the winter, he used warm orange colors to sell to people who would return to cold northern climes, then turn to cool blues and grays in the summertime. From his early days with Hair, Gibson continuously painted landscapes for a living. His patrons included former Florida Governor Jeb Bush, singer Gladys Knight, and filmmaker Steven Spielberg. In addition to being an award-winning artist, Gibson was a generous philanthropist who gave back to his community.
Al Black
(1945−2025)
Florida Landscape, Fort Pierce Area
Untitled Florida Landscape, Fort Pierce area
Oil on Masonite board, 2007
H: 22 ½” W: 28 ½”
Acquired from the artist in 2008
Born in Barlow, Mississippi, Al Black moved to Fort Pierce when he was 14. In the 1960s, Black became the top salesman for Alfred Hair and the Highwaymen. He was undeterred by signs barring Black people and solicitation. He walked into businesses that previously had turned away other Highwaymen and made a sale. Black drove all over Florida and up the Atlantic coast, selling forty to fifty paintings a day. Oil paintings take a long time to dry, and occasionally, although he was a salesman, Black had to get out a paintbrush and make repairs to a marred picture. He did not create his own paintings until after Hair’s death in 1970.
Unfortunately, Al Black developed a cocaine problem, and in 1977, he went to prison for fraud and drug possession. While he was in prison, Black was allowed by the warden to paint pictures on the walls. He created more than ninety landscape murals, transforming the prison into an artistic space that provided hope and inspiration to his fellow inmates. Released in 2006, Black returned to Fort Pierce. Today he paints, teaches others to paint, and regularly donates his works to be auctioned for charities.
Willie Daniels
(1950−2021)
Florida Landscape
Untitled Florida Landscape
Oil on canvas, undated
H: 23 ¼” W: 29”
Acquired from the artist in 2004
Willie Daniels was born in Bainbridge, Georgia, and a decade later, he and his family moved to Fort Pierce. There were not many opportunities for a young Black man to earn money in Fort Pierce, so Daniels labored as a fruit picker in a citrus grove. As destiny would have it, Daniels was a neighbor of Harold Newton and Roy McLendon, two of the most talented Highwaymen. He watched them paint over and over again and by this method taught himself how to paint.
As the Highwaymen’s art fell out of favor, Daniels found other means of making a living. He was working as a truck driver in Georgia when he discovered that there had been a resurgence of interest in his and the other Highwaymen’s work during the mid-1990s. Daniels returned to Fort Pierce and spent the rest of his life working as an artist. He was known for painting gnarled oak trees, which border on the surreal.
Johnny Daniels
(1954−2009)
Florida Landscape
Untitled Florida Landscape
Oil on canvas, 1999
H: 36” W: 47”
Acquired in 2010
Born in 1954, Johnny Daniels was the youngest of the Highwaymen. He began by making frames for his older brother, Willie, and the other painters, for which he was paid 50 cents apiece. Inspired by the others’ example, Johnny decided to become a painter, too. He liked to paint wildlife and religious paintings, but turned to landscapes because they sold better. Daniels believed that what made the Highwaymen unique was their use of color to express emotions in their paintings. He taught many people to paint, including Alfred Hair’s son, Kelvin.
Samuel Newton
(1948–)
Florida Landscape
Oil on Upson board, undated
H: 31 ¼” W: 43 ½”
Acquired in 2005
Born and raised in Georgia, Sam Newton moved to Florida in 1962, where he attended Gifford High School. Sam learned to paint by watching his brother Harold and became a very skilled and successful artist in his own right. As opposed to the fast painting technique associated with the Highwaymen tradition, Sam believes in taking the time to create detailed, high-quality art and likes to distance himself from the Highwayman name. Today, Sam lives in Merritt Island, Florida, with his wife and continues to paint, sell his own artwork at his gallery in Cocoa, and teach landscape painting to others.
Willie Reagan
(1939−2026)
Full Moon at St. Marks Lighthouse
Oil on canvas board, 2009
H: 27 ½” W: 33 ½”
Acquired from the artist in 2009
Originally from Palm Beach County, Florida, Willie Reagan moved with his family to Gifford as a child. He enjoyed all forms of art and decided to pursue a degree in art education at Florida A&M University, where he was a running back for the Rattlers until his graduation in 1963. Reagan taught school for one year in Savannah, Georgia, before being drafted into the Army. After his military service ended, Reagan returned to Gifford, where he began painting with his old friends, George and Ellis Buckner and Alfonso Moran. Reagan eventually gave up painting and taught school for twenty-eight years. After Gary Monroe published his book, The Highwaymen: Florida’s African-American Landscape Painters, Reagan was inspired to paint again and remains active as an artist.
Roy McLendon
(1932−2024)
Florida Beachscape
Oil on Upson board, undated
H: 27 ¼” W: 39 ½”
Acquired in 2005
Roy McLendon was born in Pelham, Georgia, the son of migrant farm workers. He later moved to Gifford, Florida, where he was drawn to art by watching neighbor Harold Newton as he painted outside his house. One of the earliest of the Highwaymen, McLendon inspired many other young artists in the area.
He has one of the widest ranges of subject matter among the Highwaymen and has painted still lifes, figures, cabins, and animals. Some of his paintings are vignettes of everyday life in rural coastal Florida, such as women washing laundry outside or people fishing. Like all of the Highwaymen, he is also a prolific painter of landscapes and is recognized for the way he paints the subtle changes in light as it plays on different textures.
Sylvester Wells
(1937–2023)
Florida Landscape
Oil and acrylic on canvas board, ca. 2006
H: 26 ½” W: 31 ½”
Acquired from the artist in 2010
Sylvester Wells is originally from Jacksonville, Florida. He began painting portraits in 1957. While living in Cocoa in 1965, he started painting in the Highwaymen style. He learned to paint landscapes by watching Harold and Sam Newton and then went home to paint alone, copying their general style. Wells painted a variety of scenes, but his most common were river scenes, particularly of the Indian River. A deeply religious person, Wells serves as a minister in rural Tennessee. Due to failing eyesight, Wells is not currently painting.