Oil on canvas, 1927. 1030x750 mm; 40 1/2x29 1/2 inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection.
This large and impressive portrait is only the second known painting by Cloyd Boykin to come to auction. The artist, famously depicted in Palmer Hayden's painting The Janitor Paints a Picture, was indeed a janitor late in his life. Boykin had, however, achieved considerable success as an artist in the 1910s and 1920s.
Born in Virginia in 1877, Boykin moved to Boston in the early 1900s, where he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1912 to 1913. He became known in Boston's art circles for his portraits of prominent African Americans and abolitionists. In the late 1920s, Boykin also opened the first art school for African Americans in New York City and went on to exhibit at the Harmon Foundation in New York in 1931, 1933 and 1935.
