Feb 13, 2014 - Sale 2338

Sale 2338 - Lot 74

Price Realized: $ 20,000
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 20,000 - $ 30,000
PALMER HAYDEN (1890 - 1973)
Colorado Honky Tonk.

Oil on canvas, circa 1940-49. 460x393 mm; 18x15 1/2 inches. Signed in oil, lower right.

Provenance: private New York collection; thence by descent to the current owner.

Exhibited: The American Federation of the Arts, Harlem Renaissance: Art of Black America, New York, NY, January, 1988 - October, 1989, with the label on the frame back.

This charming, folk-like scene is one of several street and storefront views that Palmer Hayden sketched on car trips and later painted in oil. After leaving the WPA in 1940, Hayden married Miriam Hoffmann and drove with her to Virginia. He began his series of twelve paintings on the legend of John Henry in 1944 - using sketches of the mountains, river, shacks and shops around the Big Bend Tunnel in Talcott, West Virginia. Through the 1940s, Palmer Hayden continue to drive across the Midwest and West. His 1940s sketchbooks in the Archives of American Art include many pencil and watercolor sketches from road trips to California and Canada with stops noted in Colorado, Nevada, Wyoming and Utah.