Palmer Cole (Hedgeman) Hayden (VA, NY, 1890 – 1973) “Baltimore Street” Watercolor. Signed lower right. Provenance: Private Florida collection.
Hayden was born Peyton Cole Hedgeman in a small Virginia town roughly fifty miles southwest of Washington, DC. After moving to DC at age sixteen to live with an aunt, he took a job as a general laborer for the circus. In 1912 he enlisted in the military, but due to a mistaken reference letter, he was registered as Palmer Cole Hayden, a name he adopted as his own. By 1920 he had left the military, and he began to study painting—in New York City with Cooper Union art instructor Victor Perard and later in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, at the Commonwealth Art Colony. When Hayden traveled to Paris in 1927, his painting focus changed from seascapes to genre scenes of the thriving African diaspora in the French metropolis. Stylistically, he developed a more abstract approach that flattened the pictorial field and represented the human figure in ways that at times uneasily paralleled stereotypical portrayals of African Americans in popular culture.
Sight Size: 20.75 x 28.75 in.
Overall Size: 29.5 x 37.5 in.
Framed behind glass.