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Palmer Hayden (African American, 1890-1973) Dreamer Oil on canvas c. 1940. Signed. "I never had any desire to paint anything about Africa. I painted what Negroes, colored people, us Americans do…we're a brand new race, raised and manufactured in the U.S. I do like to paint what they did." Born in Virginia in 1890, Palmer Hayden moved to Washington D.C. as a teen working odd jobs and eventually joining the Ringling Bros. Circus. Here he made his first foray into art, drawing portraits of the performers for promotions. After an eight year stint in the Army, he moved to New York City where he studied at Columbia University. He took art classes with Victor Perard at the Cooper Union School of Art in 1925. During the summers of 1926 and 1927 he traveled to Maine to study at the Commonwealth Art Colony in Boothbay. The many landscapes and marine studies he painted here were shown in his first exhibition at the Civic Club in New York in 1926. In 1926, he won the first Harmon Foundation gold medal for Distinguised Achievement in the Visual Arts for a painting of Boothbay Harbor titled, "The Schooners". The prize money helped contribute to his trip to France where he had a one man show at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in 1927 and was included in the Salon des Tuileries in 1930 and the American Legion Exhibition in 1931. Upon returning to New York in 1932, he worked with Mary Beattie Brady at the Harmon Foundation office and also for the WPA and the United States Treasury Art Project between 1934-1940. By the late 1930's, Hayden developed a "consciously naïve" style to represent African-American folklore and contemporary scenes of Harlem. Hayden continued to live and work in New York until his death in 1973. Hayden exhibited at the Society of Independent Artists, 1922-26; Civic Club, NY, 1926; Harmon Foundation, 1928-33; Smithsonian Institute, 1929,1933; Cooperative Art Market, 1933; Art Center, NYC, 1933; Commodore Hotel, 1934; Roerich Museum, 1934; Texas Centennial, 1936; Howard University, 1937; Galeries Bernheim-Jeune, 1937; Boston Museum of Art, 1939; and the American Negro Exposition, 1940. His work can be found in the collections of Fisk University, Atlanta University, and the Oakland Museum 12" x 18"