Palmer Cole Hayden (christened Peyton Cole Hedgeman) was born in 1890 in Widewater, VA. Self-taught, he developed a naïve style that would return in his later work. His first formal training came from a drawing correspondence course after enlisting in the Army in 1914. In 1919 he went to work in New York while studying at the Cooper Union School of Art. He moved to the Boothbay Art Colony in Maine in 1925 under a working fellowship and, in 1926, one of his paintings won the first Harmon Foundation Gold Medal Award, an award for distinguished achievement by an African American in the fine arts field. With the prize money and patron support, he traveled to Paris to study at the École des Beaux Arts and had his first solo show there in 1928.... Hayden returned to New York in 1932, where he worked at a variety of part-time jobs to allow him the freedom to paint. Ironically, Hayden worked as a janitor in the Harmon Foundation’s office building, even while regularly participating in their exhibitions. Hayden developed his art during the formation of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, but he did not embrace the movement’s preferences for abstraction and African themes. However, one of his best-known works, Fetiche et Fleurs, did incorporate African objects and textiles, linking him to the Harlem movement. His early work was of marine subjects, but in New York he returned to a consciously naïve style and captured the day-to-day lives of African-Americans in urban and rural settings. His penchant for including unflattering, even stereotypical, images of blacks often placed him at odds with his peers, who, rather than see irony or satire, accused him of caricaturing blacks for the amusement of whites. Despite such criticisms, there is no doubt Hayden brought a distinctive African-American presence to American art, and played an important role in the recognition and celebration of black artists. (http://www.muskegonartmuseum.org/mma-permanent-collection/) undefined

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