VOLUMES
BY JANIE GOULD
The Highwaymen artists are closely
associated with Fort Pierce
because that’s where most of
them lived and worked. But the first
and arguably best of the 25 or so
painters hailed from the Gifford community
in Indian River County
Harold Newton started painting in
1954, years before the distinctive school
of Florida landscape painting received
its name, and he died 13 years ago at the
age of 59. Now he’s the subject of a
handsome new book, “Harold Newton:
The Original Highwayman,” written by
Gary Monroe and published by the
University Press of Florida.
Coffee table books are often decorative
in nature and short on content. That
is not the case here. Monroe, a professor
of fine arts and photography at Daytona
Beach Community College, knows his
stuff. He wrote two previous books
about the Highwaymen and self-taught
Floridian art. He also lectures on the
topics as a member of the Florida
Humanities Council Speakers Bureau.
For his newest book, he interviewed
numerous members of Newton’s circle
of friends and relatives, including exgirlfriends
and his widow, Dorothy. He
came away with a portrait of Newton as
a highly focused painter with an exacting
style who “painted in spurts,” especially
when he was short on cash. When
he wasn’t working he became a generous
livewire fueled by alcohol. If he had
sold a few paintings and had cash in his
pocket, he was likely to buy rounds for
everybody in the bar.
“We would drink three or four hours
without spending a dime,” David
Lundy says in the book. “Harold would
even walk around and give everyone
there money. He’d put two or three dollars
in your pocket.”
The Highwaymen, all of them
African-American artists, originally sold
their work from the side of the road
because they weren’t permitted to
exhibit in white-owned galleries.
Newton hit the road with his paintings
in 1954, and by the mid-1960s at least
two dozen other painters were following
him. In the early years, they painted
on Upsom or Masonite board and got
five or ten dollars for a painting. These
days, long after Newton died penniless,
some Highwayman art commands
three- or even four-figure prices and is
exhibited in the State Capitol, among
many other places.
Monroe says the Highwaymen’s renaissance
would not have happened
without Newton, an ambassador of
sorts for Florida’s newcomers. “Newton
captured not only the meaning of the
semitropics but also the aura of the
artiste, “ he says.
The book includes a wonderful
gallery of Newton’s work – plates of 65
of his oil paintings of seascapes, marshes,
and those signature sunsets. Always,
he paid attention to detail, shading and
perspective, in the always-changing skies,
the wading birds and glorious palms.
Some of the work is starkly realistic.
The book also contains some interesting
history of Gifford. Dorothy Newton
remembers the town, before World War
II, as having a drug store with a soda
fountain, a dry cleaners, grocery store
and a post office. “Whites came into the
community during the 1930s and relations
began to deteriorate,” Monroe
writes. “It was a vibrant community
until World War II.”
Harold Newton died in Gifford and is
“Harold Newton: The Original
buried in what amounts to a pauper’s
grave at the African-American Gifford
Cemetery. It looks like a vacant lot from
the road, Monroe says, and its ragged
condition suggests the dead must have
lived anonymously.
The renewed interest in Newton and
in his unofficial role as the
Highwaymen’s pathfinder rescued him
from anonymity, a condition he never
deserved.
Postcards from
Vero Beach
BY JANIE GOULD
Abook of postcards is usually a colorful
collection of pretty pictures
about a place, featuring scenes that make
you yearn to be there. It’s a bit different
with “Indian River County,” a book of
200 postcards published in July by the
Indian River Genealogical Society. It’s no
travelogue but instead a pictorial history
of how a vast swamp along the central
east coast of Florida was tamed, drained
and populated. Undoubtedly, in those
90
>>
Highwayman”
Author: Gary Monroe
Publisher: University Press of
Florida 2007
$34.95
Original
Highwayman
followed road
less-traveled