GUEST: I bought this about ten years ago at an auction. It's by the Highwaymen, and they were a group of Black artists in South Florida in the 1950s.
APPRAISER: Yeah.
GUEST: And they would paint along the highway. And the gentleman that was the most prominent of them-- his name was Mr. Newton-- he's the one that signed it. We've had it hanging in our dining room for ten years.
APPRAISER: Where was the auction?
GUEST: In Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Everybody was sitting around talking about it. And the auctioneer, a good friend of mine, says, "Well, I'll waive my commission, the first $500 buys it." I went... and I bought it.
APPRAISER: Good, good for you! It's an oil on board, so artist's board, or Masonite, in this case.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: The moniker "Highwaymen" came about because they were literally selling their paintings up and down the highway.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: You know, stopping from one exit to another, going to hotels, going door to door. They sold anywhere from $25 to $50.
GUEST: (laughing): Oh, really?
APPRAISER: What they were selling for. And it was a group of roughly 26 artists.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: And, as you said, Harold Newton was the kind of premier, best artist of the group. And they would paint on very inexpensive materials, and often, they would frame it with just ordinary coving, molding that you would find in houses. They're pretty widely collected. The wonderful part about these Highwaymen, these African American artists from Florida, is that they painted the kind of untouched landscape of Florida in the midpart of the century.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And they started, as you said, in about the 1950s.
GUEST: Yes.
APPRAISER: Painted right through about the 1980s. It's difficult to date this, 'cause it's not dated. If I look at the material and the type of pickled oak frame that it has, and the way the liner is painted with this kind of whitewash, I would say it's an early one from the 1950s-- maybe the late 1950s. They were trained, uh, pretty much by a very prominent landscape artist in, in Florida named Backus, Beanie Backus.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: He was a white artist, but he loved training African American artists.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: And they got, uh, pretty successful, and they all made a living doing this. This, I think, is a rather good one. It's really an undisturbed landscape, there are no buildings, there are no people. It really captures that remote, unspoiled Florida landscape of that time period.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: Today, it's so built up, as we know.
GUEST: Sure.
APPRAISER: And today, at auction, this would probably bring somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000.
GUEST: (laughs) I wasn't going to say this, but, golly.
APPRAISER: (laughs) Yeah, there's a, there's a real, uh, collecting fad for this type of art, and you nailed one of the better ones. Congratulations.
GUEST: Thank you very much.
APPRAISER: My pleasure.
GUEST: (laughing) Yeah, jeez.