About the Artist: A.E. "Bean" Backus
popularly acknowledged as the Dean of Florida landscape painters

Backus as mentor to "The Highwaymen"


In 1995, art critic Jim Fitch in an article for Antiques & Art Around Florida (Winter/Spring 1995 issue) bestowed the name "The Highwaymen" on a group of black artists who have been working on the East coast of Florida from approximately 1955 to the present. He chose the name "The Highwaymen" for the artists, because their marketing and sales strategy consisted of traveling the highways and byways of central Florida peddling their paintings out of the back of their cars.

The story of the Highwaymen begins with one man, now deceased, who has come to be known as the dean of Florida landscape painters, A. E. "Bean" Backus of Fort Pierce. Backus's career began to blossom in 1950, about the time he married. After Backus lost his much loved wife to complications from heart surgery in 1955, he devoted himself to his art, the daily consumption of a quantity of rum, good conversation, and good friends.

Although Bean was a white Southerner during a time when racial equality was not yet taken seriously, he was a friend to all. This characteristic, coupled with a natural Bohemian bent, made him the perfect mentor to a group of young black men who had noted the apparent ease with which he made a living.

Click on any BACKUS painting to enlarge.

Painting, for them, was perceived as being a way out of the fields and groves. Most of these young men were content to learn by osmosis, by observation. Bean's studio became a place to congregate.

One seemed more eager to learn from Backus than the others. His name was Alfred Hair. Alfred was the only one of this group of black men to take formal lessons from Bean and even accompanied him to the Bahamas on occasion. Apparently Alfred had an entrepreneurial spirit because he later organized some of the others who had hung around Bean's studio and began to "mass produce" Florida landscape paintings. They were usually done on Upsom board with whatever materials were at hand, including house paint. It seems that Alfred employed specialists. Some were tree painters, some painted only skies, others did water. Who signed the paintings was of little concern to anyone.

Fitch felt that paintings by these artists could be placed in two categories. Those reflecting the strong influence of the groups' mentor, A. E. “Bean” Backus, and, secondly, others that are more an individual interpretation.

Backus's own work reflected his superb artistic skills as well as his deep love for the beauty of old Florida.

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