JAMES HAMPTON

Hampton (1909-1964) was a visionary artist whose one-man church and apocalyptic environment, “The 'Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations' Millennium General Assembly,” has been called America's greatest work of visionary art. This complex assemblage of secondhand furniture, light bulbs, jelly jars, and other objects covered in silver and gold foil celebrates the Second Coming of Christ and is lasting evidence of Hampton's solitary, all-consuming devotion. The Throne was discovered in a garage on Seventh Street in Northwest Washington, D.C., after Hampton's death and installed in the National Museum of American Art. Hampton's writings attached to various pieces of The Throne and his papers that were found in the garage reveal some of his goals and spiritual motivations. They also compound the mystery, for many are written in a secret script that has defied cryptographers.

PALMER HAYDEN

Hayden (1890-1973) took his first drawing lessons through a correspondence course, and later studied at the Cooper Union and in 1925 studied with Asa Grant Randall at the Boothbay Art Colony in Maine, where he excelled in marine subjects. His early sketchbooks are pocket-sized with pencil drawings of landscapes and coastal scenes, and his painting of a Maine seascape won first prize from the Harmon Foundation in 1926. When an art patron, who had urged him to enter the competition, gave him $3,000 to continue his studies abroad, Hayden moved to France and lived in Brittany and Paris from 1927 to 1932. His twelve sketchbooks from this period contain studies of sailboats, and other drawings show him dancing, drinking, and enjoying the freedom of Parisian society. After 1940 he became known for his narrative paintings of urban ghettos, the rural South, and American folklore. Among his papers are studies for a series of twelve paintings illustrating the ballad of John Henry.

CLEMENTINE HUNTER

Hunter (1887-1988) was a self-taught folk artist who began painting when she was over forty, after spending her life cooking and picking cotton in Louisiana. Most of her paintings are flat, two-dimensional views of rural southern life. She became one of the South's most important artists after her "discovery" in the 1950s.

JOSHUA JOHNSON

Johnson (c1763-1824) was one of the leading painters in Baltimore. He was one of the first African Americans to become a professional artist in his own country. Born into slavery as the son of a white man and a black woman who was the slave of another man, Johnson was purchased by his father from his mother's owner when he was about a year old. He later apprenticed to a Baltimore blacksmith, and was freed in 1782. Apparently self-taught, Johnson was listed as a portrait painter or limner from 1796 to 1824 in Baltimore city directories. Some eighty portraits are now attributed to him.