10
●
CLOYD LEE BOYKIN (1877 - nd)
Charles Lindbergh.
Oil on canvas, 1927. 1030x750 mm; 40
1
/
2
x29
1
/
2
inches. Signed and dated in oil, lower right.
Provenance: private collection.
This large and impressive portrait is only the second known painting by Cloyd Boykin to come to
auction.The artist, famously depicted in Palmer Hayden’s painting
The Janitor Paints a Picture
, was
indeed a janitor late in his life. Boykin had, however, achieved considerable success as an artist in
the 1910s and 1920s.
Born in Virginia in 1877, Boykin moved to Boston in the early 1900s, where he studied at the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston from 1912 to 1913. He became known in Boston’s art
circles for his portraits of prominent African Americans and abolitionists. In the late 1920s, Boykin
also opened the first art school for African Americans in NewYork City and went on to exhibit at
the Harmon Foundation in NewYork in 1931, 1933 and 1935.
[6,000/9,000]