Harry and the Natives

11910 S.E. Federal Hwy.

Hobe Sound, FL 33455

(772) 546-3061

MENU

 

Northern and Southern Italian, with a nice wine list and homemade pasta specials. Many dishes are topped with fresh herbs.

ATMOSPHERE

Tucked into an Old Florida home just south of the Roosevelt Bridge, Casa Bella is one of the most charming places to have dinner in Martin County. Lace curtains, candlelight and white tablecloths add romance, and a skylight allows tropical plants to grow inside. For the most privacy, try to get one of three tables tucked into a cozy room at the back of the restaurant. 

Read the full story

How Fort Lauderdale lawyer Scott Schlesinger came to be one of the largest collectors of Highwaymen art began with boyhood memories of his father’s Hollywood law office.

Sheldon Schlesinger’s 1960s walls had been decorated with cheap but beguiling oils of Florida landscapes by some of the 26 mostly self-taught African-American artists from Fort Pierce who sold art from the trunks of their cars along the state’s coastal roads. Today, these artists are known as the Highwaymen.

The images evoked by those paintings — the deep-hued brilliance of poinciana trees, wind-swept palms bent against the foamy sea, backwoods roads at dusk — would lie dormant within Schlesinger’s memory for more than two decades before they reemerged.

”I was in Lakeland for an appellate hearing, and I saw this Robert Butler picture hanging in the courthouse,” says Schlesinger, a suspender-sporting, third-generation Floridian. “I was drawn to the art, to these beautiful, postcard pictures of Florida.”

Schlesinger, 49, already a passionate collector of Florida landscapes, many of which grace the walls of his two-story Key West-style office, began chasing and promoting the works of the Highwaymen. He invested in their newfound glory because he says he believed in the artists and the making-do story that inspired them.

Schlesinger discovered the power of this regional art movement — now the subject of websites, several movie scripts, festivals, a PBS documentary, a heritage trail and a half-dozen books, including Catherine Enns’ The Journey of the Highwaymen (Abrams, $40), published in April. Enns, who grew up in Fort Pierce, includes images of several of the paintings in Schlesinger’s collection. More are on display through June 30 at the Spady Cultural Heritage Museum in Delray Beach.

”Scott is a patron of the arts. He is generally interested in the Highwaymen art and Florida art in general,” says photographer Gary Monroe, author of three books about the Highwaymen. “Growing up here, he has an authentic connection to these paintings.”

Almost since that moment in the courthouse, Schlesinger has pursued the Highwaymen’s story, an enduring narrative that springs from the intersection of art, commerce, race and Florida history.

During the fog of segregation in the 1950s, landscape artist A.E. Backus, a middle-aged white man, opened his Fort Pierce studio to black students, oblivious to or because of racially divisive social norms. He mentored Harold Newton and taught Alfred Hair, the best known of the Highwaymen. Hair taught others. From these improbable roots developed an industrious, bohemian cooperative of 25 men and one woman. The group eventually produced up to 200,000 paintings — each artist driven by the possibilities of a quick and decent dollar without having to spend hard hours of labor in the citrus groves.

The landscapes of tropical and rural Florida were often assembled factory style, painted on Upson board or Masonite, framed with crown molding and sold for $10 to $45. For these artists, the paintings were a creative means to an end. For their customers, the art was an affordable and nostalgic, if unconventional, way to cover the paneled walls of suburban Florida.

”Initially, I was just looking for a way to make an honest living,” says James Gibson, 71, who still makes his living as a painter in Fort Pierce and has a landscape on display in the White House. “I started out making frames for Alfred Hair. Then I started painting, more as a friendly competition with Hair. We painted as fast as possible. Others could paint better, but I tried to study Mr. Backus. I finally slowed down like he told me and really began to work with the colors.”

–AUDRA D.S. BURCH., The Miami Herald