Meet "Mr. American Folk Art." In 1986, the Smithsonian American Art Museum acquired a major collection of folk art from Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr.

Through his collecting, Hemphill, who had been dubbed "Mr. American Folk Art" by Connoisseur magazine, was well known among folk artists, including Howard Finster, who painted this portrait.

Around 1976, when Finster and Hemphill first met, modestly scaled portraits of historical, popular and biblical figures—cast in concrete or painted on panels—were scattered throughout Finster's Paradise Garden. There was even a self-portrait. Most of the people Finster has included in his pantheon correspond to his perception of the inventor, someone able to combine life's many facets in a creative process that Finster considers to be the salvation of the world.

Hemphill commissioned this portrait while visiting the artist in 1978. He asked.only that it fit on the back of a narrow door. Jeffrey Camp posed Hemphill dressed in T-shirt and white slacks in front of the Garden and snapped several polarolds. Finster worked from these photographs.

Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: For the National Museum of American Art by the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).

Pictured: Howard Finster (born 1916), THE HERBERT WADE HEMPHILL J.R. COLLECTION FOUNDER OF AMERICAN FOLK ART THE MAN WHO PRESERVES THE LONE AND FORGOTTEN. THE UNKNOWN COLLECTION,1978, enamel., 79 1/2 x 50 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.