Richard Hambleton

Before the galleries arrived, Hambleton was painting life-size black figures onto the walls of Lower Manhattan — silhouettes that read, for a half-second, as somebody waiting in a doorway. He worked at night, alone, and left the city to find them in the morning.

He showed alongside Basquiat and Haring and then, more or less deliberately, disappeared from the market for two decades while the other two became industries. The Shadowman paintings and the later Marlboro-country horse and rider are the works collectors ask for.

Condition is the whole conversation with Hambleton: much of the early work was made on cheap board with house paint. We check every piece against the archive before we place it.