Francis Hines

Francis Mattson Hines (1920–2016) was an American artist known for his large-scale public wrapped works. Many of his paintings and drawings were found in a Connecticut dumpster in 2017 and were re-exhibited in 2022.

Early years Hines was born in Washington, D. C. He attended the Cleveland School of Art from 1940 to 1942. He served in World War II in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Photo Reconnaissance Unit for Military Intelligence. The barn where he had stored the majority of his artwork was being sold and his estate had to comply with a tight deadline that was imposed for cleaning out the barn's contents; the contents of the barn were deemed abandoned and a contractor was assigned to clear out the contents.

Hines' artworks wound up in a dumpster on the property in Watertown, Connecticut, being cleared out by ENCO environmental and demolition. Since many of the canvases featured illustrations of automobile parts, the owner contacted Jared Whipple, a car mechanic and good friend from Waterbury, Connecticut. Whipple contacted friends and family of Hines to research the pieces. He was given permission by Hines' sons to keep and sell the artworks. Some of the pieces were exhibited at the Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury in 2021 with a larger gallery show planned for 2022 with Hollis Taggart Galleries called Unwrapping the Mystery of New York’s Wrapper.