Mystery frames river paintings now at Chicago Maritime Museum
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The Chicago Maritime Museum is the new home to a rare collection of paintings.
But behind their fascinating history, there's a bit of mystery.
Imagine the Chicago River before our time.
"They're very industrial views. It's smoky. There's industry."
In the 19th century smoke and smog, an artist sees beauty.
Madeline Crispell, the curator of the Chicago Maritime Museum, dug into the story.
"James Bolivar Needham was born in 1850 in Chatham, Ontario. That's the region of Ontario that was considered the end of most of the roots of the Underground Railroad," Crispell said.
Needham was Black and worked as a deckhand on Great Lakes freighters before settling in Chicago and picking up a paintbrush on the docks.
"He was a plein-air artist, meaning like the French impressionists, he painted on-site," Crispell said.
The river was his regular muse, but Needham rarely signed a painting and never made a living off his work.
"At times he was a janitor. At times he was a caretaker. He was often a house painter."
"You know, this is a period where it would've been incredibly difficult for a Black artist in Chicago to gain the kind of prominence like say the white, French Albert Fleury was able to gain through very similar subject matter in their paintings," Crispell said.
She can't say how many Needham paintings are out there but believes she's found five more.
"If you look closely at the water or smoke of any of the paintings, you're immediately reminded of impressionist work where you lose the picture the closer you get to the piece," Crispell said.
A Chicago collector donated the oil paintings that lack signatures but point to Needham.
The artist, who was known to paint on pieces of shipping crates, may have left a clue behind the canvas.
"Some of the nails that would have originally joined that shipping crate together," Crispell said.
All five paintings will debut at the museum next week celebrating an overlooked artist – and overlooked beauty.
"We know he had a unique perspective. He may have been able to see the beauty in those scenes that other Chicago artists couldn't," Crispell said.
The new exhibit opens next Thursday at the Chicago Maritime Museum.
This spring, the museum will dismantle the frames and inspect the paintings in hopes of proving once and for all -that they were done by James Bolivar Needham.