In the last ten years, the spotlight on Black art from the Civil Rights Era to recent works has grown brighter and brighter, and while that is amazing in all respects, it is important to be aware that the light may have dimmed on earlier historical works.

Artwork created by African Americans from the late 19th into the early 20th century symbolizes a victory, by the sake of its very existence.  Not only do these works stand as visual proof that these artists were every bit as talented as their white contemporaries, but they also symbolize an achievement that was typically much more difficult to attain.  These views were seen and artistically recorded through the lens of Black people—and that’s why a painting of a simple landscape is special.  

William A. Harper (1873-1910)

Harper was born in Ontario, Canada, the son of escaped slaves.  He immigrated in 1885 to Jacksonville, Illinois, where his father was living.  He received training at an artist colony in Oregon, Illinois, from landscape painters Charles Francis Browne and William Wendt, before attending the Art Institute of Chicago (graduating in 1901).  After graduation, he accepted a teaching position in the Houston, Texas, public school system.  He traveled to France in 1903-1904, studying at the Academy Julian in Paris.  After returning to Chicago for two years (1905-1907), he returned to France and reportedly studied informally with Henry Ossawa Tanner.

In 1908, he suffered ill health (consumption or tuberculosis) and moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, to convalesce.  He continued to paint until he died in 1910.  A year later, the Art Institute of Chicago held a solo retrospective exhibition of sixty of his works, one of the earliest major museum exhibitions for an African-American artist in the U.S.

It is suggested that his paintings done in Mexico were his first to incorporate figures into the compositions.  In the Annual Exhibition of Works by Chicago Artists held at the Art Institute of Chicago (January 4 to January 30, 1910), Harper exhibited five works, possibly most if not all, were scenes of Mexico, including Morning in the Market (which could easily be the title of this work).  The exhibition began on January 4, so the paintings were certainly done in 1909.  In a February exhibit, he included another Mexican scene.  

Janet Nussbaum, a noted scholar on the work of Harper, says:

 "Looking at the exhibitions for 1909 and 1910, there are a number of paintings set in Mexico that could easily be the one (found here). The painting is reminiscent of one called Three Mexican Women from the posthumous exhibition in two regards. First, the women's clothing is almost identical. With the above in mind, I do not think it would be out of order to state that the painting is "possibly from the exhibition of Harper's paintings held at the Art Institute of Chicago following his death in 1910.”

For further discovery, please visit www.williamaharper.com, Janet Nussbaum’s website dedicated to her research on Harper’s life and work.

Grafton Tyler Brown (1841-1918)

Grafton Tyler Brown was a painter, graphic designer, and lithographer who worked in California in the late 19th century. Brown worked in Peter S. Duval’s print shop in Philadelphia in the 1850s. By 1865, he had founded his own lithography business in San Francisco, designing stock certificates for a wide variety of companies ranging from ice to mining corporations, as well as admission tickets, maps, sheet music, and advertisements.

In the 1870s, Brown moved to Victoria, British Columbia, to work on a geographical survey for the Canadian government. He held his first exhibition of paintings in 1883 in Victoria, which included 22 local landscapes. Brown lived in Portland from 1886 to 1889 and was an active member of the Portland Art Club.  

In May of 1886, Brown boarded a Northern Pacific Railroad car for a trip to Yellowstone Park to spend the summer. He first painted the famous geyser “Old Faithful” at 9 a.m. on July 26th, 1886.  He made 48 sketches on this trip.  A nearly identical example to the work included in this auction is illustrated on page 176 of San Francisco Lithographer, African American Artist Grafton Tyler Brown, by Robert J. Chandler (University of Oklahoma Press, 2014)

At the end of the summer of 1886, Brown returned to Portland but continued to paint scenes “to order" of Yellowstone for the next six years with tremendous success.

James Bolivar Needham (1850-1931)

James Bolivar Needham was born in Chatham, Ontario, a stop on the Underground Railroad. He worked on lumber ships that sailed the Great Lakes. When he arrived in Chicago in 1867, he began to earn his living painting houses and other decorative projects. In his free time, he painted all along the Chicago River. At that time, the river was the bustling maritime heart of the city. The real life environment of this area was noisy, dirty, and generally unpleasant, but Needham recorded the views as something beautiful.  In the catalog accompanying the exhibition, Chicago Painting 1895-1945, The Bridges Collection (2004), p.202, Wendy Greenhouse writes about a similar work by Needham:

“As elsewhere in Needham’s work, these structures are portrayed with just enough physical distance to imply an unpeopled quietude.  The slightly rippling surface of the water casts broken reflections in spontaneous strokes…that reveal Needham’s direct, on-the-spot portrayal of his local subject.”

Chicago Modern 1893-1945, Pursuit of the New, an exhibition at the Terra Museum (2004), highlighted the work of Needham and presented eight oils of the Chicago River/Harbor. In the catalog,p. 134,  Daniel Schulman writes, "The small paintings have the freshness and immediacy of French impressionist painting."

An article in the Chicago Daily News in 1931, Beam, This Man Loved Chicago. p. 14. stated,

"Jim Needham was painting Chicago.  Painting the water and the boats and the boisterous human beings who worked around them.  The old Mackinac ketches, the little schooners, the solid three-masters, the water under them; the gingerbread architecture in Chicago buildings; the horse cars crossing the bridges; the swamp at the foot of Randolph Street; horses hitched to garbage wagons or to surreys or to light driving gigs; women with bustles and men with beards and tall hats—this was what Jim Needham painted.  This was the Chicago he loved.”

According to the Richard Norton Gallery, Chicago:

"[Needham] lived in a simple loft room that was filled with his artwork, which was packed in boxes and stacked against walls. On New Year’s Eve, 1931, a fire broke out in Needham’s room. The 81-year-old artist died of smoke inhalation while trying to save his paintings. About 30 of Needham’s paintings survive today, the bulk of which are in the collection of the Chicago History Museum."