The call was at an old homestead in the greater Cincinnati area. “It was pretty much, just normal stuff, you know run of the mill,” Williams says. “We found a couple of paintings on the second floor.”

The paintings were good, and the owners pretty much knew they were, coming from a distant cousin T.C. Lindsay. Their ancestor was an accomplished painter from the mid 19th century who, during the past years, has gained a faithful following of art collectors.

But, everything changed when Millier and Williams got into the attic of the old homestead.

There, to everyone’s amazement, they found crates packed with canvasses. There under the eaves, were 77 paintings of Thomas Corwin Lindsay (1839-1907), unseen for nearly 90 years. Lindsay, primarily a painter of landscapes, portraits and animals, is particularly renowned for his rendering of cows – portraying these serene, often multi-colored ruminants in their native pastoral settings.

“Yes, we had cows,” Williams said. “This was an attic find … some of the paintings were black … there was evidence of pigeons and other animals that had been up there. But, we knew right away what we had.”

What they had was an amazing find – about “one-quarter of a million dollars” in value, according to Eisele Gallery owner and restoration specialist Douglas Eisele. Eisele, who restored the previously unknown works, is very familiar with Lindsay’s work, having sold a number of pieces in his gallery in recent years.

No one knows, for certain, how the paintings came to be stored in the attic. Today, there are no direct descendants of Lindsay. Lindsay, himself, never lived at the homestead, but it is thought he prevailed upon a cousin to store the paintings for him.

In this day and age, such a discovery is highly unusual.

“It’s amazing when you think about it,” Eisele says. “Here, we had a house that was in the same family for all these years. It had never changed hands outside the family, and no one knew that these paintings were there. That just doesn’t happen anymore.”

Eisele and his staff cleaned the paintings multiple times. “Most of them were in very good condition,” he says, “but after 80-plus years, there was a lot of dirt, dust and grime.”

Of all 77 oil on canvas paintings, only six were framed. A grouping of about 25 were unstretched, flat canvasses tacked on a board. Only about eight are signed. However, Eisele has no doubt that each one was created at the end of Lindsay’s brush.

“There’s no question,” he says. “There’s a lot of his pastoral scenes, which are almost more of an Impressionistic look. Given where we found them, and on the backs of many of the frames there’s the original label where he bought them from a store on Vine Street (in Cincinnati). There’s no doubt. When I saw the cows, I said that’s unmistakably a Lindsay.”

And, according to Eisele, the paintings encompass a large spectrum of Lindsay’s active painting life, from as early as 1859 to 1905. During that period of time, the development, and transitions from one style into another, become evident to the Lindsay collector. One of the larger paintings found in the trove was barely half completed, according to Eisele, allowing the student to more fully understand how Lindsay built up his colors and developed the painting. “It shows the evolution of his painting,” Eisele says.

The sale of 77 paintings fresh to the market should not greatly effect values of Lindsay paintings, according to Eisele. For one thing, Lindsay was a somewhat prolific painter. As early as 1877, the Cincinnati Commercial, notes in a lengthy account of local art events, “over two thousand of (Lindsay’s) paintings, nearly all landscapes hang in and around Cincinnati. In the first flush following the War over $900 was earned in one week, and over $47,000 in one winter. But such good fortune is rare, and in Lindsay’s case resulted less from the artist’s will than a happy combination of circumstances.”

Also, Lindsay’s sphere of collectors has expanded beyond the small pocket of the Ohio Valley, into a nationwide state of appeal. In short, the demand still remains greater than the supply.

From a historical standpoint, many of the paintings show the early days of a riverfront town and the bucolic surroundings stretching out to Indiana and Kentucky. But, Lindsay was also a wanderer, which gives even greater appeal to his art.

In addition to a period of study in Europe shortly after the Civil War, Lindsay made forays into eastern Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Tennessee and even parts of the “Wild West.”

After a second long eastern tour in 1862, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that his “sketchbook (was) filled to overflowing” with scenes from the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Between January and May 1865 he reportedly placed a number of paintings on the auction block, including views along the Tennessee, Connecticut and Kanawha Rivers, purportedly in preparation for studies in Dusseldorf and Paris.

“He was an active painter,” Eisele says. “He participated in a lot of shows. He aggressively marketed himself. He tried to earn a living at his work … it’s my understanding that toward the end of his life he has some issues with the bottle. We’ve had some people come in and say, ’well, my grandfather owned this bar, and this artist paid off his bar bill with this picture.’”

But, that’s not to said to take away the quality of his work, Eisele adds.

“Some of his work is unbelievable,” he says. “He had a very nice sense of colors.

“He did a lot of pastoral country scenes. They are historically important to this area. “

The bulk of the collection was purchased by owners of the Wooden Nickel Antiques. These findings, and several other Lindsay works, will be displayed and offered for sale in the Eisele Gallery through April 18.

Contact: (513) 791-7717

www.eiselefineart.com

Eric C. Rodenberg