OUTSIDER ART PART ONE PART TWO
Charles Dellchau was an artist and flight enthusiast. Beyond that, his life remains as mysterious as the 13 leather-bound notebooks that comprise his known works. Was he a member of a secret society dedicated to advanced aeronautical technology? Perhaps an early UFO contactee? Or was he simply an extremely imaginative retired butcher, spending his golden years on artistic pursuits?
Dellchau was born in Prussia in 1830 and emigrated to Texas in 1850, where he found work as a butcher. He became a U.S. citizen in 1860 in Fort Bend County. In 1861, he married a widow, Antonia Hilt, with whom he had three children, in addition to her daughter from a previous marriage. In 1865, he signed the Civil War Amnesty Oath, which described him as 5’3″ with fair hair and hazel eyes. In 1877, both his wife and six-year-old son, Edward, died. Dellchau retired in 1899 and began creating art, documenting his life story. He passed away on April 20, 1923, in Houston, Texas.
These sparse dates and facts make up much of what the world knows about Charles Dellchau. While there is little detail beyond these events, his life in Texas from 1850 to 1923 is consistently recorded, with one notable exception: a few missing years between about 1856 and 1860, when he allegedly lived in Sonora, California. It is these missing years that are the focus of Dellchau’s art and writings, contained in his voluminous collection of notebooks, which document the fantastical tale of the Sonora Aero Club.
Dellchau presents an incredibly intricate narrative, complete with detailed illustrations of aircraft called “Aeros,” which he claimed were designed and operated by the club a half-century before the Wright Brothers. At the heart of the story is a special anti-gravity gas, known as “NB Gas,” discovered by one of the principal members. This gas is used both to lift the crafts and to fuel them. The club is depicted as successfully developing several working aircraft using the NB Gas. However, accidents, rivalries, and sabotage eventually cause the group to disband, with the final blow being the untimely and accidental death of Peter Menace, the club’s co-founder and the inventor of the NB Gas.
Fueling the intrigue, Dellchau embeds coded messages and imagery throughout his approximately 5,000 works, concealing the more secretive aspects of the club. In some cases, he incorporates contemporary news articles supposedly concerning past members and their activities or inventions. These tantalizing clues frequently point toward other historical sightings of unidentified flying objects, such as the Aurora, Texas, UFO incident of 1897.
While his narrative reads like something from the imagination of Jules Verne, it seems unlikely that Dellchau ever intended to publish his work. In fact, it is doubtful that he ever shared it with anyone, even his own family. This is evidenced by the strange circumstances surrounding the discovery of his collection. When Dellchau passed away in 1923, his notebooks were left gathering dust in the attic of the family home, where they remained for nearly fifty years. It wasn’t until a fire struck the house in 1967 that his work finally saw the light of day—and even then, it was set out for trash collection. A local antique dealer, Fred Washington, saw the collection and purchased it from the trash collector for $100. The notebooks sat in Washington’s store for another year until a local college student borrowed them for a project on the history of flight. Slowly, the works began to attract attention, and the deeper mysteries began to unfold.
Objectively, Dellchau’s work is inspiring. The awe and wonder that accompanied the discovery of flight cannot be overstated. It wasn’t until the moon landing that humanity’s collective imagination would again be so thoroughly captivated. Dellchau’s love for the subject shines through his work, and his passion for flight is so pure that the bizarre nature of his illustrations is often overlooked in favor of the grand vision of mankind achieving what once seemed impossible.
Charles Dellchau remains an enigma in the art world. Was he an outsider artist, or was he a witness to a miraculous secret history? No concrete evidence has been found to prove the existence of the Sonora Aero Club, and research into the names in the notebooks has proven equally elusive. Of course, the lack of proof does not disprove the existence of the club—after all, they were a secret society. Regardless of whether the club ever existed, Dellchau’s work stands as a monument to imagination and will continue to inspire future generations.
Jason Roberts is a Seattle-based author noted for his acclaimed western horror series The Dead Wind Trilogy as well as other works of cosmic horror infused with historical fiction. His web-based series, Dark Distractions examines paranormal mysteries, unexplained phenomena, and all things strange.
