Heartland Art: Selections
from Your Indiana Collection
May 1, 2010 - February 13, 2011
Object labels for the exhibition
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- Untitled
- Jacob Cox (1810-1892)
- Oil on panel
- 1835
- Transferred from the Indiana State Library
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- Cox, the "patriarch of Indianapolis art," was,
for many years, Indiana's most important painter. Born and raised in the
east, he came to Indianapolis in 1833 to open a copper and tin ware business.
By 1841, he was advertising himself as a portrait painter, although he
also painted landscapes, still lifes, and genre paintings.
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- Indians Playing the Moccasin Game
- George Winter (1810-1876)
- Oil on canvas
- 1853
- Donated by James A. Sample
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- Winter came to Logansport from England because it was
the heart of "Indian Country" and the ideal place to document
the "noble savages" before civilization destroyed them. His romantic
view of the conflict between indigenous people and new settlers only slightly
colors the documentary value of his work.
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- Portrait of Indiana Governor Oliver P. Morton
- Marion N. Blair (1824-1902)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1865
- Transferred from the Indiana State Library
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- Morton was the first Indiana-born man to serve as governor.
Blair uses artistic license to simultaneously show both the interior of
the governor's office and the exterior of the state capitol. The building,
the column, and the law books convey Morton's authority rather than depicting
a real space.
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- Portrait of John Moore
- John Elwood Bundy (1853-1933)
- Oil on canvas
- 1884
- Donated by Lois Hagedorn
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- Originally from North Carolina, Bundy's family moved
in 1858 to Monrovia, Indiana. In 1888, he became the head of the Earlham
College Art Department in Richmond. Ten years later, Bundy became the figurative
"dean" of Richmond's new art association. The association remains
one of Indiana's oldest and best art collections.
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- This portrait was commissioned by the boy's mother, to
be painted by J. E. Bundy while they lived in Martinsville, Indiana. It
was later purchased at an antique market by John Moore's niece, who recognized
the portrait.
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- Portrait of Benjamin Cox Stevenson
- Julia Cox (born c. 1860)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1885
- Indiana State Museum Collection
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- Julia Mary Cox (Mrs. Albert S. White) was the daughter
of the famed Indiana portrait artist Jacob Cox. Although she was quite
accomplished, her surviving portraits are rare. One of her most ambitious
pieces was a full length portrait of Lovina Streight (1817 1910),
the wife of Colonel Abel D. Streight, who marched with her husband's 51st
regiment during the Civil War.
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- Red Snapper Still Life
- William Merritt Chase (1849-1916)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1905
- Purchased with funds from the Governor's Contingency
Fund
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- According to Chase's brother George, "Our father
started a shoe store and Bill was put to work there. He was a complete
failure at his job. He drew pictures on all the shoeboxes. The minute he
saw a piece of white, clean space anywhere, he would pull out his pencil
and get busy." The boy's father decided to save his business and took
the budding artist to study with Barton Hays. Chase spent much of his adult
life at the Art Students' League in New York, teaching the next generation
of American painters (O'Keefe, Demuth, Hopper and many more).
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- Portrait of Theodore Clement Steele
- Wayman Adams (1883-1959)
- Oil on canvas
- 1911
- Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele
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- T.C. Steele posed for this portrait when he was 64, four
years after building his "House of the Singing Winds" in Brown
County, Indiana. The inclusion of the paint brush, like objects chosen
for most formal portraits, tells the viewer of the sitter's profession
or interests.
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- La Misere
- William Edouard Scott (1884-1964)
- Oil on canvas
- 1913
- Shortridge High School Collection
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- Scott studied at Manual High School before leaving for
Paris and the tutelage of American expatriate Henry O. Tanner. Murals make
up many of the artist's most important commissions and grandest paintings.
In most of these works, Scott cites the achievements of Negroes in America,
making his work among the earliest public art to address issues of African-American
history.
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- Katherine McLead Smith
- Wayman Adams (1883-1959)
- Oil on canvas adhered to board
- c. 1915
- Donated by Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Claffey
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- Adams studied with both noted American art teachers William
Merritt Chase and Robert Henri. Working from his Indianapolis studio, the
artist built a national reputation with his portraits of public figures
such as Booth Tarkington and Calvin Coolidge. After this recognition of
his work, Wayman Adams followed his market to New York.
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- Birches
- Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1884
- Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele
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- Born in Owen County, T.C. Steele moved to Indianapolis
in 1873. Seven years later, with the financial support of art dealer Herman
Lieber and other business people, Steele joined a group of Indiana artists
leaving to study at the Royal Academy in Munich. His Munich phase contains
work dominated by dark tonalities.
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- Black Man
- Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1883
- Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele
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- This portrait was painted at the Royal Academy in Munich
while Steele was a student. The man, like the one in the portrait by J.
Ottis Adams, was a model at the school. Though mostly thought of as landscape
artists after returning to Indiana, all of the Hoosier Group painters created
portraits as well. Steele's main income throughout his life was from portraits.
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- Study of Old Man
- John Ottis Adams (1851-1927)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1885
- Purchased with funds from the Governor's Contingency
Fund
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- Born in Amity, Adams attended Wabash College and then
traveled to London to further his art education. After studying two years
at the South Kensington Art School, he went to Munich in 1880. This man
was a model at the Royal Academy, where elderly people were considered
more useful than younger models because their weathered faces were full
of character.
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- Hollyhocks
- Otto Stark (1859-1926)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1900
- Indiana State Museum Collection
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- Stark studied at the Art Students' League in New York
under the instruction of William Merritt Chase. While the other painters
in the Hoosier Group traveled to Munich for their European education, Stark
followed Chase's instruction to go to Paris and the Académie Julian.
While sharing many stylistic traits with Steele, Forsyth and Adams, Stark's
color choices are frequently much brighter in tone and subtler in hue.
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- Hunting Rock Oysters (The Oregon Coast)
- Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)
- Oil on canvas
- 1903
- Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele
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- Steele ventured to the West coast in 1902 and again in
1903 with his daughter Daisy. They visited his son Shirley in California
and his mother and brothers in Oregon. While there, Steele painted the
ocean and seashore for the only time in his career. The different scenery
inspired fresh, unique paintings which are unlike his Midwestern landscapes
in light, atmosphere, and feel.
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- The Bridge (Garfield Park)
- William Forsyth (1854-1935)
- Oil on canvas
- 1913
- Indiana State Museum Collection
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- Forsyth described himself and his Hoosier Group colleagues:
Before their time those who painted, only guessed and dreamed in their
studios, but these men went out into the open and joyously sought to measure
themselves with nature.
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- A Jar of Peonies
- Theodore Clement Steele (1847-1926)
- Oil on canvas
- 1924
- Donated by Selma Neubacher Steele
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- Steele began painting floral still lifes inspired by
flower arrangements created by his second wife, Selma. The still life paintings
allowed the use of colors different from his outdoor landscapes. Steele
almost always included some dropped or dying petals surrounding the base
of the arrangement, perhaps to signify the passage of time.
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- Spring Scene
- Will Vawter (1871-1941)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1915
- Transferred from Soldiers and Sailor's Children's Home
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- John William (Will) Vawter was born in Greenfield, Indiana,
and first became known as an illustrator, but changed his focus to landscape
painting when he moved to Brown County in 1908. He was known for painting
landscape scenes from his car and cleaning his paintbrushes on the car's
interior roof. He illustrated several books by James Whitcomb Riley.
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- Grey Goose
- Ada Walter Shulz (1870-1928)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1925
- Donated by Mrs. Richard Crane and Charles Beall
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- While enrolled at Shortridge High School, Ada Walter
began the drawing lessons with Roda Selleck that soon led her to the Art
Institute of Chicago and eventually to Paris. However, she gave up her
career following her marriage to painter Adolph Shulz and the birth of
their son Walter. Ten years later, when her son was older, she reclaimed
her painting. She spent the last 23 years of her life painting, primarily
children, and today is the most highly valued of all Brown County painters.
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- Approaching Storm
- Adolph Robert Shulz (1869-1963)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1930
- Donated by Alberta R. Shulz
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- Adolph Robert Shulz was a prominent landscape artist
originally from Delavan, Wisconsin. In 1917, he moved to the town of Nashville
in Brown County, Indiana, with his artist wife Ada. He encouraged other
artists from the Art Institute of Chicago to relocate in Indiana and helped
to found the Brown County Art Gallery Association.
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- The Hoosier Cabin
- Edward K. Williams (1870-1950)
- Oil on board
- 1931
- Donated by the Tri Kappa Sorority
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- Williams, originally from Pennsylvania, first took a
job tinting photographs in Pittsburgh and eventually moved into painting
decorative landscapes on safes for the American Safe Company. He eventually
settled down as a commercial artist in Chicago, where he married Effie
Teegarden. The couple moved to Nashville, Indiana, after their daughter
had grown up.
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- Early Spring (Young Spring)
- C. Curry Bohm (1894-1971)
- Oil on canvas adhered to board
- c. 1930
- Bequest of Harriet C. Beasley
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- Bohm studied at the Art Institute of Chicago under Edward
Timmins and is known primarily for his Massachusetts paintings of harbor
boats and his trademark snow scenes.
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- Procession
- Gustave Baumann (1881-1971)
- Woodcut on paper
- 1930
- Transferred by the Indiana State Library
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- Born in Germany, Baumann was brought to Chicago at the
age of 9. He studied at the Art Institute and settled in Brown County in
1910. While there, the artist set up his graphics workshop and produced
edition after edition of stunning woodblock prints, constantly perfecting
his complicated process. Baumann moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1924,
where he created his artwork for almost 50 years. The prints produced there
range from intimate images of traditional Pueblo life to stunning Southwestern
vistas.
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- Zinnias in Blue Vase
- V.J. Cariani (1891-1969)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1930
- Indiana State Museum Collection
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- Born in Renazzo, Italy, "Cari" came to the
United States at the age of 3. He met Marie Goth while they were both students
at the Art Students' League and the National Academy of Design in New York.
She eventually led him to Indiana. Her invitation to come spend some time
in Brown County's Peaceful Valley saved Cari from a nervous breakdown following
his World War II service in the trenches.
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- Untitled
- Virginia True (1900-1989)
- Oil on board
- 1927
- Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant
and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger
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- A native of St. Louis, True attended the John Herron
Art Institute, and then taught there in the 1920s. Although she had likely
been exposed to the work of Victor Higgins (1884-1949), an Indiana artist
who had moved to the American Southwest, she did not actually travel there
herself until 1928. The simplified forms of the women, who appear to be
Southwestern, are painted in bright colors with expressive brush strokes,
reflecting a Modernist style popular prior to the Great Depression.
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- Silver Beeches
- Maude Eggemeyer (1877-1959)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1930
- Shortridge High School Collection
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- Eggemeyer was born in New Castle, Indiana, and studied
at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, where she received the first scholarship
awarded to a woman in 1904. She also studied at Earlham College under J.E.
Bundy and H.L. Meakin. She lived many years in Richmond with her husband,
Elmer Eggemeyer, who was the postmaster, and she also painted at their
summer home in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
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- Bomar Cramer
- Ruth Pratt Bobbs (1884-1973)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1930
- Donated by Dr. Steven Conant in memory of Mrs. H.L. Conant
and in honor of Miss Joan D. Weisenberger
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- This portrait of Bomar Cramer, a pianist with the Indianapolis
Symphony Orchestra in 1930s, is unusually informal. The artist, Ruth Pratt
Bobbs, became well known for her portraits after her studies at the Herron
School of Art, the Académie Julian in Paris, the Chase School of
Art, and Art Students' League in New York. She married William Conrad Bobbs,
head of Bobbs-Merrill publishing company and moved to Paris after her husband's
death in 1926.
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- Salt Lick Creek, Brown County
- John Wesley Hardrick (1891-1968)
- Oil on board
- c. 1930
- Indiana State Museum Collection
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- Hardrick studied at Manual High School under Otto Stark
and then attended the John Herron Art Institute. Among his many awards
was the prized Harmon Foundation Award (1922) given to young black Americans
for excellence in science, religion, and the arts.
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- Moonlight Symphony
- Frank Dudley (1868-1957)
- Oil on canvas
- c. 1940
- Purchased with funds from the Governor's Contingency
Fund
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