In 1922 Indiana University published a small pamphlet on how to look at paintings, with an introduction by President William Lowe Bryan.
This began with the sentence: “I believe that we need beauty as much as we need truth.” It was true in that day and with all the ugliness about us, it is needed even more today.
Artists are creative, sensitive human beings endowed with an extra sense of being able to see colors and design and know how design can be arranged, to enhance, enrich and beautify the portion of God’s world they are entrusted with.
The old European painters became masters by spending years in apprenticeship to the master painters with a through training of doing and learning. No matter how long it took, painting had to be right. Artists are those who produce art work.
By 1876 a few painters were coming into Indiana in search of new places to paint.
Among the early painters who found their way to Brown County were Jacob Cox, T. C. Steele, John Love, James P. Gookins, Dewey Bates, Alois Sinks, Samuel Richards and Richard B. Gruelle who later won the top art award at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Gruelle had two sons, John and Justice, who also became famous artists.
Chicago became interested in these early artists and in 1884 promoted a big exhibition of “Five Hoosier Artists” — T. C. Steele, J. Otis Adams, Otto Stark, R. B. Gruelle and William Forsyth — at the Central Association. The City of Chicago received the exhibition well.
Adolph Shulz and his wife, Ada Shulz, were both professional artists. Adolph did mostly landscapes and Ada became nationally known as a painter of mothers and children. They purchased land cheaply and built their house and studio just north of Locust Lane and Mound Streets near the famous giant black walnut tree. They made money by selling property, which made it possible to spend more time painting.
Brown County pioneers had their own gardens and raised their own food, tended to their own business and didn’t like flatlanders moving into their quiet world. By the early 1900s other artists came. Some stayed at the Pittman Inn, some at the Ferguson House and some, later, at the Nashville House.
Salesmen, teachers and a few tourists came for mineral water at the Pittman Inn Sanitarium.
Sara Moore ran the dining room at the Nashville House for a few years and was noted as a good cook. In the Nashville House dining room she reserved one big table for the artists. She kept them fed and ready to paint. She was a good friend of all the artists. Sara lived her last years on Gould Street until she was in her 90s.
A psychology professor once said, “We are not all alike, but we are more alike than we are different.” Thus when discussing the methods of these early Brown County painters one discovers each had his or her own personal palette — the different colors the artists felt at ease with — and the order in which the artists arranged the colors on the palette. Most of them used bristle brushes, as large as could be kept under control. Others used a palette knife. But most of them were proficient at using both when needed.
Will Vawter would drive around in the evening looking at the silhouettes of the trees. When he found one he liked he would return the next day and paint it from the back of his car.
Cariani would be out at 8 a.m. by Grover Brown’s old red barn with the Mail Pouch sign. He wasn’t painting the barn; he was looking northeast painting the dark purple color he found in that early morning light.
Everyone who plans to be an artist should know how Marie Goth advanced her training. Marie graduated from Manual Training High School in Indianapolis and earned her degree to teach art in high school. She returned and taught at Manual. The second semester she told the principal she would not be back. She went to New York to Art Students League where she studied art under the best art teachers in the United States for the next 10 years. When she returned she was a professional artist.
L. O. Griffith was an impressionist. He was painting the little creek just south of the Van Buren School. He had a beautiful pattern of the sand and little puddles of water. He had just come back to work on the picture again. He said, “Look at that! Somebody just drove their old wagon on the spot I was painting.” One of his favorite statements was, “If you go into art to make money or just have fun, you will fail, but if you go into art to learn to paint well, you will succeed.”
This is a condensed version of a story written by Francis Clark Brown. You may read the full story in “Brown County Remembers,” a Historical Society publication that can be purchased along with other historical society publications in the gift shop at the History Center. We also have “The First 175 Years of Brown County,” published by our own Brown County Democrat.
History Center hours are Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.
— Submitted by Pauline Hoover, Brown County Historical Society
