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Traces of T. C. Steele’s Indiana Footprints
RACHEL BERENSON PERRY
Unless otherwise indicated, all images from the collection of the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites
it, Gallien was available in the early spring
of 2010 to introduce me to Billy J. and
Brenda J. Beaman, who own property in
Montgomery Township, Owen County,
where Steele’s grandfather, James Armstrong Steele, had lived.
James and his wife, Anna Johnson
Steele, were established Gosport community leaders in the early 1800s and
built the first two-story brick house in the
county. The eldest of ten children of
Ninian and Jane Armstrong Steele,
James had served as a lieutenant in the
Seventy-third Kentucky Regiment
commanded by Colonel John Davis
place. His meticulous work produced an
during the War of 1812. Appointed to
unpublished paper, “T. C. Steele’s Ancestors in Owen County.” As luck would have Owen County’s first board of county
Many people have written about their deep emotional connections to specific places and structures. Standing in the actual locations where people have lived and worked and significant events have
occurred, can create a visceral sense of those past experiences. To
reawaken a feeling of wonder and write with more authority about
the artist Theodore Clement Steele for my youth biography to be
published by the Indiana Historical Society Press, I decided to find
and explore places in Indiana where he had strolled and painted more
than a century ago. Already familiar with his home in Brookville,
Indiana, called the Hermitage (now a bed and breakfast), I had also
worked for more than a decade at the T. C. Steele State Historic Site,
his Brown County home and studio.
But Steele’s birthplace near Gosport,
Indiana, had always been ambiguous.
In which cabin or house had his infant
cries been heard? Another mystery was
the artist’s alleged studio on the Indiana
University campus in Bloomington. I
never could find anyone who knew how to
get to the actual space, although everyone
acknowledged that it was located in the
old library, now Franklin Hall. In addition, I had never visited Steele’s boyhood
home in Waveland, Indiana, or his favorite
painting places near Vernon. Like any
research path, the synthesis of vague clues,
determination, and benevolent help from
sympathetic souls eventually led to these
obscure destinations.
A colleague from my days as a tour
guide at the Steele State Historic Site,
Jack Gallien, had in the 1980s extensively
researched Steele’s genealogy and birthOpposite: An 1887 photograph of T. C. Steele. Above: Road to Schleissheim painting by Steele,
circa 1882.
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Interior of a Cloister painting by Steele, circa 1882. According to Libbie Steele, her husband’s work in Germany had received critical praise from
Indianapolis newspapers. “I am so happy over the good words I can scarcely control myself,” she wrote a friend. “And my husband goes around in his
calm way, with a joy beaming face.”
commissioners in 1819, he also served on
the first grand jury, for which he was paid
seventy-five cents per day when the jury
was in session. In 1834 he became the
school commissioner.
James’s son, Samuel Hamilton, and his
wife, Harriet Newell Evans, lived on an
eighty-acre farm five miles west of Gosport. They were expecting their first child
in September 1847. And here is where
conjecture interprets history. T. C. Steele’s
birth took place in a “farmhouse,” ac-
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cording to Steele’s grandson, Theodore L.
Steele, in the book The House of the Singing
Winds. Later writers took this to mean that
Steele was born in his father’s cabin, but
Thomas Lakin Creveling, Steele’s greatgreat-grandson, believes that the artist was
born in his maternal grandmother’s house
in Gosport. Other evidence points to
Steele’s birth in his paternal grandfather’s
(James) house. Gallien’s research points
out that James’s fine brick home was only
about a mile from Samuel’s farm, and
would have been a more comfortable and
roomy place for women in the family to
gather for the birth.
James sold his farm to his nephew,
Harvey, on February 2, 1854. Harvey and
his wife, Mariah, donated ground to build
the original Wesley Chapel Methodist
Church on February 15, 1860, according to the chapel history written in 1939.
Gallien discovered a picture of the Wesley
Chapel that appeared in an article by
Frank Hohenberger in the Indianapolis
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Star on Sunday, January 22, 1928. Along
with the chapel picture were photographs
of the ruins identified as the birthplace of
T. C. Steele, the stream running through
the property, and the location of the barn
on the farm. “In the Hohenberger photos the house and barn sites appear to be
recently timbered,” Gallien wrote. “Now
the site is covered with mature timber.
However, the photos seem to match the
ruins on the Beaman property today.”
Family lore of the current property
owners of the James Armstrong Steele
place also supports this location as the
birthplace. Billy’s grandmother recalled
that “between 1930 and 1934 T. C.
Steele’s widow, Selma Neubacher Steele,
came to see her aunt and uncle for the
purpose of visiting the site of the painter’s
birth. Mrs. Steele wanted to explore the
possibility of erecting a monument there.”
A small group of people then went to the
site, but Selma decided that it would be
too difficult to get a stone memorial that
far down into the woods.
On April 10, 2010, Gallien had arranged for us to meet the Beamans at
the McDonalds in Spencer. During his
research trip thirty years before, Gallien
had met with Billy’s mother, so I was a
little dubious that we would all recognize each other. But when we entered, a
middle-aged couple at a nearby table eyed
us curiously, and we introduced ourselves.
We all climbed into the Beaman car and
drove the four or five miles to the county
road and turnoff just past the foundation
remains of a burned church.
After traversing a gated gravel road,
we parked in a clearing and began hiking along a trail through the woods. The
day was sunny and fresh, with redbuds
and fruit trees in full bloom. New leaves
unfurling in the tree crowns gave distant woods a soft green radiance. Seas of
trilliums, yellow and purple violets, and
wild geraniums carpeted the forest floor.
Two Steele self portraits, the one on the left in 1874 and the one on the right in 1880. Steele
once observed: “What Genius does is inspire the soul with power to persevere in the work that is
needed. Ninety percent of what men call genius is talent for hard work.”
Mayapples had opened their lush umbrellas to hide any treasured morel mushrooms
(although Brenda did find one). The trail
followed a slope down through the woods
to the wide, shallow Mill Creek, rushing
across a limestone bed. Random small waterfalls audibly gushed over stone ledges.
We took off our shoes and waded across,
up to our ankles in the cold, clear water.
Climbing up the steep hill on the far side
of the creek, we eventually came to a small
clearing.
The homesite is on a wooded hill overlooking the creek. A depression littered
with brick remnants, the site shows no
evidence of a foundation footprint. About
two hundred yards through the woods is
the Steele/Fain Cemetery where Hester
Ann Steele (Theodore’s younger sister,
who died before her second birthday) is
buried. The area has been logged, perhaps
more than once, and older trees can only
be found farther south on the hillside. Although the Beamans thought the original
access to the home was through bottomlands and across Mill Creek (from an old
main road through the county west of the
property), there is evidence of a winding
road up over the hill behind the site in the
direction of the newer State Road 231 to
the east.
Seeing the site and envisioning life in
the mid-1800s stirred feelings both nostalgic and awestruck. I thought of carrying
full water buckets up the hill, hunting for
game and raising crops, slaughtering hogs,
cooking over the fire or on cookstoves,
caring for livestock, and enduring seasonal
extremes. My envy of the simplicity of
pioneer life diminished when thinking of
the hard realities of their existence.
In January 1850 Samuel sold his
farm for $600. After laying Hester Ann’s
body to rest in 1852, Samuel and Harriet moved with their two sons about fifty
miles north to Waveland, in Montgomery
County, Indiana. Waveland was a thriving
town at the time, established in 1830 for
its natural springs, where travelers stopped
to water their horses between Lafayette
and Terre Haute. The prosperous village
boasted three general stores, two wagon
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shops, a blacksmith shop, two inns, and
three churches. Samuel rented space for his
saddle shop in the center of town next to
his brother-in-law’s store on the northeast
corner of Cross and Howard Streets.
Samuel may have relocated his saddlemaking shop to this busy travel route in
order to increase business or, as descendants indicate, to be closer to the Waveland Academy, a superior school for his
children. The academy had been incorporated in 1849 by the Presbyterian Church
to give “better intellectual and religious
training to the pious youth for the gospel
ministry,” and to prepare students for college.
Theodore was almost five years old
when his family left Gosport. As an adult
he wrote that he only remembered “the
little log house in an orchard where it seems
to me it was always morning and the sun
was always shining, the spring, and my
grandfather’s brick house a mile away.”
When interviewed late in life by his grandson, Brandt, Theodore also recalled being
transfixed by the colors of the sunset while
sitting on the porch of their Gosport cabin.
Samuel’s relocation influenced other
relatives to move to the Waveland area,
and within a few years his parents and
uncle, as well as Harriet’s parents and four
of her siblings and their own families, had
joined Samuel and Harriet’s new community. Surrounded by extended family
and friends, the Steeles prospered. Samuel
rented a modest white house at 110 South
Cross Street on the edge of town and
farmed a small plot of fertile ground
nearby. Harriet’s mother died in 1854,
but her father continued farming the land
across the street and to the east of them.
Harriet and Samuel were blessed with
three more sons: William Jesse, Altice
Howe, and Samuel Ninian. They also had
two more baby girls: Ida Bell who, like
her older sister, died before her second
birthday, and Mary Hattie, who did not
live beyond infancy. The five boys slept
in an attic room with a peaked ceiling
and windows on both the east and west
ends. Almost as soon as they could walk,
all the boys helped with the farming
chores. Shortly after the family moved to
Waveland, an uncle gave Theodore a small
Afternoon at the Ford or The Muscatatuck painting by Steele presented at the Society of
Western Artists’ third annual exhibition. A critic wrote that Steele presented a “virility in his
work that is of the soil.”
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paint set. Creveling believes that Theodore
noticed color and light effects even earlier,
but the gift triggered the boy’s interest in
drawing and painting, and he spent much
time absorbed in teaching himself the
basics.
Theodore received his first formal
instruction in art when he enrolled in the
academy at age twelve in 1859. According
to Mabel Sturtevant’s biographical article
in the Hoosier Magazine, Steele’s first art
teacher at the academy was a Mrs. Bennett. His classes included Object Lessons
on Forms and Colors, and Drawing on
Slates, among other more traditional
studies. According to an application document for the National Register of Historic
Places, Theodore’s “unique talent was
immediately recognized and in the following term he was himself teaching other
students.”
Samuel died at age thirty-eight on
August 16, 1861. A second cousin, Mrs.
Cunningham, wrote that he died at her
Grandfather [Ninian] Steele’s in Bainbridge, about fifteen miles southeast of
Waveland. “Cousin Harriet became ill
while on a visit in Bainbridge and her
husband came to take care of her. He,
himself, sickened and died there,” said
Cunningham.
Harriet’s youngest child, Samuel, was
only one month old when she became a
widow with five sons. Theodore, at almost
fourteen years old, became the “man of
the house,” taking over much of the farm
work. Creveling repeated a family story
that Theodore “would have to go and
plow, and one of the things he would do
is tie colored ribbons to the handles of the
plow so that he could watch the ribbons in
the wind and the effect that they had on
the [surrounding] colors.”
The little white house at 110 South
Cross Street, where Steele spent his formative years, still exists. I got in touch with
the Western Regional Manager, Tommy
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Kleckner, who oversees the property for
Indiana Landmarks, the current owners.
Accompanied by friend and historian, Bill
Weaver, we drove to Waveland in midMay 2010.
The town is now typical of small Indiana villages, where thriving heydays have
faded. About half of the downtown area
has been demolished, with only a few of
the original buildings in existence. Weaver
and I visited the local public library, where
the director proudly showed us a Steele
landscape, donated by the artist many
years after his departure from Waveland.
We snooped around the exterior of
Steele’s boyhood home while waiting
for Kleckner. The house has a new roof
An addition to the back of the house expands the space by another twelve feet by
thirty feet, and the cookstove flue appears
to be the only chimney. We climbed steep
wooden steps to the attic room where the
five boys likely slept. Conforming to the
pitched roof, the center slopes toward the
floor on either side of the peak. A tenfoot-wide board floor supports a small
built-in storage cabinet to one side. The
front arched window (probably added in
and stabilized foundation. Facing Cross
the early 1900s) overlooks the street and
Street on the east side, the location was
farmhouse beyond, and a second large
conveniently adjacent to the academy to
window in the rear also provides natural
the west. No buildings associated with
light. I imagined cots in the attic and
the academy exist. No traffic passed. The
most animated life nearby was a confused nights of snoring brothers. I thought of
Theodore waking at daylight and creeprooster, repeatedly crowing.
ing down the stairs to attend to chores in
Kleckner arrived and graciously
showed us the interior. There are wall studs the frosty mornings. I recalled stories of
Theodore learning to play the flute on the
where the original rooms may have been.
front porch, and painting his first portraits
The space felt surprisingly large (about
of friends and family.
thirty feet by thirty feet), perhaps due to
Although life was hard for the fatherthe ten-foot or eleven-foot-high ceilings.
Above and Inset: Views of Steele’s studio on the top floor of the University Library at
Indiana University in Bloomington, where he painted during the last few years of his life.
Right: A contemporary photograph by the author of Steele’s IU studio.
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Clockwise from Bottom, Left: Scenes from Steele’s life: the Waveland Church and Community Building, Franklin Hall at IU, Mill Creek near the
Steele homestead in Gosport, Steele’s Waveland home, and the Vernon home.
less family, Harriet’s father and sisters
remained nearby to help. By 1862 the
Waveland Church and Community Building was erected (and still exists), where
town gatherings and picnics took place,
and academy teachers organized activities
for students and their parents. Steele later
remembered “with pleasure and thankfulness . . . this little town, a village of five or
six hundred inhabitants, where my childhood and youth were spent.”
Steele married fellow academy student
Mary Elizabeth (Libbie) Lakin and began
his challenging career as an artist. They
eventually moved to Indianapolis, where
Steele established a studio to paint commissioned portraits. The Steeles had three
children before leaving, in 1880, for their
five-year residency in Germany so Steele
could study at Munich’s Royal Academy.
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After returning to Indianapolis, Steele
became increasingly drawn to landscape
painting. In the late 1880s he discovered
the beauty of the Muscatatuck River near
Vernon, Indiana, and frequently spent
time painting there.
Finding the place where Steele stayed
near Vernon involved a more circuitous
route than the previous two investigations.
Indiana art collector Randy Tucker had
mentioned a woman, Helen Ochs, whose
relatives had owned the Vernon house
where Steele rented a room. In August
2010 Tucker took me to visit Ochs at
the Four Seasons assisted living facility in
Columbus, Indiana.
Ochs, at that time ninety-eight years
old, was perched on a bench in the lobby
dressed in a dark blue suit with a white
blouse. A colorful bird brooch was pinned
onto her jacket. Using a walker, but
completely ambulatory, she led us down
a long hallway to a sitting room, “where
we wouldn’t be disturbed.” Ochs was the
granddaughter-in-law of “Grandmother
McIlroy,” the previous owner of the
Vernon farmhouse. Still giving lectures
about her passion, Indiana birds, at the
time Ochs wrote a column for the North
Vernon Sun and was writing a novel.
The hour-long conversation meandered
from politics to grandchildren, to family
lore about Steele, and paintings that got
away. “Grandmother McIlroy actually
babied [Steele],” Ochs declared. From her
husband’s grandmother she learned that,
“She kept his meals warm if he was late
and he often painted as long as the light
was good. She took pitchers of water up
to his room to fill a big bowl that was
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his bathtub. She just did everything for
him. . . . Grandmother McIlroy never
disturbed [Steele’s] room. His paintbrushes
were there. He came about eight different
years.”
Ochs described the Vernon house as
“down a country road and across the railroad track [the Madison and Indianapolis
Railroad]. . . . My mother-in-law [Jesse
Dunlap], when she was eighteen years old,
[lived in] Grandmother McIlroy’s house.
To the side of the house was a farm field.
T. C. Steele painted a picture of [Jesse]
holding a dinner horn when she called the
men in from the field.” Ochs put us in
touch with Katie Nelson, a historian and
former columnist for the North Vernon
Plain Dealer and Sun, who gave us directions to the house. Accompanied again
by Weaver, we drove on a gorgeous early
October 2010 morning to Old Vernon.
The drought had scorched the corn and
bean fields, but an occasional brilliant red
maple or oak tree with leaves of yellow
ochre, accented the landscape.
The correct road was found through
serendipity, since I had initially understood 80 East to be on the Vernon side
of the Muscatatuck River. We’d already
crossed the bridge with a big eighteenwheeler barreling close behind. Thinking
I needed to turn around, I took the first
left off State Road 7, and it miraculously
became 80 East. Finding the railroad
crossing, we parked along the narrow road,
upsetting the neighbor’s numerous dogs.
We could see the house from the road, at
the end of a curving driveway. On its left
a large meadow sloped down into the river
valley. A ramshackle wood fence defined
the driveway and tall forest trees and brush
bordered the field as well as the railroad
tracks.
Walking east along the tracks, we got
a better view of the two-story brick house.
Located on a gentle hill between the tracks
(south) and the river valley (north), the
house appeared to have been tastefully
renovated, with an addition on the east
side. An original one-story wing on the
south side and the main entrance (with
columns) on the west side fit with Ochs’s
descriptions. The second floor appeared to
have three windows facing west, all with
white frames and dark green shutters.
Perhaps due to knowledge of its history, the ambiance of the old farm was
one of peace and tranquility. Although the
river is no longer visible from the house,
due to overgrowth, one can easily imagine
that a second-story room would have had
a view of the Muscatatuck, as well as the
tillable fields to the west. Not knowing the
names of the current residents, I noted the
mailbox number and wrote a note to that
address in the late fall. Aware that it was
a long shot, I explained how we’d found
their house, the reason for my interest, and
asked that they get in touch. After a few
months I forgot about it.
Then, in late February 2011, I received
an e-mail from the current resident of
the Vernon house, Jaime Greathouse. She
explained that she was renting the place
from her mother, Phoebe Greathouse
Greemann, and we arranged for my visit
to view the interior on March 6. I arrived
on a gray, damp, and cold afternoon and
waded through half a dozen well-fed cats
on the porch. Longhaired gray and white
tigers and a few black shorthairs lounged
on various blankets and pillows.
An elderly woman came out the door
as I arrived (one of the great-grandmothers) and I was ushered into a comfortable
brick kitchen addition, complete with a
long table, hanging pots and pans, and
Portrait of Shirley
Steele by Steele, circa
1884. In 1887 an Indianapolis newspaper
described the artist as
“of striking appearance . . . above the
average height, with
prominent features,
high and broad head,
finely though modestly poised above broad
sloping shoulders,
full dark-gray, kindly
eyes, large shapely
hands, and the easy
quiet manners of a
man who has seen the
world but lived more
within himself.”
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a number of people conversing, washing
dishes, or putting away food. They had
been celebrating a child’s birthday, and
festive construction paper letters spelled
out “Happy Birthday” on the kitchen wall.
Colorful napkins, discarded party hats,
and remnants of a sugary banquet littered
the table.
Jaime cleared off a space and offered
me a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie and
coffee. How could I refuse? I was introduced to her mother, Phoebe Greemann,
and her husband, Tom, who had just
returned from Key West, where they live
on their boat. Also in the kitchen were
Phoebe’s younger sister; a three-year-old
boy, Sam; and Jaime’s husband. An older
brother, Whit (for James Whitcomb Riley), the birthday boy, had just turned five.
He played with a new John Deere tractor
toy in the living room with his father’s
mother. The tractor periodically zoomed
into the kitchen.
Phoebe explained that she had originally purchased the “Ochs house” when
a young married woman. She had raised
Jaime and her brother (now deceased)
in the house, and still owns the place as
well as more than thirty acres surrounding it. The story of Steele renting an
upstairs room had been passed along with
the deed. Phoebe thinks the house, with
seven original fireplaces, was built around
1830. Some of the earliest wood flooring
is intact, but the interior of the house had
undergone many changes, including use as
a boardinghouse.
Sam generously showed me the
second-floor bedrooms, where he and
his sibling reside. The attic rooms had a
ceiling tapering down from the eight-foot
peak. The bedroom on the side nearer
the river had been hit by a tornado in the
1920s, so the roofline had been changed
to a steeper angle. Original small windows
looking east and west still survived. Any
lingering ambiance of previous tenants had
been erased by the childrens’ clutter and
presence.
After looking at the attic bedrooms,
Phoebe, Sam, Whit, and several cats took
me for a muddy walk to see the remnants
of an old mill, the stone springhouse, and
the swollen Muscatatuck River behind
the house. The cats scampered all around
us, running up and down tree trunks and
hiding among the weeds. According to
Tom, a mortarless stone wall across the
river matches one of Steele’s paintings, On
the Muscatatuck, which now hangs above
the piano in the Indianapolis Columbia
Club. In 1895 Steele wrote to Libbie, “I
wonder if the crimson oaks will ever look
so fine, burn with such inward fire, and
toned with such an envelope of ashen gray
as those we used to see at Vernon. Somehow the things at Vernon seem to be the
standard by which things are judged.”
Having grown up in Bloomington and
worked at the Steele State Historic Site,
it always seemed odd that my familiarity
with Steele’s campus studio at IU was limited to historical photographs. On June 9,
1922, IU president William Lowe Bryan
had written to Steele, “I write on behalf
of the Trustees of the University to invite
you to be in residence at Indiana University next year. Your service would be what
Above: A postcard of a Steele painting of Dunn Meadow on the IU campus. Right: The old
library, today Franklin Hall, at IU. Opposite: A 1916 Steele portrait of the Hoosier Poet, James
Whitcomb Riley.
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you choose to make it. We should by no
means wish to interfere in the least with
your continuing your work as a creative
artist. You would have no prescribed duties. We would want you to do whatever
you think most profitable for your art. . . .
The University proposes an honorarium of
twenty-five hundred dollars for the year.”
According to Sturdevant’s Hoosier Magazine article, Steele accepted his appointment to the faculty with a certain degree
of diffidence and reluctance. Although his
duties were to be what he chose to make
them, the proposal was to bring a greater
appreciation and understanding of art
technique and composition to the student
body. “[Steele] saw it as his task to create
an atmosphere that would bring to them
the true realization of what art is,” noted
Sturdevant.
Steele agreed to keep a studio on the
top floor of the University Library (today
Franklin Hall). As always, Selma, whom
Steele had married after Libbie’s death,
wholeheartedly devoted herself to furnishing and decorating the space, calling it
“an artistic room, [which] might become
a forerunner to greater expressiveness of
beauty on campus.” She purchased old
furniture and Turkish rugs, scouring the
used furniture stores with her usual flair
for recognizing quality, bringing in a few
shawls from her significant paisley collection as well as plants for the south window
sills.
Steele’s portraits, still lifes, and landscapes on the massive walls combined
with comfortable furniture groupings to
make the cavernous gallery/studio inviting. A few campus clubs decided to meet
in the restful space, and Selma hosted a
series of Sunday afternoon teas for faculty
members there. Bryan wrote on April 26,
1924, “I believe that we need beauty as
much as we need truth. I believe that the
University needs artists as much as it needs
scholars. . . . I rejoice in the presence of
Theodore Steele and his pictures.” In an
effort to encourage students to share the
president’s appreciation for Steele and his
work, a series of articles were written for
the Indiana Daily Student by F. C. Senour,
a professor of English. Later these articles
were compiled into a booklet titled Art for
Your Sake. “I want you to go to the studio
that you may see Mr. Steele, and catch
his joy—a quiet unobtrusive joy it is—in
the artist life,” wrote Senour. “I wish I
could tell you about his life and what it
has meant to be faithful to seeing things
steadily and seeing
them whole. His
art is his life, and
he, as you meet and
talk to him, is the
best commentary
upon his pictures.
He puts into his
pictures not only
what he sees but
what he believes in.
His pictures are all
interpretations of
quiet beauty. If the
world we each live
in were the world
he paints we would
have more joy and
peace and rightness.”
Students who
climbed the stairs to
the top floor of the
library sometimes
found the artist in
A Steele painting of trees and buildings on the IU campus. Lena M. McCauley, a Chicago art critic, noted that Steele’s
mission while at IU was “to lead students ‘to see the Beautiful in nature and in life.’”
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Future IU president Herman B Wells looks on
as Steele paints on the university campus, circa 1923.
I met her in the
Service Representative’s area on a
promising sunny
spring afternoon in
early March 2011.
A friendly, middleaged woman with
short curly hair
and a direct gaze,
she took me to the
business manager
who handed her the
key to 299A “Mechanical Room” on
the second floor.
There we entered
a small work area
with a ten-foot
tall concrete wall
the mood to share observations, and other blocking the west side. Goddard gamely
times they only watched as he concentrat- began climbing the metal rungs of a ladder
attached to the wall. When she got to the
ed on his painting. In his mid-seventies,
Steele sometimes sat in a chair while paint- top, she reached down to take my camera
ing, a departure from his lifelong habit of and notebook so I could use both hands to
standing at the easel. He often chewed on climb the ladder.
A large space with desks, filing cabia cigar in the corner of his mouth.
nets, and office furniture was dimly lit by
When weather permitted, Steele
several high windows on the west side. We
painted outside on campus. Sturdevant
walked through this room and entered a
wrote that, “whenever he was painting
out-of-doors he was surrounded by groups door in a temporary looking bead-board
wall to another large room. With windows
of students improving their chance to see
an artist engaged in creative work. . . . He on three sides, natural light flooded the
[taught] through a combination of skill as room, although none from an artist’s ideal
an artist and his sympathetic understand- north side. On the west and east walls,
five feet of wainscoting warmed up the
ing of human nature.”
yawning space, and sloping beams partially
After several abortive attempts to find
blocked light from four small high winsomeone at the university to take me to
dows. The south side featured eight winSteele’s former studio space, Ed Maxedon
dows with gracefully arched inner frames,
of the IU Art Museum put me in touch
two smaller ones on each side flanking
with Brad Cook of the IU Archives, who
four large windows. The room’s vaulted
gave me the name of Donna Goddard in
ceiling, the underside of the impressive
Franklin Hall’s Office of the Registrar,
building’s peaked roof, reached at least
who agreed to show me the space.
thirty feet at the center. A wooden catwalk
crossed the length of the room just under
the center peak. To the south I could see
the west campus gates (Sample Gates),
Indiana Avenue, and the administration
building from the windows.
Goddard, sensitive to my purpose,
offered to leave me alone in the space, but
I declined. Originally from near Oolitic,
and having worked at IU for more than
twenty-five years, she was interested in the
history of the space. We both wondered
where the staircase would have been in
Steele’s day. I told her about a 1925 letter
I had discovered from the university about
an addition to the library, including plans
for a new studio space for the artist. Steele
died on July 24, 1926, before the new
construction was completed.
I had not realized until compiling these
notes that almost all of these discovered
places were top-floor rooms in attics and
garrets. Surely it’s a coincidence that these
quarters are consistent with the archetypal
imagery of the “starving artist in the garret.”
Each destination enabled me to stand
in and feel the space and peek out the windows at views (albeit altered by time) that
Steele saw. These experiences helped me to
understand and re-create snippets of the
life and work of Indiana’s best-known artist. Thanks to those who so kindly helped
me along the way.
Rachel Berenson Perry is the former fine
arts curator at the Indiana State Museum. In
addition to organizing art exhibitions at the
ISM, she is the author of numerous articles
for such publications as the American Art
Review, Traces of Indiana and Midwestern
History, Outdoor Indiana, and Southwest
Art Magazine. Her book Paint and Canvas:
A Life of T. C. Steele, will be published by
the IHS Press in December 2011. •
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