Her Place in Time.
A trailblazing painter came of artistic age at the turn of a century, 125 years ago in Central Indiana. In the 1900s, the 1910s and into the Roaring Twenties and beyond, Dorothy Morlan tirelessly pursued a unique and evolving inspiration and nurtured a personal artistic vision that set her apart and ahead of even the most talented artists in Indiana during those times. Her paintings were expressionist, by both design and color, simultaneous with the formation of that 'official' artistic movement half the world away in Berlin and Paris.
To place Dorothy Morlan in time, arguably the world's most famous and first modernist, Pablo Picasso, was almost an exact contemporary. He was born in 1881 and she in 1882. Two American mavericks that also shared the year, plus or minus, of Morlan's birth are Arthur Dove and Rockwell Kent. The works of all these rogue and wandering personalities were expressive distillates of experimentation, innovation and ambition. Their artworks were evocations of their individual psychologies made accessible and more generally relatable by some strange alchemic process of refined sensorial emphasis. In Morlan's specific case, the visual simplification and enhanced colorization of something experiential and personal and overwhelming.
These contemporaries were born at the tail end of the Civil War in America, and in the Europe, the Franco-Prussian War. Children of battle scarred parents, coming of age just before the Lost Generation would coalesce. They shared a momentous world unfolding with shocking events. Buffeted by a series of cultural eruptions that affected society at large, yet burnished in an individual way by their own localized milieus of routine and adventure, culture and life.
Even if a world or a continent apart, these artists shared a hectic and harrowing timeline, with careers beginning with the dawn of the 20th Century and its mechanized metamorphosis. Careers that would grow and be molded amid a sustained barrage of cataclysmic events, political chaos and revolutionary change. The death of empires, the globe's maps redrawn. In American, women's suffrage and an experiment in Prohibition. Then a planetary stock market crash, the birth of a cascading totalitarianism and great wars, over and over again.
In the case of Picasso and Morlan, they both had painter fathers who introduced them to a creative world at an early age and were prodigies as a result. They each were equipped to perceive their times with a trained talent from the get-go. Quickly eclipsing their fathers and moving beyond their elders, and would push the limits of local traditions and forge a path forward and modern, into an age when tradition and boundary would cease to be. Picasso, the modernist in Europe, in Paris, the world's art capital, was among many fellow travelers. Dorothy Morlan, arguable the first modernist in Indianapolis, seemingly by herself.
Dorothy Morlan's Midwest and America was dominated by men. The Hoosier Group of painters, all men, reigned supreme in Indiana at the time. Their works were impressionist and naturalist and inspired by the European art of the mid to late 1800s, the 'in vogue' art of their youthful training. Dorothy Morlan's early study at her father's side, and then more formally, by two of these same Hoosier Group of men, seemed to combine the tried and true impressionist approach to the natural landscape as a foundation for her open and searching soul.
Pioneering American women changed society as Morlan was to do with her art and her community. Simpatico, by all record, with the truly American notions of modernism, in the age of Henry Ford – new ways to see, new was to express, new ways to be.
Inception of her modernist inclination.
Born in Salem, Ohio in 1882, Dorothy Morlan's family moved to Indiana in 1894 and settled eventually into a home in the 6000 block of Lowell Avenue in Irvington.
In a biographical statement provided to Indianapolis Star art writer, Lucille Morehouse, in 1933, Miss Morlan indicates she aspired to paint pictures to follow in the footsteps of her father, an amateur artist, who had an art for art's sake love of outdoor painting. She also credits her mother's artistic sensibilities of color and design as instrumental in her development.
The artist's first landscape experiments were paintings on site of the fields of Irvington, among its beech trees and woodlands and aside Pleasant Run Creek.
Her love of landscape would remain her artistic obsession throughout her career. It was an adoration within her from the start. The first public inklings of this devotion can be observed in newsprint rather than paint. In a remarkable written piece on the front page of Section 2 of the Sunday Indianapolis Journal dated March 9, 1902, Dorothy Morlan expresses poetically about 'The Last Day of February.'
Her first published lines read,
“The morning has been dark. The sky lowering, with great cloud billows rolling onward like the waves of a restless sea.”
She continues to describe the transformation of the morning, as a microcosm of the turn from winter to spring,
“...the wind grew less angry and a clear patch of blue appeared in the sky bound by folds of the purest white. In less than an hour the mighty wind was converted into a gentle south breeze and the clouds had all vanished except a few, white and rosy-tinted, which sailed like peaceful barks through a sky as clear and calm as a summer sea.”
For her readers, the minds' eyes are drawn from sky to earth, as Dorothy Morlan continues her painterly words,
“The meadows are rich with tones of brown. There stretches away in dim perspective a soft gray
line of woods, which gradually becomes more faint until it almost merges into the horizon. Nearer, in a little grove, stand several rugged beeches, like sentinels, clad in last year's foliage.”
At twenty years old, Dorothy Morlan was already a sensitive seer. And a published one at that!
An art career was encouraged by both parents and she would ultimately receive training at John Herron Art School, c. 1906, instructed, most notably, by two Hoosier Group artists, as noted prior.
Several autumns around this time were spent in Brookville, Indiana, known for its scenic river views, painting in vicinity of J. Ottis Adams and his Hermitage retreat. Her crucial Herron painting teacher was William Forsyth, also her Irvington neighbor.
Morlan would credit both Adams and Forsyth for the vital instruction and criticism they provided during her formative years.
She would further her art education with later instruction at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art at Philadelphia, and under famed artist Robert Henri in New York City.
Active Progression – Dorothy Morlan in the 1900s.
It is said that Vincent van Gogh sold but one painting during his life. His 'Red Vineyard,' in a Brussels Belgium exhibit in 1890, toward the end of his life, was sold to artist/collector Anna Boch. It was the only documented sale of his work while he lived.
The Dorothy Morlan paper trail of sales and notoriety begins at the beginning of her career. In an early mention of her as an artist, just out of school, J. W. Fox (the Herron Institute of Art Director) in the The Indianapolis News reports in his June 9, 1906 article on 'Three Important Art Exhibits of Summer.' He writes that Dorothy Morlan, among others, sold a landscape painting in the annual Herron exhibit. He went on to describe the the overall success of the school that year and the upcoming expansion into a new Herron classroom building for the fall. The name or the price of Morlan's artwork was not reported.
In an October, 15, 1906 society column in The Indianapolis News, it is noted that Dorothy Morlan will be spending several weeks in October and November in Brookville, Indiana, sketching and painting its environs. The same column, the following spring, advised on April 26, 1907, that Morlan would be spending two weeks in Plainfield, Indiana, sketching along White Lick Creek.
Opening June 11, 1907 in Richmond, Indiana, was an annual exhibit sponsored by the Richmond Art Association. Dorothy Morlan was one of many artists to participate and compete for prizes with her painting Bit of Whitewater Valley possibly painted the prior fall in Brookville.
The first art criticism of Dorothy Morlan's work is by, again, W. H. Fox in The Indianapolis News. On June 6, 1907, he comments on her landscape work exhibited at the most recent Herron exhibit, and also at shows in Vincennes, Indiana and Richmond. Presumable he is speaking of Bit of Whitewater Valley and another unnamed work when he says her paintings are “strongly individual compositions to which an excellent color sense is manifest.”
An anonymous art review in the June 21, 1907 edition of The Vincennes Commercial notes two Dorothy Morlan submissions, October and Summer in a first ever annual exhibit in that town. Saying October is “...a painting that is felt and well drawn. The sky is a little cold and should be more sympathetic, but it has a lot of good atmosphere.”
The annual Indiana Artists exhibit was held at Herron, in the new classroom building, and Dorothy Morlan had a painting included called The Willows according to a December 1907 Indianapolis Star article.
In a January 25, 1908, Indianapolis News anonymous article on the society page, Morlan's continuing success as an artist is reported in detail. 'Irvington Woman Wins Honor as an Artist' reports that Dorothy Morlan's aforementioned canvas The Willows had been accepted for inclusion in the 103rd Annual Exhibit of American Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, at Philadelphia. The painting is described in detail by the unnamed writer. “It is marked by its composition and breadth of treatment. It was painted directly, and shows the spontaneity and charm of work thus produced. No doubt the style brought it favor in the eyes of the Philadelphia jury, as much of the work of leading artists in the East is being done in this manner.”
The writer goes on the explain Morlan's apparent method of finishing a work on site, and in one go, with no successive finishing sessions or retouching of the work.
“The result is strength and vigor such as is striven for by the impressionist, yet obtained by an entirely different method.”
According to the writer, Morlan's work is exclusively landscapes in oil, unusual for a woman at the time.
In a February 8, 1908 review of the 12th Annual Society of Western Artists exhibit, in The Indianapolis News, W. H Fox once again writes about Dorothy Morlan, “...Sunny Morning in November deepens the impression made by her admirable Willows...”
Fox adds about her technique, “...with a good color sense, original in composition, strong and free in her brush work, there is more than promise in this young artist.”
Fox continues his words of admiration for Morlan, in a spirit of pride and boosterism befitting the director of the local art institute. He notes her rapid rise and heralds her 'arrival' on the local scene.
In what may have been a traveling exhibit of works by the Society of Western Artists members, Morlan showed her landscape painting A By Way – Brookville at the Brazil, Indiana High School Building in mid-February, 1908. Other artists included Hoosier Group artists T. C. Steele, Otto Stark, J.O. Adams, R. B. Gruelle and fellow female Emma King to name a few.
Around this same time, the same Miss Emma King, artist, held a tea in her studio in downtown Indianapolis on East Market Street in honor of Dorothy Morlan. In the studio, bedecked with the paintings by Morlan and decorated with vases of daffodils, many guests, including Mrs. Ottis Adams, were in attendance.
A hyperactive and exuberant Indianapolis art scene can be imagined as reported in a March 1, 1908 Indianapolis Star article 'Society of Fakers Stirs Art Circles.' The column chronicles the burlesque exhibition of mad cap art students calling themselves The Western Society of Fakers. In the show, Herron students mocked, pilloried and/or trolled their artistic elders by creating a wild variety of slapdash, slapstick visual artwork jokes. Just to name a few outlandish examples from the very detailed article that mentions an exhaustive list, young Simon P. Baus, (and later Irvington Group member) created Winter Morning by J. Otiss Adams, 'a bunch of cotton pasted on a landscape.' Cobb Shinn created Sunny Brook by William Forsyth, showing a muddy pool with frogs and snakes.
The fact of Morlan's 'arrival' as announced previously by W. H Fox is further confirmed by the fact that her painting style was already a known commodity, like her well-established Hoosier Group forebears, and subject to the fakery of Sunday Morning in November by student Robert Collins.
The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram reported on June 10, 1908 that Dorothy Morlan's painting Winter Wheat won an Honorable Mention prize in the 4th Annual Exhibit of the Richmond Art Association.
In the July 4, 1908, edition of The Indianapolis News, Dorothy Morlan is discussed at length in an article with the lengthy headline 'Group of Young Artists Has Sprung Up Recently Whose Work Succeeds Along Individual Lines.' The column by Ruth Braden, reports that Morlan is one of few women who paint the landscape in oil, seconding an earlier observation about Morlan by a different writer.
Braden writes that the wide out-of-doors is Morlan's preferred studio, year round, and that Morlan has had particular success in capturing winter moods on her canvases.
About painting the natural scene close to home, Braden quotes Morlan, “The sky is always here – and always changing.”
In February 1909, an exhibit of paintings by Indiana artists was shown in the Columbus, Indiana Public Library. Dorothy Morlan submitted four works; 1. Spring, 2. Summer Sky, 3. The Hill and the Cloud, 4. A Summer Landscape. Her prices ranged from $35 to $50 and placed her asking price at about one-quarter to one-third of the going rate for works by the Hoosier Group artists also showing.
Traveling exhibits of Morlan's work was reported in newspapers in Evansville, Lafayette and Muncie in the spring of 1909.
Dorothy Morlan's first one-person show was anonymously announced and detailed in The Indianapolis News on November 9, 1909. The exhibit as described in the column “Work of Dorothy Morlan” included twenty-two paintings, created over the prior two years, and was being shown at the art gallery of B. H. Herman and Co. on North Pennsylvania Street in Indianapolis.
Two paintings, Autumn Willows (aka The Willows) and The Ohio River in December had been recently exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, at Philadelphia. Four scenes of the Irvington area were captured in The Melting Snow, The Edge of the Village, The Winter Field and The Hill Road.
There was also a north-looking sketch of the canal at Thirteenth Street, in Indianapolis.
Two paintings created near Hanover, Indiana, were The Valley and Across the Valley.
Further paintings included were of Kentucky hills as seen from the Indiana shore of the Ohio River, winter fields, sky studies, and a not-to-be-missed canvas, A Hazy Afternoon in June.
The same show is reviewed in The Indianapolis Star by Roderick S. Munford in the Art and Artists column on November 18, 1909. He says of Morlan's work, generally, “...there is scarcely a picture of them all that is not done in a different manner that that of its fellows.” The overall impression from studying her paintings “...all represent an intimate communion with nature.”
About the several Irvington scenes and mainly the more numerous studies of Southern Indiana along the Ohio River “with much sky and water in evidence”, Munford says, “Originality is a characteristic in the artist's method of handling.”
The writer provides so much care and detail in his description of specific paintings in Morlan's show, that he will quoted at length as follows:
Melting Snow has been done with a sure hand, the patches of white over earth and the broken surface of a road being the chief points of interest in an interesting picture. The same bit of road appears again in The Hill Road. The latter is not as admirably balanced a piece of composition as the former, but it makes up by its charm of color, which is in harmony from the high sky line down to the foreground edge.
Indiana Fields and Sky Study are filled with air and sunlight and flying clouds and breathe throughout of the out-of-doors. These are only a few of Miss Morlan's pictures. Some are full of high color, some are lower in key; all are thoughtful and display the student as well as the artist.
And with that, the first decade of the 20th Century comes to a close.
The New York Armory Show is still several years away. The modern art of Europe has not yet landed on American shores, but for Dorothy Morlan and the most adventurous of her artistic generation, the modern art moment had arrived.
Mark Diekhoff, July 2025
Upcoming – Part Two – Dorothy Morlan; Jazz Age Gem and the Turbulent Years
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