Active Exhibition and Working Holidays.
Dorothy Morlan's active involvement in the contemporary art scene of Indianapolis and wider Indiana continues with the dawn of the new decade in the 1910s. She continued to exhibit regularly in annual exhibits, such as those of the Indiana Artists at John Herron Institute, the Western Society of Artists, and established yearly shows in Richmond and other Indiana cities. She also continued her working art holidays at Brookville, Indiana and other locations to seek an ever expanding landscape of study for her painting.
In the waning days of winter 1910, as reported in The Indianapolis News, February 26, the 14th Annual Society of Western Artists exhibit would open at Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis. The show included work by Dorothy Morlan and had already traveled through St. Louis and Chicago, receiving good reviews in the newspapers of those cities.
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette remarks in the March 20, 1910 edition on a traveling exhibit of Indiana artists just ending at the public library that included Hoosier Group artists and Dorothy Morlan, among others.
The Indianapolis News society page, on April 30, notes that Dorothy Morlan will spending the summer in or near Brookville sketching and painting.
The Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram on May 18, 1910, announced in its society column that J. Ottis Adams, at his Brookville home 'The Hermitage,' would be conducting classes in landscape painting over the summer. He was assisted in instruction by Dorothy Morlan, an artist already familiar to many in the Richmond art community. Ottis explained the allure of the picturesque Brookville area, saying,
“Located on a narrow ridge between the two branches of the Whitewater (River), with quaint old buildings and stone terraces rising from the waters of an old canal, it presents, from many points of view, quite a foreign aspect, furnishing much charming material for the art student; while the streams, rocky ravines, roads and old bridges, in conjunction with splendid groupings of trees, with hills far and near for background, afford unlimited motifs in the immediate neighborhood...from simple door yards and old-fashioned flower gardens to far reaching-views of distant hills or wide stretches of plain such as from the artist's standpoint are unexcelled in the middle west and would be difficult to surpass anywhere.”
A September 23, 1910 front page column in the (Richmond, Indiana) Evening Item newspaper advises that the annual exhibit by the Richmond Art Association will be delayed indefinitely due the fact that the electricity has not yet been installed in the show's location, the new high school building. The lights and other materials having been shipped were en-route, but their later installation would delay, at best, or at worst, postpone the exhibit to contain works by J. Ottis Adams, Dorothy Morlan and many others.
The show did go on, once the lights were installed, and eventually opened and was reviewed by an anonymous writer in the same Richmond newspaper on October 24. The writer raves on the newly furnished galleries, perfect for viewing art with gray carpet background walls, natural sky lighting and work that was hanging at a comfortable eye-level.
The show contained only strong works, the writer opined, including the “remarkable excellence” of a Dorothy Morlan canvas, The Ohio in June.
An exhibit which was shown in the Marion, Indiana Carnegie Library was covered by their Chronicle paper, February 3, 1911. J. L. Messena writes that Dorothy Morlan's picture, A Bit of Canal, “is an interesting bit of work for the freedom and individuality of treatment.”
As can be gathered by her newspaper write-ups, works by Morlan continued to intrigue and surprise with their skillful and spontaneous execution, effective moody coloration, and simplified compositions and designs – all characteristics distinguishing her from her seniors and fellows at the time in Indiana. These characteristics, to varying extents, were shared by the so-called burgeoning schools of 'expressionist' artists, among the first 'modernists,' around the world.
The 5th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron Institute was reviewed in a long article in the Art & Artists column on the Sunday Indianapolis Star on April 14, 1912. The column was anonymous, but well written and thorough. The time frame was about a year before the appearance of Lucille E. Morehouse as the by-line critic in the Art & Artists column.
The article contained illustrations of three stand-out works, one each by by J.E. Bundy, William Forsyth and Dorothy Morlan. Morlan's was the “...bold, well-executed winter picture, Old Mills – West Philadelphia.”
Although the newspapers at the time were silent on the matter, perhaps the additional instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, at Philadelphia, that Morlan cites in later years occurred around this time and resulted in the Old Mills painting.
As promised, a year later, Lucille E. Morehouse is on the art beat, and pens her first thoughtful words on Dorothy Morlan in the March 9, 1913, Indianapolis Star.
Her study of Morlan's pictures Approaching Storm and Winter compels the Star's new art writer to contrast the strange repulsive allure of Morlan's somber colored works of dark and chilling subjects. Paintings that could be misperceived and dismissed as glumly uninteresting by average art eyes more keen for the bright colors of flowers or gardens. But Lucille Morehouse had patient eyes and an inquisitive mind, and she took her own sweet time in front of interesting artworks. Her long study of Morlan's work results in a poetic epiphany in the writer, as she is driven to quote Longfellow in the aftermath of her reflection on the pictures.
Oh, the long and dreary winter,
Oh, the cold and cruel winter –
As Morehouse writes, Longfellow's lines “seemed so to harmonize with the spirit of the picture. If you have never felt...with its big icy power, the oncoming winter storm, then Miss Morlan's picture will help you enter altogether into the spirit of it.”
Morehouse implores the reader again with her suggestion, “But you must take time to see all that is there for you, just as you would take time to read a wonderfully gripping story in the pages of a book – and perhaps to the lay the book down and cry a little...”
Clearly moved, Morehouse writes, “If you take a half hour to study it, to follow that wagon track across a snowy field toward the sheltering home far in the distance, to see the sky grow darker and darker until the whole earth seems to take on a sullen blackness, and then the big white flakes come cutting sharp lines through the gloom – oh, it is all a wonderful representation of nature's somber mood!”
An anonymous review of the same paintings in The Indianapolis News on March 15, says of Morlan's pictures, “...two large winter landscapes wrapped in deep melancholy, a style which this talented young artist affects just now.”
Modern Art in America, and Indiana.
The Armory Show in New York, officially called the International Exhibition of Modern Art, was just happening on the East Coast of the U.S.
America was awakening to the shock of not only cubist and futurist visions, but also the first expressions of more natural subjects not enlivened by the play of light and spontaneity like the impressionists, but endowed by emotion and enhanced by obsession. Among them, Morlan and other progressive artists of her generation, the emerging expressionists.
On June 29, 1913, Lucille Morehouse, in her Star column, detailed the summer goings-on of various Indianapolis art personalities, including Dorothy Morlan.
Miss Morlan, she writes, “...has opened a studio at her home 6030 Lowell Avenue, Irvington. The studio is built apart from the house and occupies a place under large beeches on the lawn. Miss Morlan will remain in Indianapolis during the summer, making studies for landscape work along the streams and in the fields and woodlands near Irvington.”
The following year, in February 1914, an exhibition and a tea for Dorothy Morlan was hosted by the Art Center Studio, on 142 East Market Street, Indianapolis. Perhaps the Studio was associated with or inspired by the artist Miss Emma King who had hosted a show and tea for Dorothy Morlan on Market Street a prior time.
An unnamed critical review of this show is carried in a column to the February 3, 1914 Indianapolis News. Morlan's unique meld of impression and expression, spontaneity of execution and deliberative design are noticed and haggled about by the writer, who says, perhaps too critically,
“Miss Morlan's well-known preference for the quieter moods of nature is here illustrated with two large canvases...Nocturne and...Winter Evening... They are feelingly done and colorful, but too thin as to paint....”
And,
“(in other works) Miss Morlan uses another style, that of palette knife persuasion in painting the sunshine effects...Her color is clean and interesting in harmony, yet we feel too strong a 'family resemblance' in color scheme with all the pictures, as though the artist painted with a preconceived idea rather than being open to the impressions of the day.”
The critic follows the 'yes, but' observations on a more solely positive note,
Miss Morlan's dash and vigor of expression engages the attention, and her impetuous handling proves her of artistic metal...”
The column sums up with biographical information about the artist. It reports that Morlan paints near her studio in Irvington, where “...she finds the simple motives that she loves best.” It also indicates the artist has painted on the Maine coast, noting the maritime example included in the show. Her Herron and local instruction has been supplemented by then at the Pennsylvania Academy under Daniel Garber, and in New York under Robert Henri.
Additional coverage of the show, along with a seated profile photo of Morlan at her drawing table appears in the February 8, 1914, Indianapolis Star. New information contained in the column indicates that the show consisted of oils, pastels and crayons. The crayons primarily depicted the vicinity of Hanover, Indiana along the Ohio River.
It is mentioned that Morlan's earliest creative interest was in writing, but was supplanted by her art ambitions due to the influence of her father Albert Morlan (1850-1926), who was an artist himself, and associated with William Forsyth and others of the Hoosier Group. Indeed an ink drawing by her father is now in the collection of Newfields, titled House at Corner of East Street and North Liberty, 1895.
In the July 5, 1914 edition of the Indianapolis Star, amid a page of news of terrible tragedies and injuries to children as a result of fires and fireworks, it is announced a group of local artists will be decorating the new Burdsal Units of City Hospital in Indianapolis under the supervision of William Forsyth. The women's ward area to be decorated by artists Dorothy Morlan and Lucy Taggart.
That fall in October, an exhibition of paintings by local artists opened at the (Indianapolis) Propelaeum. Morlan exhibited, as well as William Forsyth, Simon P. Baus, Waymon Adams, T.C. Steele, Emma King, Frederick Polley, Otto Stark and Clifton Wheeler.
On November 14, 1914, Morlan had a painting in the Society of Western Artists exhibit described by an anonymous writer in The Indianapolis News as a “...picture of Ohio River foothills, with the river far below the level of the eye....charming in its high keyed color scheme, the bare tree in the foreground and patches of snow give a beautiful interpretation of winter.”
By February 3, 2015, the decorations were complete in the children's ward of City Hospital, as reported on the society page of The Indianapolis Star. A tea in honor of the contributing artists was given, and it was noted that their efforts were largely offered free of any charge for the benefit of the city, as the limited budget for the project was taken up almost entirely with the purchase of artists materials.
With war in Europe, local artists would occupy more and more of their time in the following years with volunteer efforts, and by providing art works for auction to raise money, in service of the armed forces and the like.
The 8th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron was reported in the March 6, 1915 Indianapolis Star. Dorothy Morlan's contribution to the show was “an unusual picture,” Nocturne. The painting also described in the Indianapolis News the same day as “a composition of houses and an icy stream and a snow-covered landscape in moonlight, beautiful in quality and feeling.”
A year later, in an April 1916 Indianapolis News article reports that the 9th Annual of the same show, again at Herron, contained a Morlan picture , described as “of exceptionally good quality” and “a really distinguished work.” Winter – Coast of Maine is described more specifically as “beautiful in quaint gray green coloring and structural in composition, with hills and evergreen trees in the foreground and expanse of sea in the distance.”
On Women Artists – A Man's World and a Woman's Words
In a September 30, 1916 Art in Indiana column to The Indianapolis News, called 'Fifteenth Article. Women Artists.', William Forsyth provides a survey of practicing female artists in Indiana at the time, both professional and semi-pro. Artists include but are not limited to Susan Ketcham, Winifred Adams, Janet Scudder, Caroline Peddle Ball (a sculptor born in Terre Haute, who studied under Saint Gaudens, and was then living in New York) , Olive Rush, Lucy Taggart and Dorothy Morlan.
Forsyth describes Morlan as “a landscape painter of talent” and “one of our best known women painters.”
Forsyth concludes his article with somewhat pithy and Darwinian remarks about art generally, and not specific to women artists, when he states,
“Art is not an adventure undertaken by the few for the gratification of natural instincts, but a part of the complete expression of a people; not, as is mistakenly supposed, an exotic to be carefully pampered to preserve its life for a select few, but it speaks for its race in a language of its own. It is as sane a natural expression as literature or music. It desires no coddling, but its life is appreciation; without that it must inevitable die...only the strong persist, for they must feel and speak for all.”
Perhaps I'm reading into it with 20/20 hindsight, but Forsyth comes across as a bit of passive-aggressive, a bit side-eyed, a bit 'mansplaining,' as it's called today.
Forsyth beckons backward, perhaps unknowingly, to a classicism of worthy beauty, recognizable by all – man, woman and gods alike – rather the actual and unfolding individual visions that were then sweeping away all prior commandments on art. He understands the concept of expression as a vital component of art, its undisputed indispensability – he drops the word twice – but without recognizing the very real and modern 'expressionism' blossoming the world over, including by an Indiana women in his own backyard – namely, Dorothy Morlan, his student and Irvington neighbor.
Perhaps an age old wisdom explains Forsyth's nearsightedness in this regard. Quoting the New Testament, Matthew 13:57, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town...”
In the October 28, 1916, Indianapolis News, it was reported that the Herron Art Institute had a Centennial Exhibition in honor of 100 years of Indiana statehood. Relics and antiques were shown as well as a gallery of Indiana artists. Dorothy Morlan's submission was a somber-colored picture called March, which was described as “poetic in feeling.”
On January 20, 1917, The Indianapolis News society page ran a lengthy column, “Many Indianapolis Women Have Gained Fame in State and Station with Brush and Chisel.” Perhaps it was inspired by or written in response to Forsyth's article of a few months prior, to set the record straight, so to speak, or at least provide a female perspective on the milieu of local women artists.
The column is without by-line, and the identity of the editor, whether male or female is not readily known. But the mere fact that the article allows for the women to speak in their own words acts as a counter-point the Forsyth professorial tome.
Morlan's words provide an argument against Forsyth's notions of a generalized, communal and victorious art.
“Art is merely one kind of language for the expression of ideas. When we look at pictures or other works of art, we know something about the artist. If he is a landscape painter we know at once what he likes – the sort of thing that expresses, however imperfectly, his own temperament and outlook, for we are really seeking ourselves in nature, and we are bound to see unconsciously the thing that best expresses our own personal feeling.”
Morlan continues along the same lines, with an example,
“The more intensely the artist feels, the more likely he is, as he approaches maturity, to seek expression by means of some one definite type. Take Rembrandt for example. Can anyone think of Rembrandt without immediately without recalling the wonderful concentration of light that is peculiar to him, and the atmosphere of mystery that permeates all his work? Why Rembrandt wouldn't be Rembrandt at all if he had followed fads and fashions in painting. Rembrandt expressed himself forcibly in one particular way, just as every great artist must – a powerful way that commands attention.”
About her particular obsessions, singularly revolving around the landscape, Morlan says,
“I am in love with the meeting place of earth and sky. I like best the kind of picture that suggests to me the bigness of the earth – that the sky has no boundary. I love large and simple spaces. What could be finer than a deep shadow in the foreground, in fact spreading far over the landscape, simplifying everything within close range – then a gleam of sunlight illuminating the distant fields. This is the sort of thing that makes me wild to paint – the sort of thing that I must attempt if I am to paint at all.”
Uncle Sam (and Lucille Morehouse) Says 'I Want You.'
Within a few months, the United States would join a world at war.
Over the course of the year Morlan would continue to participate in local exhibitions, but would increasingly volunteer in support of war efforts; helping the U.S. Navy by knitting socks and scarves for sailors, and by donating art for auctions and designing posters for the Red Cross.
As the holidays approached toward the end of the year, The Indianapolis Star on October 28, 1917, reported that local artists were holding a benefit exhibition with proceeds, in part, to support Indiana artillerymen. Artists contributing to the effort included Otto Stark, Carl Graf, William Forsyth and Dorothy Morlan, among others.
The following spring, the 11th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron is previewed in The Indianapolis News on March 9, 1918. New for that year, the exhibit would feature the grouped hanging of works by individual artists to facilitate better comprehension of the artists aims and style, etc.
Dorothy Morlan was only represented by only one large canvas in a side gallery according to a follow-up News review of the exhibit on March 16. The anonymous reviewer describes the picture as “one of her big open spaced landscapes, with a restful color scheme that is satisfying.” Two days later in a review of the show by Lucille Morehouse of The Indianapolis Star on March 18, 1918, the critic highlights two noteworthy paintings by T.C. Steele, Christ Church, the Deep Snow and The Soldiers' Monument, Mid-Winter Afternoon. She mentions many other artists and works, but is silent on Morlan, other than by mentioning her participation.
It can be noted that the columns of Lucille Morehouse in The Star around this time begin with pleas for active patriotism. Such as in the same March 18 column, 'Woman Artists of Indiana are Urged to Aid Liberty Loan,' which begins with somewhat extreme propagandist jingoism as follows,
“War work comes first. You women artists of Indiana who are busy with landscapes and portraits, with still life and flower studies, put aside your canvases for a brief time. You sculptors lay down your chisels... Your country calls...Your talents are in demand and you are called upon to help win the war.”
And on on March 31, with a softer touch, but no less government-sponsored tone, Morehouse writes,
“Here's a new way, and a commendable one, to sell Liberty bonds for Uncle Sam...Will you help? You who are public-spirited and have a few extra dollars in the bank, or dollars coming to you in your next pay envelope.”
Morehouse goes on to describe that many artists at the 11th Indiana Artists exhibit have agreed to donate all sales proceeds to the Liberty bond effort, and she names then, one by one. Dorothy Morlan's name is not among them.
It seems a tricky and unseemly business of Lucille Morehouse – her list of patriots, and as a result the omission of others – which she tries to rectify by writing, “ ...the absence of a name from the above list does not mean that some other exhibiting artist may not be just as patriotic.”
But such were the war times, when battle lines were drawn not only only on the fields of conflict, but between home-front factions as well.
The April 13, 1918 Indianapolis News reports that Morlan has traveled to New York for two weeks to attend two art shows; an Albert Ryder retrospective for the painter – deceased a year prior, and an exhibit of one hundred works by Rembrandt.
We all know Rembrandt and Morlan's affinity for him by her direct remarks cited earlier, but it is interesting to study the work of Albert Ryder to ponder the crux of Morlan's appreciation for his work, and discover the threads that are woven between the tapestries of their visions – a subdued, yet dramatic, effect of light, the grand romance of an immense landscape and a personified approach to design and technique.
On April 21, Lucille Morehouse reports in her art column to The Indianapolis Star that local artists raised $500 for the purchase of Liberty bonds for the aid to “ many a returned soldier's comfort.” Dorothy Morlan's name was now among the lengthy 'who's who' of patriots.
Perhaps war efforts were prioritized by Dorothy Morlan, as documentation in the papers of her exhibitions and artworks was noticeably less over the following weeks and months.
In a January 22, 1919, society page column in The Richmond Item, 'Work of Women Artists Constantly Gains Favor,' reports Dorothy Morlan's absence from a current Indiana Artists show. Esther Griffin White begins her article,
“ The landscape phases of the current exhibit of Indiana art in the public art galleries are less interesting than the showing of portraits...due, perhaps, to the fact that some of the leading Indiana landscapists are not represented. Among those notable for their absence are...T. C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams...Dorothy Morlan...and others.”
On May 4, 1919, Lucille Morehouse, in a full page illustrated column in The Indianapolis Star reports on a new project utilizing local art talent to decorate several public schools in Indianapolis. Here again, Dorothy Morlan is noteworthy, not in her participation in the current project, but in her absence, only as a footnote, mentioned as one of many participants in the earlier City Hospital project from years prior.
Morlan's active exhibition and travel schedule of the 1910s had slowed by the end of the decade. The lapse would continue over the next few years as will be seen in the next installment of Dorothy Morlan's story in Part Three.
Mark Diekhoff, July 2025
See Also
The Hermitage - Brookville, Indiana
No comments:
Post a Comment