127th Annual Exhibition of Indiana and Ohio Artists

St. Joseph's, Terre Haute, Michael Neary

Granddaddy of Indiana Art Shows in Richmond.

From the roots of a mostly self-taught group of artists in the Richmond, Indiana area from about 1870 onward, the Richmond Art Association was formed in 1896, and two years later, in 1898, this organization would establish an annual exhibit of Indiana artists. It has expanded to include Ohio artists over the years, and includes both advanced and amateur award divisions. 

The Indiana State Fair has hosted arts and crafts exhibits and competitions for over 170 years. The participation of Indiana's professional contemporary artists in the event have waxed and waned over the many decades, with the first half of the 20th Century being arguable to most relevant  period in which the exhibit stood as an equal pillar and mainstay with other annual events in attracting the state's best talent, including professionals, to its exhibition halls.

Other Indiana-related annual shows have come an gone. The 'Grand Circuit' rotating and traveling show of the Society of Western Artists. The original showcase for the works of the artists who would become known as the Hoosier Group, the annual exhibition had an eighteen-year  run from 1896 until 1914. 

The Indianapolis-based Annual Exhibit of Works by Indiana Artists was held from 1908 through 1969. Originally held as an annual event at John Herron Art Institute, it became a biennial event at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in the 1970s until its last iteration, the 70th Indiana Artists Show in 1985.  

The newer old kid on the block, is the Hoosier Art Salon, which began in 1925 and was held at Marshall Field & Company in Chicago. It would move to Indianapolis for the 1942 show, and continues with the 101st Hoosier Art Salon being hosted by the Indiana State Museum last August.

Annual shows of the Indiana Artists Club,  began in  1917 and continued for many years at revolving locations such as the Union Trust Building and Spinks-Arms Hotel. It moved to L. S. Ayers and Company from 1935 -1989. After two years at University of Indianapolis, it has continued from 1992 to the most recent 93rd Annual in 2025 at Newfields (formerly IMA). 

Irvington Artists, later called the Irvington Group, held annual exhibitions in the east side community of the same name from 1928 through 1937. 

Two other exhibitions in Indianapolis that were held more than a few years failed to develop generational staying power. They included the Indiana Directions (and later Indiana Directions and Regional) held as a biennial from 1976 through the early 2000s at the Indianapolis Art League (later the Indianapolis Art Center), and the Indiana Arts Competition hosted by American States Insurance from 1987 through 1995. 

Another local art event and competition began in 1994 when Phil Campbell, artist, and owner of Hot House Gallery, started Masterpiece in a Day. The outdoor event began its run at the Faris Building and its environs and moved to Fountain Square and the Murphy Arts Center in the early 2000s. It continues to this day.

Harrison Center in Indianapolis has presented annual 'color-themed' shows every December since about 2002, with its latest, Golden Ticket, just ended. And the Indianapolis studio gallery run by Justin Vining has recently presented the Sixth Annual Vining Gallery Invitational at its East 10th Street location.

It is clear that a sustained duration of 127 years running for the Anderson show, hosted now by the Richmond Art Museum, is an amazing feat in the annuls of Indiana art history. 

Past and Present, Spread Over Four Rooms. 

The permanent collection room of the Richmond Art Museum (RAM), certainly sets a high standard of artistic achievement. William Merritt Chase's, Self Portrait (in the 4th Avenue Studio), is a glory to behold. He is a magician not only with paint but also bare canvas. And he portrays not only himself, but every painter, standing aside a blank canvas waiting for something to happen.  That moment at the start of a new work, is captured in the picture. It looks like maybe he used that bare space to clean off his brushes, and yet, the promise of those haphazard marks are just the first steps of any masterpiece. It is a picture, both inside and outside the picture, of an artist assured, aside the task at hand.

Amazingly, not to be outdone, is the museum's spectacular new acquisition,  Emma B. King's, Pic-a-Back. The canvas exists out of time, out of genre – outside any art movement – in a timeless moment of sunlit beauty –  in a real, yet dreamland, world.  That such a thing could have occurred or been imagined, let alone painted with such mastery, is beyond words. 

The room is loaded with great art and artists from the permanent collection, too numerous to describe in this preface.  Suffice to say, they will whet the appetite of the eyes, to see more wonderful things in the adjoining rooms and hallways of the 127th Annual show.

Landscapes Abound.

The Lake I Grew Up On, Justin Vining

The Lake I Grew Up On, by Justin Vining, is a large brooding landscape dominated by the inky waters of a large lake beneath a dramatic display of clouds and sky. With night fast approaching, the water appears choppy, but maybe it is reflecting the dark and turbulent spectacle above. The last mute pink and yellow daylight slips down at a horizon, ringed by a thin back-lit strip of land – the intermediary between lake and sky. That narrow band of terra firma is crammed with specks of bright yellow cast from windows of the numerous homes that hug the shore and stare at each other across the waters.

A Hint of Autumn, Donna Shortt

Donna Shortt has two contribution that display landscapes of a similar mood; darkness and water in one and twinkling light and night sky in the other. Her award-winning A Hint of Autumn is a pocket of wooded deep shade at the foot of a creek that trails away toward fewer trees and a brighter light. The green and gray of the scene shows just a few spots of orange-changing leaves almost too slight to notice, so subtle is their hint.  Her other piece, Community Stars, has a night sky so thickly populated with faraway planets and suns that the little domestic village beneath is like some faraway outpost, some western remote beneath the Milky Way. With our local light pollution, we rarely get our skies so full of stars.

Staying on the subject of dark, brooding and somber landscapes, are the two submissions of Curt Stanfield and one by Ray Hassard.  Stanfield's vertical Dawn's Embrace shows the winter beauty of high horizon sunrise in golden pink tones above and through a web of bare and skeletal branches of scrub and a bed of bright blue snow. One cannot argue with the prettiness of the moment, but somehow it seems a scene, in orange and blue, seen before on postcards in Florida. Those dawn or dusk photos, substituting beaches for the icy sand of Indiana winter.  

Solitude, Curt Stanfield

Stanfield's other picture,  Solitude is altogether more effective in portraying a frozen moment less seen. Shades of grayish white and whitish gray, make up the land and the sky of this picture. The precision and geometry of its square shape are accentuated by the minimalism and simplicity of the subject matter. The straight lines of pole and thinner wire, of muted horizon and diagonal and dormant vegetation. A wedge of lifeless woods, in dark winter brown. The painting lives up to its name.

Ray Hassard's Soggy field is also a nearly monochrome. He paints a wide, flat, green-gray field of muddy grass.  Large pockets of standing water reflects the severe winter sky off its puddles. One feels a chill and wet feet when looking at the picture. 

Less moody, are David M. Seward's two pictures. This artist was seen recently in the Hoosier Salon in Indianapolis with two landscape paintings of innovative composition. His submissions here are less so, but still effective in their ability to capture and direct the viewer's eye into the heart of his landscapes with his use of light and brushwork. The greatest contrast of light and dark and the most detailed strokes of paint exist together to create his centers of attention. They are offset from the actual center and balanced by the other elements he captures in the scene to direct movement. 

Afternoon Barn, David M. Seward

Afternoon Barn has a heave and a ho of pond and hedge to zigzag toward the white of cloud and black of a shady soffit on the side of the barn.  Bonita Springs Parking has the shade of three tree trunks, two of which out of frame of the painting, running in a parallel diagonal to the white sun soaked bark of a tree thrust forward from the shady roots near its base.

Less moody still, and more playfully vibrant, are two city scenes by Michael Neary. Painted in the gregarious greens and cumulus whites of high summer, his paintings display the most idiosyncratic brushwork of any landscapes in the show.  Entirely effective in capturing his scenes, the brushwork appears energized and excited. Both Gowyn's Back Yard and St. Joseph's, Terre Haute (top of page) exude an  intensity that vibrates. 

Both paintings possess a lovely clutter of domestic or civic deferred maintenance; overgrown grass, sagging sidewalks, crumbling curbs. Two light posts in the St. Joseph's picture lean away from each other in the foreground, while the twin church steeples in the background, seemingly of firmer foot, point straight as arrows, side by side, toward the sky. 

In the amateur division, four pastel by two artists showcase the differing temperaments of their creation. Betty Knapp's two pieces, Birch Gateway and Winter Surprise, depict intimate and seasonal corners of nature where trees dominate traditional impressionist compositions. Elisabeth Von Der Lohe in her two works reveals a nature more roiling and majestic. Her technique, not an impression, but a tangible reality, almost photographic.  The tumult and crash of a rocky coastline in Crushing Waves and the sublime merger of lake, trees and sky in Summerpeace. 

Two prize winners in the division are similar works by Victoria Pope and Jenelle Burris. Both western redrocks, of needles or spires. Pope's Bryce Sunrise and Burris' Garden of the Gods paint with pastel or oil, well known and loved park vistas, rock formations as they mingle with the sun.

Figures and Portraits.

Rope Swing, Brookville, Mark Van Buskirk

Back to the Advanced Division, Mark Van Buskirk's ambitious, large oil, Rope Swing, Brookville, merges landscape with  a multitude of figures. The young men and mostly women, in bathing suits,  dispatch from their kayaks and canoes at a riverside and gather at the base of an epic tree trunk.  The technique in the application of paint, the hues chosen – the result is a hazy mythology, as opposed to a snapshot narrative. Huge dollops of pure pigment in the canopy of leaves and sky. 

A simple scene of young people swimming and having fun on the river. But captured at the moment between on the river and swinging in the air. The figures climb carefully over tree roots and muddy banks in single file. NPCs in their anonymity, no one is the hero yet. They could be anyone standing in line, backsides and bikinis, seeking to up the thrill.

A prize winning portrait, The Break of Day, by Dianne K. Porter, could almost be surrealism. The profile of a bearded and bespectacled older man, in a loose and wrinkled flannel robe, stands in profile to meet a full face of sunlight from an out of view window. The background is a featureless and of total black. The dreamlike part is the gnarled bare branches of what looks like a walking stick tree between the man and the window. Almost like wisps of steam off his coffee cup. But whatever it is must be off to the side, because it casts no shadow across him whatsoever. 

There is something about a coffee cup. John Hrehov's Morning Nancy (Indianola) is in interesting composition that merges portrait, genre-scene, landscape and still life. An amalgam of uncomplicated lines and shapes, and restrained color fields. Even the flowers that dominate the right side of the picture do so with perfect manners. As a whole, it reminds of the symbolic emotion of Emile Bernard and his Brittany simplifications with Paul Gauguin.

The Gift of Seeing, Stephanie Spay

Stephanie Spay paints a woman holding a coffee cup in The Gift of Seeing. She conjures the woman standing amid a dissolving space of orange gown, gray floral wallpaper and diffuse natural light. What the woman sees is open to interpretation. The gift the artist sees is clearly shown.

Stephanie Paige Thomson paints portraits and figures in a recognizable way. Her Portrait of Mark Burkett won a 4th Prize overall award in the 101st Hoosier Art Salon in August and has been acquired by RAM and hangs in their collection room currently. 

Old Friend, Stephanie Paige Thomson

She has two works in the the current show, including Old Friend, that like the Burkett piece is a no-nonsense portrait head within a sketchy, unfinished background. Her method preserves the early brushstrokes and empty canvas that provided the foundation for the finished likeness –  her seated figure The Old Ways Endure has the same sketchiness. The manner highlights the painted portrait subject to be sure, but seeing all three works together, their overtly similar technique makes them less individually memorable.

Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony, Erin Smith Glenn

Erin Smith Glenn's award-winning Subtle Stare in Secondary Harmony is a head portrait with a simple background created in colored pencil. Here, again, the relatively empty background surrounding the space of the head. But the background space is colored in a shimmering gold. A young woman looking forward through creased eyelids with her stare. The face has silvery highlights on forehead, eyelids, nose, cheekbones and lips that mimic the glimmer of the woman's earrings. The silver and gold are a stunning décor. The emotion portrayed is as subtle as the stare veiled through almost closed eyes, and the dare of the piece is left to the viewer. 

The Merit Award winning portraits and figures in the amateur division  are Anna (Connection) by Anna Marcum and Love Everlasting by Jessica R. Maxwell.  

Randy (Devotion), Anna Marcum

Perhaps Marcum's more visually lively piece did not win an award but does delight the eyes. Her Randy (Devotion) is a large, vibrant head and shoulders portrait. The busy geometry of a plaid shirt, the astonishing abundance of a bushy blonde beard, and a bright salmon colored stripe that divides the background, all vie for attention at once. Like Randy in the painting, I smiled amid the colorful mayhem.

Still Lifes, Florals and What May Be Conceptuals.

Samantha Haring's two pastel still lifes are quiet and modest. Each portrays a single object on a brown clothed table against a white wall. The scenes are enmeshed in a tan monotone, warmed by hits of orange. Etched shows a mason jar and Seasoned a rumpled brown bag. Folds, textures, shadows and highlights invite close inspection. 

Aaron James Pickens has also created a still life in shades of beige and brown with Dried Corn – June 10th 2025. The flame-like shapes of dried husks provide the matter for the subject of the picture's exercise in painting jagged shapes.

Two interesting floral compositions by Leslie Shiels are exhibited. In Plain Sight shows a robust bouquet of burgundy, yellow and pink. Birds perch among the woody stems also in the arrangement, in a perspective that teeters from on high, looking down on the birds in the foreground from above, to straight on with the birds in profile at the top. The flowers survive the hidden pivot, as do the birds, without rustling a feather. 

Palekeet Trio, Leslie Shiels

Her other floral, Palekeet Trio, depicts a jar of cut sunflowers, three large conch shells and two birds. The layout of the painting is like an Italian altarpiece, with transcendent sunflowers at the epicenter, attended by open winged birds that hover like cherubs overhead. The conch shells gather at the foot of the painting like weeping women with their sounding of the sea. The color and energy lean Rococo, though, with its pastel shades of pink and yellow and blue. 

What to make of the two works by Constance Edwards Scopelitis? They are from an ongoing series called Recovery Blankets. Precise colored pencil drawings of striped and rumpled blankets draping atop wood panels. There must be a concept behind their obsessive assemblage of imagery and title. They all are named after 1960s pop song hits. Here she presents Brown Eyed Girl (inspired by Van Morrison) and Dead Flowers (inspired by the Rolling Stones). 

The blanket colors often relate directly to the song titles. The meaning of the Top 40 oldies, the incessant stripes and the wooden squares though? 

Maybe there is a basis in some personal memory or loss, some echo of connection or triggered emotion.  Or perhaps the specific nostalgia of the components were more randomly chosen, post-meaning – a sentimental tip of the hat to the machine-like efficiency of the 60s pop art minimalists, with their neon lights and crumpled cars. 

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Carpenter Realtors East Irvington Now Showing Art

Vermont Farm, Frederick Polley

 

The Rich Costello Collection and Carpenter East Gallery in Irvington

The First Friday art and culture walk in Irvington on December 5 included an introduction to an amazing personal collection of works by historical Irvington and Indianapolis artists, as well as a companion show of contemporary area artists at a new art venue in the heart of Irvington. The exhibit continues its display and can be viewed at the location of the Carpenter Realtors East Irvington branch office (Carpenter East) on Washington Street, right between Jockamo Upper Crust Pizza and Sahm's Tavern and Sports Bar.  The art space is hosted by art collector and Carpenter East branch manager, Rich Costello. 

The most numerous artworks that make up the current display are by Indianapolis artist, Frederick Polley, a favorite artist of Mr. Costello. 

Many other well-known Irvington and Indianapolis artists are also included, such as Hoosier Group painter William Forsyth and his artist daughter Constance Forsyth, both longtime residents of Irvington at their former family home at the corner of Washington Street and Emerson Avenue. 

Wayman Adams and Edmund Brucker, both well-known and respected portrait painters from Indiana, can also be seen with major works in the exhibit.   

Collection Contains Many Impressive Works.

My Mother, Edmund Brucker

Greeting your eyes upon entering the Carpenter East, is the large portrait, My Mother by Edmund Brucker. The skill of this well-known artist and long-time Herron School of Art instructor is apparent immediately. The hands and face of the sitter, the countenance portrayed, are captured with care, and obvious technical dexterity. The blue background and gown convey the scene in a peaceful calm that contrasts with the warmness of the flesh-tones. A  remarkable realism is achieved, particularly in the rendering of the aged hands.

The piece is presumably a portrait of the artist's own mother, given the title. Brucker himself would have been about 70 years-old at the time, so if the sitter is indeed his mother in her nineties or thereabouts, she is quite stunning for her age.  

Brucker entered a very similar portrait, called Matriarch (1982), in the 69th Indiana Artists Show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, held in June through August, 1983. 

Matriarch, Edmund Brucker, 1982

It is same sitter, seated and similarly dressed in both paintings. The pose is the the same – a diamond shape created with her head, arms and hands.  The Carpenter East picture is a three-quarter sideways view, whereas the IMA picture is more facing frontward. It may be that the Carpenter East painting is the superior of the two, with the mystery of the mother's glance looking somewhere out of the picture frame, portraying a a wistful contentment. The IMA exhibit piece, which won an award in the show, portrays a downward resignation, seen in the averted eyes of the matriarch. 

Couple, Wayman Adams

Another terrific piece in the Carpenter East show is Couple by Wayman Adams. The huge canvas  depicts  an early 20th Century couple, the lady dressed in a pink short sleeve and the man in a gray suit and blue dress shirt. They share a place next to each other in the intimacy of  a wood backed davenport whose curving sweep dominates the painting's foreground. 

Their bodies are perpendicular to the viewer, although not in profile, as they each look over their right shoulder to face the viewer, eye to eye. Wayman's bravura brushwork is on full display, the whole picture over. The most detailed care, in his signature way, in capturing their faces. 

This painting also has a twin of sorts. This time in the Richmond Art Museum collection – the painting The Love Seat, c. 1930, also by Adams. The pair in that painting could almost be the same two in Couple. 

In the Richmond picture, both their bodies and their heads have a more formal pose, facing ahead in the composition, as opposed to the dynamic twist of the Carpenter East painting.

Much smaller, but no less remarkable in the Carpenter East show, are several graphite drawings by William Forsyth. One is of an elderly lady, possible the artist's mother, showing her in a pose similar to both Brucker paintings; seated with  hands in her lap, and forming a diamond shape. This lady looks down, eyes averted as well, with somber expression, as Forsyth sketched away.

The intimate studies of a newborn baby nursing, shows Forsyth perfecting the baby's head in three tries, and capturing, in two separate sketches on the same page, two distinct gestures of the child's arm while feeding. One grasping toward the mother, and one less restless, relaxing downward.

Frederick Polley – Artist and Artworks.

An example of Frederick Polley Indianapolis Star page

As mentioned, Frederick Polley is well represented in Costello's Carpenter East exhibit. 

Frederick Polley lived both in Irvington and then a home studio at Paradise Hills on the city's north-east side. He taught in the art department at Tech High School for about twenty years, and later at Herron. About his early years and first artistic inspiration, we can refer to an newspaper article and interview appearing in an expansive Indianapolis Star Sunday magazine article by Aletha V. M'Naull, on January 4, 1925. 

Ms. M'Naull describes her rebuffed attempts to obtain an interview of Frederick Polley.  The subheading to the article described the state of Polley's career – Local Artist's Work Appears in Large Publications and Wins Prizes in Some of Best Exhibits Conducted in the United States. And it adds, by way of further introduction to the readers,  that, 

“Mr. Polley's drawings are appearing regularly on the page opposite the editorial page  of The Sunday Star.” 

The writer quotes Polley's self-deprecating manner when she first contacted him for a talk, 

“I am just working and am busy, but there really is nothing to tell about.”

Polley remained elusive, but she presses him further, prompting him to add,

“There is practically nothing to say.  I am putting all my spare time evenings and holidays working on some things that interest me very much, but that is all there is to it.”

Ms. M'Naull would eventually wear Polley down, and get him to speak a bit about himself and his origins of his career,

“I got my 'big lead' in a small prairie town in Illinois, where I was stationed as a telegraph operator...a sketch artist came to the town...and got...a special...edition of the...newspaper. This edition was profusely illustrated with pen and ink sketches of the station, the elevator and the prominent department stores of the town...”

Polley is presumable referring to the prominent local landmarks such at the railroad station, grain elevator and so on. He adds,

“These sketches were a revelation to me, and I found that I could sketch the buildings around me with ease and some grace. The local printer soon after gave me my first commission to draw a commercial illustration, a label for a cigar maker. I was a full-fledged commercial artist and decided that my goal was finally illustrating.”

Flatiron Building, center left, by Frederick Polley in The Star

The rest, they say, is history, as the Carpenter East show will attest. It contains original graphite drawings by Polley that were reproduced in the pages of The Star, as well as etchings, a large selection of original holiday cards of his unique and hand-made design, and original landscape paintings, several of which are on display.

The collection has the original graphite drawing of New York City's Flatiron Building that was printed in the paper in the pictorial accompanying Ms. M'Naull's article referenced above.  

Two paintings of Polley's Paradise Hills property are in the show; Paradise Hills – Polley House  and Paradise Hills – Polley House Rooftop. 

Paradise Hills - The Polley Home Rooftop, Frederick Polley

Paradise Hills refers to a large barn and parcel of land that the artist purchased in 1927, in an area just north of Fort Benjamin Harrison today. At that more rural time, the property was described as “three miles from Castleton and about five miles from Millersville on the Dandy trail, and about twelve miles from Monument circle,” according to a December 4, 1927, Indianapolis Star article with accompany photo spread.

Paradise Hills would first become the location of his studio and exhibition space, and then, some time later, his home.

Frederick Polley and his Paradise Hills Studio, c 1927

The paintings show the home and its red roof from different viewpoints on the property, both of which accentuate the hilliness of the locale.  Polley, even in the early days after the purchase of the property, would begin holding exhibitions of his work in the barn. 

Polley's inaugural open house at his new Paradise Hills studio

It should be noted that Polley also maintained an Irvington residence at the time, and would exhibit in nine of the Irvington Group shows from 1928 through 1937.

Artist Returns, Frederick Polley

Interiors and Exteriors – New Nicole Meisberger Photographs.

Carpenter East is also presenting area artists on a long wall opposite the historic collection. In the current show, three artists have work; David Lee, Nicole Meisberger and Eduardo Quixchán.

Nicole Meisberger has provided an artist statement explaining her work. She presents a series of interesting photographs from her new portfolio of Interiors and Exteriors around town. Her images run the gamut, from extravagantly baroque, to sparse – almost monotone – and banal. They are all interesting. 

Also of local interest, Meisberger's past projects are Irvington-centric.

The Inspired By series contained her image Nighthawks, derived from the source Edward Hopper painting.  Her image was shot in Irvington, with Irvington artists serving as models for the people in the painting. And Meisberger contributed to previous projects of specific note; the books 24 Hours in Irvington and Irvington Noir.

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Harry Davis – Select Artworks at Fine Estate Art

Time is Running Out, Harry Davis  at Fine Estate Art

Harry Emeritus.

Fine Estate Art, located just north of downtown on Talbot Street, is presenting a selection of large paintings, pen and ink and graphite drawings, prints and other works by a well-known Indianapolis artist, in the show Harry A. Davis (1914 – 2006), Snapshots.

Spanning decades, the art career of Davis began in Indianapolis when he graduated from Herron School of Art in 1938. His painting Harvest Dinner won him Prix de Rome honors that allowed for his study in Rome in the time just before America's involvement in World War II. 

Davis would go on to serve in the war in North Africa, both designing camouflage and as a combat artist. As a result of the latter, many of his artworks of this period are held in the collection of the Pentagon.

At war's end, Davis would return to Indianapolis and begin teaching painting and drawing at Herron School of Art from 1946 until 1983, retiring as Professor Emeritus. 

His major artistic legacy is his contemporary realist paintings of Indiana architectural landmarks, many painted just before the planned demolition of the buildings. His signature mature-period style displays a nuanced play of light and shadow over the architectural lines and details of his subject buildings. This technique of brushwork can offer an amazingly varied result from painting to painting, due to his expert capture of the time of the season or the daylight hour.

His major local exhibitions during his lifetime included My City, 1972, which was a special exhibit of Indiana landmarks for the 150th anniversary of the State, and Here and There, 1983, a traveling exhibit that compared the architecture of Indiana and Italy. 

In 2024, Indiana Landmarks held a major retrospective, The Art of Harry Davis.

A Biography in Art.

The current showing of Harry Davis pictures at Fine Estate Art covers two major periods of his creative life, with snapshots showing primarily the people, in figure groups, during the war time, and later, the houses, buildings and street scenes that fascinated him during his middle age onward. 

There are many examples of his artwork from the war years, mostly originals and some limited edition prints as well as several fine examples of the large architectural paintings for which he is most known. 

Follies, Harry Davis

Although not dated, the graphite drawing Follies may represent a scene from his pre-war time in Italy, or perhaps some moment of R&R during the war. The busy, festive scene of 15 or more figures including the signature dancing girls, recalls the celebratory mood and jam-packed happiness also seen in his early award winning Harvest Dinner, already referenced.

The subject matter of many other works clearly places them as being produced during Davis' time in the service. Welcome the Liberators shows a group of weary partisans resting on and about an Army truck. One clearly exhausted, leans on his rifle and the truck's fender. The style of the pen and ink drawing is fluid yet sure, capturing the brief moment of relief after a fight.  The Canteen Quartet, a pen and ink drawing, shows four uniformed buddies, joined in a song at the ledge of a bar. A wonderful drawing in a dynamic regionalist manner, the soldiers are are drawn together by the placement of their arms and the circle of light in the picture. A beer bottle and and aperitif glass, are their only audience. 

Treatment Tent, Harry Davis

Treatment Tent, another pen and ink, shows a prone soldier receiving aid to an injured arm while walking wounded sit nearby, talking among themselves, seemingly numb to the carnage.

The several large paintings include Time is Running Out, 1992, (top of page) a high-noon view of a row of two-story  red brick buildings on Indiana Avenue slated for demolition.  Boarded storefronts and broken windows signal the fate of the two buildings, joined in their fate behind a barricade of barrels, and beneath a web of drooping telephone wire.  Across the street, a parking meter – showing time expired. 

The Black Curtain Theater, Harry Davis

This painting is in the Harry Davis sub-genre of pictures he painted to preserve the image of buildings destined for change or demolition. It is a type that is also seen in his The Black Curtain Theater, 1983, shown in the 69th Annual Indiana Artists exhibition at Indianapolis Museum of Art. Coincidentally, the theater on Talbot Street, was across the street to Fine Estate Arts' location today.  

Benton House, Harry Davis on loan to Irvington Historical Society

But back to the present exhibit, a classic, stately portrait of a historical building is seen in Bates-Hendricks House. The piece is of the same matter-of-fact, frontal composition seen in many, but certainly not all, of his house pictures. He has a similar picture, Benton House, (above) now on display at the Irvington Historical Society exhibition of art in their collection, at Bonna Thompson Center. 

Reilly Industries, Harry Davis

The Fine Estate Art selection includes several widely different variations on this theme, though, in the other large pieces on display. Reilly Industries, 1996, shows the pink light of setting sun slanting over the complex array of pipe tracks, risers and storage silos at the west-side industrial facility. 

Pennsylvania Lines Parking is a painting of an unlikely corner of downtown just south of Washington Street. It's all concrete and asphalt and sky. It's filled out with a few cars, some zigzagging stairs, and a circular yellow-painted curb. Like in the Reilly painting, it's the play of the light that provides a strange, quiet grandeur and beauty to a scene otherwise overlooked or downright unlovely.

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

See also: 

The Art of Harry Davis (You Tube) 

https://www.facebook.com/FineEstateArt/

The material used in this article is being used under the fair use provisions of copyright law. The content is being used for educational purposes only, and all rights to the original content are held by their respective copyright owners. We do not claim ownership of any copyrighted material used in this work.

Ruthven Byrum – An Anderson Artist's Formative Years

Ruthven Holmes Byrum as a young man

Idyllic Adventures of an Artistic Boy.

The boy was born Ruthven. Likely of Scottish origin and referring to a certain locale in that country  around Perth and the River Almond. The name translates roughly as 'red place,' most likely, again referring to the landscape thereabouts. Ruthven's family name was Byrum, a name that would become well known in Anderson in the first half of the 20th Century.

His father Noah Byrum and uncle Enoch Byrum were founding leaders of the Anderson, Indiana-based non-Pentecostal, protestant Church of God. Both brothers were involved in the publishing arm of the church, called the Bible Trumpet Company, which was the major mode of evangelical outreach for the church  in its early years. The Byrum brothers, and their families, followed the relocation of Bible Trumpet from its Michigan location, where Ruthven was born, to Anderson, Indiana in 1906. 

Ruthven Byrum, like a typical youngster of his era, would begin to test the limit of his curiosity and adventure, and his growing strength, both physical and mental, soon after moving to Anderson, Indiana. 

So it was, in 1907, the boy became more widely known in the new city of his youth, by making the the third page of the The Anderson Herald on November 17, with his accidental adventure as follows,

“Ruthven Byrum, son of N.H. (Noah Holmes) Byrum, near the Gospel Trumpet home in Park Place, fell about twenty feet from a hickory tree yesterday afternoon and received painful injuries. He is expected to recover. He is eleven years old and was with some companions. By striking limbs of the tree the force of the fall was broken.”

The hard knock from the hickory, both the source of his exciting climb, and the near disaster of his fall, was the only reported misadventure of young Ruthven in Anderson. In contrast, his boyhood was was filled with idyllic events, perhaps commonplace in those simpler times, and with the educational and athletic challenges that would serve his overall development as a young man. We know of these things now, because in those days, such things were covered by the newspapers, whose columns Ruthven filled constantly, especially during his high school years.

He was put to volunteer at the annual camp meetings for the church by his father Noah, working in the book store booth as a part of the elaborate outdoor gathering which drew thousands of visitors. He attended lots of parties, we know by the society page coverage in The Herald; Halloween costume parties with other children, cake and ice cream extended family events, and even a topsy-turvy themed party on one occasion. 

In high school, he would try out for basketball, making second team. His first cousin Arlo Byrum, Uncle Enoch's son, the same age as Ruthven, would be first team captain, and a local star. Ruthven and Arlo would share many milestones and adventures in the high school years, although they were on distinctly different paths. As mentioned, Arlo mastered basketball, whereas Ruthven excelled in high school leadership, attaining both vice-president and then president of the student body senate. 

That high school senate would hold public debates and Ruthven would argue one side or the other at times, on such topical concerns as women suffrage, prohibition, and the need, or not, of a merchant marine force.

Around this time, when Ruthven was sixteen-years-old, on December 22, 1912, newspapers reported the first artistic inklings, in two different small articles on the same day, that would note the beginnings of Ruthven Byrum's life calling and career. 

In The Anderson Herald,

“Ruthven H. Byrum...is attracting considerable attention as an artist for a lad of sixteen years. A number of his landscape  sketches have been sent  to eastern cities and are winning popularity among art critics. This week Mr. Byrum is painting pictures at the White House for the public.”

And in The Indianapolis Star, 

“Ruthven H Byrum...after two years of study in art has realized enough money from the sale of pictures throughout the East to pay his expenses for a course in art at a conservatory in Paris and will leave for that city soon. Several of his productions have received honorable mention in art reviews in New York.” 

The newspaper evidence of the training and travel in the East and to Paris is not apparent. Perhaps the trip to France was canceled or postponed for some unknown reason. This was still before war in Europe but was after the April sinking of the Titanic in the Atlantic crossing on its maiden voyage.  

After graduation in May 1914, the shared exploits of the Byrum cousins, Ruthven and Arlo, would be reported in the  August 30, 1914, Anderson Herald. On a page covered with the harrowing develops in the war in Europe, both on land at at sea, the innocent yet arduous, adventures of the recent graduates stands in stark contrast,

“Word has been received here from Arlo and Ruthven Byrum who are on a bicycle trip through northern Michigan. At this time the boys are enjoying a week's long fishing at Torch Lake, Antrim County, Michigan. They report that the fishing is extra fine in the streams around.”

It was not until a year later, in summer, when the cousins, again as a pair, would visit both Bloomington and Valparaiso. In may have been college visits. 

They both would enter Indiana University at Bloomington in the fall of 1915. And after four years, Arlo will have become star player and captain of the I.U. Basketball team in the 1919-20 season. Ruthven would study art.

Ruthven Byrum studied under Robert E. Burke, professor and landscape painter, while at I.U., where he would earn a degree in fine arts. Byrum would later cite T.C. Steele as providing inspiration during his I.U. years. Perhaps the art student sought out the master at his home studio and gallery at the House of the Singing Winds in nearby Brown County, because Steele was not to begin his affiliation with the University until 1922.

Study at the Chicago Art Institute and First Exhibits.

After graduation, Byrum returned to his parents home in Anderson, and was a swimming instructor for a year. The next phase of his artistic training is reported in The Anderson Herald on January 16, 1927,

“When he was twenty-three, (Byrum) entered the Art Institute at Chicago. The first three years in the Institute are taken up with the various expressions of portrayal. Perspective, color, design, chiaroscuro, were part of Byrum's first three years. Under Leon Kroll famous modernist and follower of George Bellows, he studied design. 

The effect of this modern portrayal (as championed by Bellows and Kroll) was well balanced by Byrum's work under Karl Buehr, whose landscapes and portraiture are considered exceptional fine. (Beuer) gains his effects in a more classical method with the pervading tone of simplicity through all his work. (Kroll and Buehr) exerted a powerful influence on Ruthven Byrum's work.

After the usual three year course in the Institute, he stayed on two years to perfect his method of work, by watching and copying the methods of the great painters of America who have been drawn to the Chicago Art Institute, Byrum has been able to develop a style and a worth which place him in the same category with our noted Indiana painters.”

During the five years in training in Chicago, Byrum would often return to Anderson at holidays and during summer breaks. In this period of time, he would paint a mural and have his first solo exhibition in Anderson and travel to Oregon to sketch the northwest landscape and climb Mt. Hood.

About the mural, the November 10, 1923, Anderson Daily Bulletin, reports,

 “Ruthven Byrum, 24...has completed a mural painting on the wall over the pulpit of the Church of God in Park Place...The painting...is a pastoral scene entitled The Eastern Shepherd and is a splendid work of art. A shepherd and fourteen sheep are shown in the painting. The picture is ten feet high and eight feet wide. The artist started the work last Monday and finished it today.”

A year later, the same paper reports about the Mt. Hood expedition, in the August 22 edition,

“Ruthven Byrum, son of Mr. and Mrs. N. H. Byrum, of this city, is in the West with his parents and his brother Myrl, on a tour. An account of an interesting hike up Mt. Hood is contained in a letter from Byrum to a friend...”

The column continues with excerpts from Byrum's letter to a friend Bill,

“We pulled out of Portland...Saturday afternoon, drove 50 miles to the government camp on Mt. Hood, and hiked four miles to the timber line...just before it was too dark to see...It is very wonderful to sit around a roaring camp fire...singing and having a big time...

(The next morning) We took our time eating breakfast and painting our faces so they would not blister, and didn't get started till nearly 6 o'clock. The next four and a half miles took about seven and a half hours. It was most the way over glaciers. It got steeper all the time, until the last 500 feet was at least an 85 degree angle.” 

The letter details the harrowing and exhausting final ascent, and the climb down, the letter reading,

“Coming down was the fun. It took an hour and a half where it took seven and a half going up. That 500-foot slide was hard on the seats of our trousers, but was the biggest coasting I ever did...The rest of the glacier was fun, too. We ran down, and now and then would take a tumble in the snow heels over head. It was the greatest hike I ever took.”   

 Byrum concludes his letter to a friend regarding his overall impressions of the West,

“California is all right, but I like Oregon much better. They say you like the states better the longer you stay. But give me Indiana compared to the other places I have been.”

The adventure of Byrum's first solo exhibition would occur about a year later, as reported in the September 9, 1925, Anderson Daily Bulletin. The small notice shared a front page screaming headline about a dirigible crash in Caldwell, Ohio, of a huge airship called Shenandoah. The small article titled Anderson Society Sponsors Exhibit, reported,

“Twenty paintings by Ruthven Byrum...constitute the annual exhibit of the Anderson Society of Artists at the Y.M.C.A.  The paintings, most of which are portraits, are receiving many high compliments and are drawing much interest.”

It should be noted that Byrum himself was a founder of the fledgling Society of Artists, and was beginning to teach classes in art about this time out of his studio in the Griffith Block in  downtown Anderson.

A year later, he would spend time in Brown County painting the peak season of color, one imagines, as reported in the Anderson Daily Bulletin, October 25, 1926,

“Ruthven Byrum and Warner H. Clayton, local artists, have returned from Brown county, where they spent the week end as guests of Prof. Robert Burke, head of the art department at Indiana University. The short visit was spent at the studio lodge of Prof. Burke, overlooking Nashville.

The Anderson artists spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday sketching scenes of picturesque Brown county and brought back to this city about thirteen sketches which will be exhibited at the annual exhibit...sponsored by the Anderson Society of Artists.” 

Byrum's sketches would be seen in the upcoming days, not only in Anderson, but in Indianapolis, where he would begin a series of solo shows that would be covered extensively by that city's best art critic, Lucille Morehouse, in her Indianapolis Star Sunday column, In the World of Art.

On a Bigger Stage.

The first of three solo exhibits of works by Byrum, all at Pettis Gallery, was held in January of 1927. It garnered many mentions in the Indianapolis  newspapers, the most thorough and detailed by Lucille Morehouse in her Star coverage on January 23,

“Ruthven Byrum...is holding his first exhibit in Indianapolis, with twenty-five oil paintings at Pettis gallery....

Thirteen portraits, nine landscapes, one figure composition in landscape setting, one flower study and one still life make up the exhibit.”

Morehouse goes on to provide her opinion regarding both portrait work and landscape,

“Two portraits that might be regarded as outstanding are H. E. Briggs and Self Portrait. Of unusual interest from the standpoint of composition...Mr. Briggs...is a study in character that portrays a type given to philosophical thought. The sitter appears to be ready in speech, quick witted, a bit cynical, but good-naturedly so...

The artist is a bit over-zealous...in his effort to make the accessories do his bidding...

In the Briggs painting the glossy wood and the patterned cane of the chairback come forward too much.”

And about landscape,

“He handles hazy atmosphere and distances with softly glowing light satisfactorily, but his landscapes, in most cases, lack vigor, definiteness in line and convincing construction.”

She sums up her thoughts and first impressions,

“On the whole I like the honest serious work of Ruthven Byrum, the sincerity of purpose and the stamp of what seems to be his own fine character, leaving its imprint on that which comes from his brush.”

Her listing of some titles of his landscapes provides evidence of the subjects he found interesting at the time;  Mysterious River Bank, View on the Dunes, Tree Group, Brown County Road and House on the River Bank.   

Autumn on the White River, Ruthven Byrum

 

The following spring, Byrum exhibited a new multi-figure painting, first at the Anderson Society of Artists exhibit where it earned a 3rd prize, and then as part of the 20th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis. The March 26, 1927, Indianapolis News described the picture,

“Indicating that Indiana artists are alive to all Hoosier interests is a canvas showing two teams of basketball players in full action. Basketball by Ruthven H. Byrum has the life and the vigor of the game. Few artists would think of looking to so violently active a sport as an inspiration for an art product. Close study and careful delineation make this a notable canvas.”

His other painting in the same show is covered by a competing paper, The Indianapolis Times, in its March 30 edition,

“Man with a Pipe, by Ruthven H. Byrum is a problem worked out in grays – all clean, thin paint, extremely simplified in color.”

And then a month or so later, as part of the 30th Annual Exhibit of Paintings by Indiana Artists in Richmond, Indiana at Morton High School, another painting by Byrum was covered.  The April 11, 1927 Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram  reported that his Portrait, Miss Vandiver (later called Girl with the Pink Hat) earned a third place honorable mention.

The September 14 Anderson Herald announced yet two more award winning pictures by Ruthven Byrum that year, this time in the Indiana State Fair arts competition; Portrait of Rev. Floyd Appleton (later called Ph. D)  a fifth prize in the portrait category, and Hollyhocks, a second prize in flower pictures.  The short article also note the flower picture was painted from a window looking out in the home of Judge Lawrence Mays of Pendleton, Indiana. 

Byrum's second solo show at Pettis Gallery in Indianapolis would occur that same year in November. It is interesting to note that at the same time there was a plethora of interesting exhibits around the city. 

At the Woman's Department Club on North Meridian Street, there was a memorial display of artworks by J. Ottis Adams showing pictures from each period of the artist's life. At his Paradise Hills Studio north of Fort Benjamin Harrison, Frederick Polley was showing his etchings, drypoints, drawings and small paintings.  At John Hardrick's Studio on Indiana Avenue, the artist was showing thirty landscape paintings and Portrait of Frederick E. Shortmeier.

Byrum's Pettis show is reviewed by Lucille Morehouse in the November 11, 1927 Indianapolis Star, where she speaks admirably of the portraits Ph.D and Girl with the Pink Hat. About Byrum's other pictures she writes succinctly,

“There are several sprightly little flower paintings, handled realistically and decoratively. The landscapes are mostly autumn scenes near Anderson.”

On February 8, 1928, Ruthven Byrum would marry Miss Mae Valentine of Portland, Oregon. They would make there home in Anderson. 

In the 31st Annual Indiana Artists in Richmond, Byrum would show two portraits and a large oil titled Hazy Afternoon which depicted a scene of rooftops in Anderson according to the Indianapolis Star on April 8, 1928. 

Apple Blossoms, Ruthven Byrum

Byrum would again win awards at the Indiana State Fair that year in various categories, as reported in the September 2, 1928, Anderson Herald. 

“Ruthven Byrum...won unusual distinction in the art exhibit at the Indiana state fair  when judges awarded him four premiums on pictures he is exhibiting...

Mr. Byrum was given a second premium...(for human figures or animal pictures)...on his painting of the scene on the north side of the court house  last summer for the closing of Anderson's first Dollar Day. Two awards for landscape painters were given  him for a picture, The Sand Dunes, painted last year while visiting along Lake Michigan, and for a painting, Apple Blossoms, a study of an apple orchard near Daleville.

Mr. Byrum also won a premium  for painting of the human figure, with a painting of his mother, the picture known as Inspirational Corner.”

Glacier Laker, Ruthven Byrum

Lucille Morehouse, for the third time in two years, covered a Byrum solo show at Pettis Gallery in Indianapolis. He observations are contained in her Sunday column in the Indianapolis Star dated December 16, 1928,

“Outstanding canvases in Ruthven Byrum's exhibit are a large figure composition, Dollar Day, that was a prize winner at the Indiana state fair, and a mountain scene, Inspiration Point, which is a glorious view of Mt. Hood's snow-patterned peak in bright sunlight. Mr. Byrum had a two months painting excursion in Oregon and Glacier park, Montana, from July 15 to Sept. 15. He said...Inspiration Point (is) where the view of Mt. Hood is one of the best to be had.”

St. Mary's Lake, a trifle larger canvas than Inspiration Point, should be viewed across the room and dwelt upon long enough for the loveliness of tonality to be fully enjoyed. Both mountain and lake seem to belong to fairyland...it seems like a dream mountain.”

 She mention two other Oregon pictures, Crown Point on the Columbia and Oregon Breakers. About the  Anderson multi-figure painting she write,

“...Dollar Day might be said to be reminiscent of some of the figure groups  that were painted by George Bellows. This does not mean that the work is any the less stamped with Mr. Byrum's individuality.”

She then describes portions of the picture,

“The blindfolded boy scout in the copper tub, the man at the right with a megaphone, the bandman seated off at the left...”

She continues to describe the paintings obscure narrative, then settles on an helpful admonishment to the viewer, in summary,

“Enjoy the picture from the art side and don't bother your wits about the 'story' side. I hope Mr. Byrum sends his Dollar Day to some of the big exhibitions  and then paints some more pictures along the same line.”

 

The End of the Beginning.

Ruthven Holmes Byrum, at just over thirty years old, had lived twenty years in Anderson since boyhood. He was newly married and on the precipice of whole new lives of experience. 

The coming years would bring further art training in Paris and Munich. His family life would be blessed by a child. He would return to Anderson and be a founder of the art program at Anderson College (now University). 

But that all happens in the last half of his life. This was the story of his first half. 

The first half when his love of art began when he painted a landscape as a child, and straight away he sold it to his dad for a dollar. In tree climbing, and basketball, mountain climbing and art, a little support and the spark of encouragement can lead to beautiful things. 

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

Lake and Mountains, Ruthven Byrum, AWI Collection

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