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(no title given), A. E. Wrentmore, 1953 |
Arrival, Education and Extant Works.
Alson E. Wrentmore was born in 1872 near Cleveland, Ohio. As a young man, he would graduate from Hiram College in Northeast Ohio, and then study at the University of Chicago.
His obituary in The Indianapolis Star on August 13, 1959, explains the middle years of his life before his arrival to the Indianapolis area,
“(Wrentmore) held pastorates in Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, Kansas, and Oklahoma...and spent about ten years as an evangelist in the Central States.
He later served as school superintendent at several northwestern Indiana towns and wrote seven books on English which were widely used.
(He was)...an outspoken foe of intemperance, and served as a president of several organizations, including The Landlords and Tenants League, The American Property Owners and Christian Dry Crusaders.”
As he was nearing age fifty, in December 1920, Wrentmore bought a house in Irvington on the east side of Ritter Avenue north of University Avenue.
From about 1925 to 1929, part-time, he would pursue a master's degree from Indiana University, Bloomington.
Within a year of earning that degree, as he approached age sixty, he would begin pursing state-wide political office seeking election to the office of Superintendent to Public Education on the third party ticket, the Prohibition Party, in 1930.
We learn Wrentmore was also an artist, when he entered and was accepted for exhibition at the 24th Indiana Artists show at John Herron Art Institute in 1931.
Other Irvington and Indianapolis artists who were in that year's exhibition, many of whom have been covered elsewhere in this blog, are Simon P. Baus, Constance Forsyth, William Forsyth, Marie Goth, John Wesley Hardrick, Cecil Head, Emma B. King, Dorothy Morlan, Isaac Lane Muse, Frederick Polley, Robert Selby Oakley E. Richey, Elmer Taflinger, Lucy M Taggart, Clifton Wheeler, Hilah Wheeler and Charles Yeager.
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Old Sugar Camp, A. E Wrentmore |
Wrentmore's picture in the 24th annual show is not described in the press at the time. However, we do know that he was also represented in the 25th Indiana Artists exhibit the very next year, 1932, because a photograph of his actual painting (and its reverse side label) can be viewed on Ebay, where the work is offered for sale.
The Old Sugar Camp depicts a winter landscape scene of a rudimentary A-frame shelter at a work site at a wood's edge.
A dormant field stretches beyond the encampment to a faraway white farmhouse on the horizon.
The drab color scheme is the maybe the point of the painting – depicting what? – maple sugaring and a hint of sweet warmth in the dead of winter?
Another painting by A. E. Wrentmore can be found online. (image top of page)
Untitled, it is described as dated (and purchased) 1953, and shows a bend of road or river, you be the judge, in the fall colors of a hilly landscape.
The painting, if the date is accurate, was painted when Wrentmore was past 80 years old, and displays a more dreamy, folky style than the earlier work.
Politics, Painting, Tragedy and Poetry.
Wrentmore was a man of many passions, as newspaper coverage attests over the following decades of his life.
Prohibition Party politics was a focus his entire time in the Indianapolis area. He continued to run unsuccessfully as a candidate for U.S. Senator in 1932, Indiana Secretary of State in 1934, U.S. Congress in 1950 and Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction in both 1956 and 1958. (The last campaign being just one year before his death.)
In the 1940s, Wrentmore's shared passions of politics and painting were joined by poetry.
The Indianapolis Star reports in January 1945 that he gave a talk as a member of a group called The Poet's Rendezvous, to others in the group of 40 poets from counties around Indiana, on “the choice of poetic words.” The same event featured Miss Florence Marie Taylor speaking on “correct rhyming.”
A September gathering of the same group, affiliated with the Indiana Federation of Poetry Clubs, was held at the Indianapolis YMCA, and featured a portrait of the group's president, Miss June Winona Snyder, painted by A. E. Wrentmore.
A later annual convention of the group held that year at the World War Memorial Building in Indianapolis, featured another talk by Wrentmore, titled Sources of Inspiration for Writing Poetry.
That Wrentmore continued painting can be surmised more from public notice columns in the local papers than from seeing examples in exhibitions reported at the time. He rarely is at auction or hanging in museums today.
Wrentmore's death was announced with the obituary on August 13, 1959, mentioned above. He died at his longtime home in Irvington on Ritter Avenue where “he maintained a studio for landscape painting ” according to The Indianapolis Star.
Just a month later, in September, auctioneers L. C. Chandler and Marley Neal would hold a sale of “all oil paintings by Mr. Alson E. Wrentmore, deceased,” along with frames and other furnishings from his studio. The public auction was held September 30, and the terms were cash.
As a historical Irvington footnote, a tragic event in Wrentmore's life is that his daughter would lose her life at the hands of her husband in 1932, around the time of the elder Wrentmore's U.S. Senate campaign and exhibition at the Indiana Artists shows.
Both his daughter and son-in-law were former Irvington residents who had relocated to Illinois to pursue teaching careers.
The sensation of the murder, arrest, trial and sentencing would fill the pages of Illinois and Indiana papers over the following months and year. The effect of such a monstrous occurrence on his art and poetry remains unknown and unreported in public sources of information.
Mark Diekhoff, July 2026
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