Dorothy Morlan with her painting 'The Sentinels,' 1933
Dorothy Morlan in the Early 1930s
The early Depression era years were productive for Dorothy Morlan and the Indianapolis art scene. New annual exhibition opportunities were launched even as established annuals continued. Her thoughts about art were verbalized in several public talks she gave during these years, and noted a shift in her ideas about expression to those of an ideal. The inspiration of an aural and 'musical' landscape and nature grasped her attention during this period as she continued to spend holiday seasons in the fields and by-ways near her Irvington home. An important solo show occurred in 1933 that would showcase her latest and most experimental modernist painting to date, The Marching Tree. Indianapolis' best known art critic, Lucille Morehouse, of The Indianapolis Star, continued to champion Morlan's work, and new writers weighed in as well with new viewpoints and observations.
Words and Pictures, Pictures and Words.
The second annual Irvington Artists exhibit at Carr's Hall on Washington Street was held over a period of just less than two weeks in the waning days of February, 1930. According to The Indianapolis Star on February 24, the exhibit had over two thousand visitors and resulted in the sale of several works by Frederick Polley, Simon Baus, Hilah Wheeler and Clifton Wheeler.
The large exhibit room of 100 feet by 40 feet allowed for 'on the line' hanging of nearly the entire show of works, as opposed to the salon-style cramped groupings seen more commonly in other exhibits.
Morlan's contributions consisted of ten decorative landscapes, mostly large oil paintings and a couple of pastel sketches. She gave a talk as part of the show's run, titled 'Evolution of a Picture.' The Indianapolis Times contained a confusing announcement of the talk that showed her photo and said the artist's talk would be about the movies. The talk was about painted pictures and not moving pictures as confirmed in The Star on February 21 which provided a summary of Morlan's remarks which shed light into her way of working and thinking about paintings, not movies.
Regarding the inception of an idea for a picture, Morlan noted that the enthusiastic suggestion from a friend for a subject or motif will not suffice the artist. She finds that the artist must be sparked by an urge, an awareness or a recognition of a personal, emotional or sensorial nature.
"Often the stimulus to create is stirred by something other than an appeal to the eye. It may be the voice of a bird, the tone of a bell or the ragman's tuneful call in spring. Something of this kind, often found in the most commonplace and unexpected of places, will touch the spring of the artist's imagination and stir the emotion that starts him in a quest of material to express it.”
She expresses her unapologetic approach to landscape,
“...artists represent different types and sources of inspiration. We have the strict realists who take pleasure in depicting plain, cold facts. It is doubtful if the strict realist performs the greatest service in art for it is the personal element in creation that gives it its power. It is the union of realism and idealism that brings forth the most interesting results.”
In September of 1930, The Star reported on how the Irvington Artists spent their summer. William Forsyth traveled out west from the Grand Canyon into Southern California, sketching in paint along the way. His daughter Constance painted at Winona Lake, in Indiana. Clifton Wheeler, in the Colorado Rockies. Simon Baus and his family traveled by automobile on a grand tour of the West, taking the northerly route to the Pacific Northwest and returning the southern route through Taos, New Mexico, where he painted portraits and figure studies with local indigenous people as his subject.
Dorothy Morlan reportedly stayed put near her Irvington home that summer, painting the fields and Pleasant Run.
That fall, The Lafayette Journal and Courier announced that Dorothy Morlan and Star art critic Lucille Morehouse would attend a luncheon given by the Wabash River Sketch club in Attica, Indiana, on October 25. Morlan and Morehouse would give talks and local artists would be presenting work, open to the public to all those interested in art.
A second Irvington Artists exhibit was held in calendar year 1930, in December, in which Dorothy Morlan both displayed pictures and gave a talk about her art beliefs. Her six submitted canvases included the large and striking painting The Marching Tree. According to a December 11 Indianapolis Star article. The picture is described as a striking view of a “valiant tree against a background of sea and stormy sky.” It was inspired by a Tchaikovsky symphony, according to Morlan, amplifying her earlier musings about the inception of art ideas emanating from sonic sources.
The deeply symbolic and abstracted landscape painting, clearly modernist, in now in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields.
Morlan's talk during the exhibit run was called 'Painting as a Language.' Her obsession over the topic of the relation of words and art, art as communication, is evidenced by her increasing number of prepared talks she presented that year. And recall, that her origins as a creator began with her poetry prose in The Indianapolis Journal twenty-eight years prior in 1902. In that writing about the last day of February, she observed her own exaltation with the sights, the colors, the sounds and the dynamic changing sky in the realm of her perception.
In her talk in December 1930, she returned to her current theme, that year, of the contrast of realistic art with an art infused with idealism. In prior years years she spoke of expression as opposed to slavish realism, not idealism. What are we to make of her ideas on idealism? It seems a concept based on groupthink as opposed to the singular psyche. Perhaps by that time, her aspirations trended to a more universal classicism. A capture of a worthiness, a beautiful suchness, based not on the picture's appearance but its meritorious effect. When she was younger she espoused a more experimental and individual 'expression,' whereas now, in later life, having achieved the aim of an art in that modern expressionist style, for some decades by then, she strives yet further, for the communal and lofty goal of some 'ideal.'
Specifically, Morlan is quoted from her talk by Indianapolis Star critic Lucille Morehouse in her December 14, 1930, column as follows,
“...the realist can not hope to create such a lasting impression or make such a wide appeal as those who combine realism and idealism because there is something intangible within us that we long to express, something that casts a sort of radiance over the bare cold facts of existence.”
Another important facet of her talk, summarized in the article, was her discussion of the role of a change of scenery for the artist in search of new inspiration and novel motifs.
Morlan conceded that a change of environment is stimulating to the artist, but further said that “it is not the only dynamic that can stir a painter to action.” Morlan suggested a fresh mental outlook as equally important, thus enabling the artist “ to see with the eyes of imagination.” Morlan cited the examples of Albert P. Ryder and Arthur B. Davies as artists who “painted their dreams, yet gathered their material from the great store of nature.”
There is little critical coverage of Dorothy Morlan the following year, other than a November 30, 1931 Indianapolis Star article that covered the closing of the annual Irvington Artists exhibit. Morlan had six works on display, including four meteorological studies from the sound of their titles; Thunder Caps, Cloud Study, Approaching Storm and After the Rain.
The silver anniversary of the Indiana Artists annual exhibit held at Herron was covered in Lucille Morehouse's April 3, 1932 'In the World of Art' Indianapolis Star column. Morlan was represented by the oil painting Blue Depths.
The same critic covers the 5th iteration of the Irvington Artists exhibit in her December 4, 1932 column. She briefly remarks that Dorothy Morlan was represented by “outstanding work in big decorative landscapes, solemn and impressive for their imaginative design and of brilliant depth and color in blues and greens.”
A Year of Solo Shows.
The year 1933 would mark a year of two important solo shows for Dorothy Morlan. It can be noted that the most widely-used term at the time was still 'one-man' show and would appear often in newspaper coverage.
Reported in The Indianapolis News on March 27, 1933, Morlan's first one-person exhibit of the year occurred at the Woman's Department Club (of Indianapolis), presumably at their clubhouse mansion at the corner of 17th and Merdian streets. Her sixteen oil paintings displayed included several “striking winter scenes for which she is widely known.”
She exhibited a painting as part of the traveling annual Indiana Artists Herron show at Richmond, Indiana's Morton High School building that was reviewed by an unnamed critic in the April 16 Richmond Item newspaper. The reviewer states that the overall exhibit was saved from mediocrity due to the presence of works by William Forsyth, Clifton Wheeler and Dorothy Morlan. Morlan is described as one of Indiana's finest old line artists, and was represented by a painting described as “a tonal study, a large picture, a river scene, an occult canvas in blues and purples which is pitched in a key suggestive of cello.” Further, about the artist, the anonymous admirer says in an outmoded turn of phrase, “Miss Morlan does lovely things and should be seen oftener.”
Morlan's second and perhaps more pivotal solo exhibition occurred in October 1933 as part of a series of 'one-man' shows of Indiana artists at Herron that year.
Lucille Morehouse, always a critical friend of Dorothy Morlan, wrote an extensive column covering the artist's origins and history, the root of inception for her creative impulses, her observations about locale as related to the creative process, and her ultimate artistic aims. All this in addition to the critic's own thoughtful observations about the pictures on display.
The nearly half-page column appeared in the October 22, 1933 Indianapolis Star.
Morlan's art beginnings, as sourced from this article and other newspaper write-ups have appeared already in earlier parts of this Dorothy Morlan series, but there is much new information to be gleaned from the other sections of Morehouse's exhaustive column.
Morlan cites the nature of the artistic impulse when she explains,
“There are many sources capable of stirring the imagination of an artist who uses the material offered by nature to express his own moods and ideas – such as sounds, church bells, the whistle of a train in the far distance, wind in the trees, the rustle of snow against leaves. The fact the thing that stirs the artist to action may be so slight as to be almost indescribable, and yet call forth his greatest power – so that the life of the subjective artist might seem to be almost devoid of outward events and yet, to the artist himself, be full of interest and action.”
Morlan alludes to the interplay of the external and internal worlds of artists when she says,
“The old Dutch artists traveled scarcely at all – yet who has left a richer record of a life experience than Rembrandt? It would not have mattered in the least where he lived. The sources within him, his way of feeling and seeing things, would have resulted in masterpieces anywhere, any time.”
Her artistic aims are explained, in part, when Morlan says,
“Always I have wanted to express space, air, repose...depth, silence, solitude, a feeling of largeness, remoteness. Nature talks to me this way.”
The critic Lucile Morehouse observes about the pictures in general when she writes,
“Certainly in these large creative landscapes, so pregnant with the artist's thought and feeling, one can not but be convinced that Miss Morlan has realized her wish to interpret the solitudes of nature. Not many artists can paint on a canvas of such large dimensions as she uses habitually and cover the wide surface successfully.”
Morehouse attributes the feat to Morlan's mastery and prior practice of painting the large landscape on a small canvas. Indeed, an entire exhibit of such works was shown by Morlan in the frugal aftermath of the world war and covered in detail by her Star art column referenced earlier in this series.
About some individual pictures, Morehouse writes of Through the Trees at Hanover,
“The winding river takes on a pale blue luminous light from the reflected sky. The softly curving line of the river and distant hills is offset by the sturdiness of foreground trees whose trunks and bare branches are of reddish brown hue...the basic truths of form and color are not lacking, but there is no slavish holding to realism...nature lends itself only as a motif for more or less formal design in line an color.”
And about Marching Tree,
“Don't try to make thunder and lightning (as some have done) out of Marching Tree. For those phantom-like lines that cleave the air have nothing to do with storm...”
Morehouse provides perhaps an overly personal interpretation of the meaning of the picture, before she returns her observation to the picture itself, when she writes,
“Don't try to make a realistic landscape out of Marching Tree. It is a typically creative sort of composition. A thing of spirit, tied to earth my material paint and a canvas so that it can be seen by mortal eyes.”
Morehouse experiences the painting's composition of colorful design, greens in the ground and gray in the sky, as musical color fields that inspire reaction and feeling more than any scene actually existing. The writer, with great descriptive detail, summarizes additional canvases in the show, including Hanover Hilltop, November Snow, Solitude and The Pool.
About Into the Sunset, a piece now, from my best guess, is in the permanent collection of the Irvington Historical Society, Morehouse writes,
“...(the painting is an example of) the vigorous way (she) paints when she holds more closely to realism. Hedge rows, angling along sidewalk and back between many closely painted trees, whose branches are low and wide-spreading are partly covered with heavy snow...There is skillful painting of the later afternoon light that sifts through bare tree branches.”
Some of the canvases from this solo show were also included by Dorothy Morlan in the 6th annual Irvington Artists show according to a November 21, 1933 Indianapolis News article.
And a piece not discussed prior, The Sentinels, was shown by Morlan as part of the 2nd annual 'downtown' exhibit on the eighth floor of L.S. Ayers & Company sponsored by the Junior League of Indianapolis. Of the painting, Lucille Morehouse writes in her December 10, 1933 Indianapolis Star column, “(The Sentinels is) a dark-toned landscape with beauty of mood."
Mark Diekhoff, August 2025
