Indiana's Richard Brown Black – Painting by an Artist as a Young Man

Street Scene, Algiers by Richard Brown Black

Orientalism in Indiana.

A painting of glowing mastery and golden beauty hangs in the genealogy room of the Greenfield Public Library. It is an street scene of North Africa, in a late orientalist style that borders on modernism. The vaguely abstract manner of its rendering is evocative of the mystery of its subject matter of faraway daily life. The picture appears created with a level of skill seen by masters of the French genre, Eugene Delacroix and Jean-Leon Gerome. It was a genre that coincided with the more well-known romantic movement that supplanted the neoclassical period dominated by Jacques-Louis David and Jean August Dominique Ingres.

European interest in the 'Orient,' as Egypt and Northern Africa were called at the time, was inspired and began shortly after Napoleon's Egyptian escapades prior to his time as emperor. It would continue throughout the 19th Century.

All that being said, it seems strange to see such an exotic piece hanging outside a museum in a library in the middle of Indiana. Even if it shares space with artworks of or by such local luminaries as painter Will Vawter and poet James Whitcomb Riley.

The artwork hangs in a prominent spot of the history room, treasured under glass, within a sturdy golden frame with an engraved plate reading Street Scene, Algiers,  Richard Brown Black, 1988 – 1915.

Who Was Richard Brown Black?

The first mention of Greenfield, Indiana native Richard Brown Black in Indiana newspapers is the June 24, 1909, Cambridge City Tribune.  His story starts with the news as follows,

“Richard Black, of Greenfield, a talented and successful young artist, who has spent several years abroad in the study of his profession, is here the guest of his relatives, Mr. and Mrs. M. L. Bowmaster.”

The next year, the July 3, 1910, Muncie Star reports, amid a column containing various horrific tragedies reported around the state, a bit of good news from Greenfield,

“Richard Black, whose home is in this city, and who is studying art in Paris, has had the sketch, An Old Fashioned Fireplace accepted for a place in the Paris salon.” 

A few years later, in an article titled 'Recognition as Painter' in the April 1, 1914, Indianapolis News, Black's burgeoning art career is reported,

“Richard Black...who for some years has been an art student in Paris, is receiving substantial recognition as a painter.  He has just sold two canvases exhibited in this year's orientalist salon, one to the French government and one to Georges Leggeus, the well-known French art connoisseur...Mr. Black is only twenty-five years old, and his success is regarded as remarkable. Until recently he had given most of his time and talent to etching.”

His participation in the prestigious annual French exhibition is reported in the April 12, 1914, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette,

“Paris, April 11. – Richard Black, of Indiana, is among the American artists, who have exhibits in the national salon of fine arts, which opens (in Paris, April 12, 1914).”

A year later, Black exhibited in the 8th Annual Indiana Artists show at the Herron Art Institute. His work was reviewed by the art writer, Rena Tucker Kohlmann, in The Indianapolis News,  March 13, 1915,

“Among the younger artists in the state, the work of Richard Black, of Greenfield, is noticeably good. His Street in Algiers is excellent, and his etchings, Grain Market, Lousse and In the Souks – Tunis are interesting notes...”

The Pride of Greenfield.

A palpable city pride for the accomplishment of the young artist is observed in the reporting of the Herron exhibition by the Greenfield Republican, April 1, 1915,

“Those of our citizens who have visited the exhibition of the works of Indiana artists at the Herron Art Institute, at Indianapolis, have been especially interested in the three pictures by Richard Black, of this city. Mr. Black, who has lived abroad many years, is at present ill at his home on Douglas street.

Two of the pictures are etchings of unusual merit, and were in the 1914 salon des Beaux Arts of Paris. The one oil painting is of a distinctive character – a harmonious representation of a street scene in Algiers. This painting was first exhibited in the 1913 salon in Paris and in 1914 it was selected by the Paris jury of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to represent the Paris group of American painters, and was well hung in the Pennsylvania exhibit.

Mr. Black's pictures show that he is a thoroughly equipped artist. In his works, we see picturesque composition, good drawing, exquisite harmony of low-keyed color, and fine technique. Those who have been fortunate enough to see Mr. Black's pictures know how justly proud Greenfield will be of her talented young artist.”

Sadly, within days, and during the run of the exhibition, Richard Brown Black would pass away at his family home in Greenfield, as reported in the April 5, 1915, Greenfield Republican,

“Richard Black, age 26 years, died at 4 o'clock Wednesday morning at the Black home on North Spring street...of tuberculosis, following a long illness. The deceased was born in Greenfield, June 3, 1889, the son of Richard A. and Ione Black. His father, who was a prominent attorney, died in 1900, and a few years later the widow and her children went to Europe where the children were educated.  They lived abroad about twelve years. 

For the past five years Richard A.(sic) Black was a student of art...He spent two years in Africa and painted many views of northern Africa. 

He returned to his home in this city last summer and had been sick since that time. While there had been but little if any hope for his recovery, still his death at this time was unexpected, as he had seemed to be better, especially on Tuesday, and his brother, Thomas, who had been here several days, left at 7 o'clock Tuesday evening for Columbia University, where he is a student. The deceased leaves the mother, one brother, Thomas, and two sisters, Nelle(sic?) Black...and Mrs. Kelsey Flower...”   

The death was also reported April 17, 1915,  by The Indianapolis News,

“Greenfield, Ind., April 7. – Richard B. Black, age twenty-seven, an artist of note, died today at the home of his mother, Mrs. Ione Black, in this city.

Two of his pictures were sold to the French government a year ago, and three are now on exhibition at the Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis...

Mr. Black was in northern Africa two years, and painted many scenes there.

Mr. Black was educated in Germany and Paris, where he spent twelve years. He returned to this city last summer, afflicted with tuberculosis. He was the son of Richard A. Black and was unmarried...”

The Algiers painting's eventual location in the library is explained in a September 2, 1915 article in the Greenfield Republican, 

“An oil painting, the work of the late Richard Brown Black, has been hung in the public library. Mr. Black was born in Greenfield, but spent most of his life in study abroad. He was an artist of rare ability, and had he lived he would have achieved a high place among American artists. His death, which occurred last spring, is greatly to be lamented. The picture which hangs in the library is a street scene in Algiers....

Mr. Black gave the picture to Miss Lizzie Harris, of this city. Because of his esteem for his native city and a desire that his work may be seen and appreciated by the people, Miss Harris has hung it in the library as a memorial to him.”

Although it is not clear from the newspaper articles, one stating an age of 26 years and one 27. If Mr. Black had been born in June 1889 and died in April 1915, he would have been 25.

Posthumous Honor and Family Tragedy.

Ione Brown Black of Greenfield, Indiana,
mother of Richard Brown Black 

Almost a decade later, on August 10, 1922, the Greenfield Republican reported an update regarding the the work of the fallen artist,

“Word has been received here from Mrs. Ione Black, who has made her home for several years in the country around the Mediterranean Sea, that a painting by her son, the late Richard Black, has been given recognition by the French government and is to hang in one of the government buildings until twenty years from the date of Mr. Black's death, when it is to be transferred to the chambers of the Louvre, where it will hang among the works of the greatest artists of Europe and of the world...

One of his best paintings, a North African landscape subject, and very similar to the one honored by the French government, hangs in the local public library, a gift from the family...(the Greenfield library painting) has opportunity to become one of the most highly regarded and prized possessions of the city.”   

In a horrifying turn of events, within a few years, Richard Black's sister Nellie, along with her two young children, would be murdered by her husband, the children's father, in New Orleans. Reported in the May 16, 1925, Indianapolis News, 

“Nellie Black Peckham, who with her two small children, was killed in New Orleans Friday by Professor George W. Peckham, her husband, was the daughter of Alexander and Ione Black of this city. Mr. Black, for many years a prominent attorney of Hancock county, was killed twenty years ago in Indianapolis when he struck a telephone pole while stepping from a moving interurban car.

Mrs. (Black) Peckham, her two children and (Mr.) Peckham were found at the Peckham home in New Orleans, dead of bullet wounds. The coroner decided it was a triple murder and a suicide case. Peckham is said to have been deranged.”

This horrific postscript serves to illustrate the level of tragedy the Black family had suffered for a period of years. But also, adds mystery to the whereabouts of certain artworks by Richard Brown Black.  The Greenfield Daily Reporter ran a similar article, also on May 16, 1925, about the New Orleans killings, and ended with this note,

“While last in Greenfield Mrs. Peckham removed to her home in the South some of the pictures by her brother.”

Additional Biographical Details.

On the occasion of his posthumous participation in a three person art exhibit in 1928 in Richmond, Indiana, additional biographic details of Richard Brown Black are learned. The  March 3, 1928, Richmond Palladium and Sun-Telegram reported,

“An exhibition of oil paintings, watercolors and etchings, the works of Miss Olive Rush of Santa Fe, N. Mex., R.B. Gruelle, one of Indiana's early Hoosier Group, and Richard Brown Black, a young artist who painted during the early part  of the 20th century, will be open to the public ...in the art galleries of Morton high school...

Although just a very young painter when he died, Richard Brown Black, whose collection of oil paintings, etchings and water colors, mostly of foreign subjects, are a part the exhibition...

His oils show his profound feeling for exquisite color harmony. His choice of subject is varied and usually interesting. A delightful crispness prevails in his water colors, many of them preliminary sketches for his oil paintings.

Black was born in Greenfield, Ind. On June 3, 1888. All his art education was obtained in France. In 1903, at the age of 15 he entered the Beaux Arts of Avignon, and remained there for two years. The following year, 1905-1906, he traveled through Spain, Northern Africa and Italy. It was in Rome, in 1906, that he learned to etch. During the year 1906-1907, he was a pupil of Jean-Paul Laurens at the Academie Julien in Paris. After a stay of two years in the United States, he returned to Paris and was admitted at the (Fernand) Cormon studio in the Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts (1909).

Until that time, he had worked only in drawing (charcoal, pencil, pen and ink), water color and etching; it was Cormon who insisted that he had the eye and the manner of an oil painter. The great French master was proud of his 'find,' for he soon considered his American pupil as one, if not the most, promising in his studio. 

After 1911, his health obliged him to live most of the time in Southern France and Northern Africa, where the majority of his work was done. 

Each time he returned to Paris, he showed all the work he done  to Cormon, and the master invariably had nothing but praise. On one occasion, he paid the American artist a compliment that probably was unique to the painter's career. 

'Black,' he said, 'your conception of painting is altogether different from mine, but if I were young, I don't know  but what I'd choose yours.'”  

 A week later on March 10, the same newspaper provided a more detailed review of the show,

“Along the east wall and on panels on the north and south walls are hung the 43 works of art by Richard Black, which is only a small number compared to the many pieces of work he produced before reaching the age of 25 years. One marvels at the quality of painting beautiful warm color harmonies and fine drawing displayed by so young an artist. It is a manifestation of his genius and of what he probably would have achieved had he lived longer.

Upon showing his likeness and aptness in making pictures while a very young boy, Mr. Black's mother became thoroughly interested and consequently, gave him all opportunities and advantages of the best art schools and masters of painting in France. He was a consistent and rapid worker, always well liked by his associates and made great progress in his art expression.

Practically all the paintings and etchings of R. B. Black are in New York, and with two exceptions, the present exhibit contains only work that was left in his Greenfield studio...(the exceptions) The Port of Algiers...was in the Salon des Orientalistes of 1914. Later it was informally accepted by the late Leonce Benedite, curator of the Luxembourgh museum, to be added to the American School in the gallery.  His Street in Algiers...was in the Paris Salon of 1913...”   

A complete and invaluably list of the Richard Black works in the exhibition is included in the March 24, 1928 coverage of the exhibit in The Indianapolis Star. Of particular note are the oil paintings, reported in the art column as follows; Portrait, Gaby, Louise, Vaison - France, Fruit Merchant – Tunis, Constantine, Port of Algiers and Street in Algiers (the Greenfield library painting).

Although his life was cut short by illness and death, the sublime vision of Richard Brown Black lives on, in a painting of stunning beauty in central Indiana. He, and his painting, the color of perpetual sun.

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025  

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Dorothy Morlan in the Late 1930s – Indiana's First Modernist Painter, Part 5

Dorothy Morlan in the Mid to Late '30s 

Art's Flow Through Time.

As the years of the decade of the Great Depression marched on, the art world in the United States and Indiana would transform from romantic or academic realism, American impressionism, and the modernist first expressions and urban realism of the Ashcan School toward new visions. A new art, with new methods and aspirations, and state-sponsored, at times, under Roosevelt's New Deal programs to combat poverty and unemployment. 

Artworks depicting rural social utopias, on the one hand, and grittier urban scenes that celebrated work and endurance, on the other. There was an idealization of work and land in art, perhaps due to the scarcity of soil and employment in the real world of dust bowl erosion and chronic joblessness. Artworks of starving desire, of shortages fulfilled, almost propaganda, like future television ads or Instagram feeds –  sumptuous still life cornucopias offered for the eager eyes of hungry hearts. 

Although Dorothy Morlan remained largely untouched by the new movements in art, many Indiana artists a half-generation her junior embraced the trends in Social Realism and the American Scene.  Artists such as Cecil Head, Edmund Brucker, Florence Bartley Smithburn, Floyd Hopper and E. Roger Frey were in this group of artists. William Edouard Scott, a contemporary of Morlan's with Indiana roots, had a style that changed over the years, and he adopted the new trend of social scene painting in the 1930s.

As described in the last part of this series, Morlan alluded to the 'ideal' in her talks about art in the early years of  '30s, despite her dedication to, almost deification of, a more personal expression.  It was as if she caught wind of the new communal wind blowing, whether or not it would carry her away.

Her journey, through her skies, across her vast fields, was a soulful search, a pilgrim's trek, not for the basics of life like farm and food, home and hearth, production and profit, but something much deeper, more spiritual, inexplicable and mysterious. Her personal path would carry on. 

In the mid '30s, Irvington and Indiana art icon William Forsyth would pass away. Within a couple years, the Irvington Artists annual show would also end. Morlan's participation in art exhibitions and interesting new shows would continue tirelessly as the 1930s ended and the winds of a new war blew ever closer to our shores.  Far-off vistas and mountain views would call to Morlan by decade's end as her paintings of the Colorado Rockies and English Isles attest.

Demise of an Art Instructor and the End of the Irvington Artists Annual.

William Forsyth and Dorothy Morlan each produced a landscape painting deemed “outstanding” by Indianapolis Star critic Lucille Morehouse in her March 18, 1934 'In the World of Art' column.  Exhibited in the 27th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron, the pictures were Waterside by Forsyth and Frosty Morning by Morlan.

About William Forsyth, one of Dorothy Morlan's most influential teachers and a neighborhood mentor to her for many years, Lucille Morehouse writes,

“(Waterside is) brilliantly executed and characterized by poetic feeling and charm. High in key, this picture of mirror-like bit of lake, reflecting color from sunny cottages and moored rowboats, a balancing element of strength in the sturdy-trunked old willows, might be regarded as typical of Mr. Forsyth in his most joyous moods.”

One is happy to hear reported the happy effect of the painting from an artist suffering through hardships over the past few years.  According to the book The Herron Chronicle, 2003, things took a turn for Forsyth, beginning in 1933, when he lost his job teaching at Herron after 42 years.  And at age 78, in the days before Social Security or retirement pensions, the aging artist found it necessary to apply for government aid under the federally funded Public Works of Art (P.W.A.) project. Health failing, his final works of art would be funded by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, a program designed for artists in the most dire need of assistance.

On Morlan's picture Frosty Morning, Morehouse writes about the artist's by-now familiar motif,

“(Frosty Morning is) a wide view of river valley with distant curve of the Ohio, seen in the misty gray-violet light of early dawn.”

That year, both Forsyth and Morlan created works funded by the P.W.A. and which were included in a national exhibition of such works at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. 

Reported in The Indianapolis News on April 30, 1934. Forsyth's contribution was a decorative landscape in tempura intended for the reception room at the Indiana State Library.  Morlan's painting was the oil, Ohio River from Hanover, created for the Manual Training High School library. A young artist who would make his name as an 'Indiana scene' painter, Cecil Head, also had a picture in the show, the oil on canvas Canal Boat (Wabash and Erie Canal).   

Months after, the annual Irvington Artists exhibition at Carr's Hall recurred in late 1934.  

In her December 16 column in The Indianapolis Star, Lucille Morehouse covers the work of Simon P. Baus and Dorothy Morlan extensively. There was a full wall of Forsyths in the show, the most recent of which were in tempura, a medium the aged Hoosier master was using for his W.P.A projects. The Forsyth works were covered in the Star column by the writer a week before on December 10. Morehouse remarks that the Irvington Artists show was practically a group of solo shows under one roof, as several artists were allotted substantial wall space for a large grouping of works, 8-12 each. 

In the December 16th article, Morehouse describes a Baus figurative composition Pueblo Gossips as “three small (indigenous American) figures, brightly blanketed, (who) give color to a background of adobe wall.”  

And of Morlan, Morehouse writes, in part,

“Midwinter...impresses me as one of the finest landscapes from the brush of this artist who paints realism in such way that there is a close union between reality and imagination....There is nothing fantastic or fanciful. But there is an imaginative interpretation of the solemnity, the tranquility, the majesty of nature; an interpretation of the grandeur of our hill fields when locked in the snows of winter – a grandeur which influences powerfully without approaching the dramatic.”

You get the impression Lucille Morehouse really enjoys and understands Morlan's work. About the canvas Spring in Town, Morehouse observes,

“Spring in Town,  an interpretation in lighter mood, painted in front of the new State Library, looking across the State-house grounds. But the locality only suggested a motive. Imagination did the rest. The distant office buildings might be marble palaces.”

Retreat of Autumn, Old Elm in Winter, Harmony in Blue, Skyline From the Cold Spring Road,  and Near Rockville are listed as additional works by Morlan in the show.

Just one year later, by the time of the 8th Annual Irvington Artists show in December 1935, William Forsyth would be dead.  The last surviving member of the Hoosier Group had succumbed to kidney failure on March 29, 1935. He had been ailing since a prior heart attack about one year earlier.

Lucille Morehouse covers the exhibition in her December 15 Star column. A special hanging of 21 paintings by Forsyth took up the same entire wall as the year before. The memorial included early paintings from the Munich years, a self-portrait (then owed by the Irvington Union of Clubs) – floral pictures in oil and watercolor – and the main bulk,  his Indiana landscapes. Three of the Hoosier pictures, given their titles, were Down at Connorsville, Hills of Morgan and Along Pleasant Run. 

Morlan was in the overall show with her fellow Irvingtonians, which included a newcomer, William Kaeser.  Morlan was  represented by five works, including the interestingly titled The Plough Handle, a large Ohio River landscape of a view near Hanover (possibly Logan's Point), and the additional works Silhouette in Gray, The Cloud, Winter Sketch and Thunderheads.

A year following, in the December 6, 1936 Indianapolis Star, Lucille Morehouse reports that the current 9th Annual Irvington Artists exhibition was held, not on the second floor of Carr Hall on Washington Street, as in prior years, but in a series of artist studio open house locations spread over Irvington. The innovation, inspired by similar open studios events by the artists in Brown County, Indiana, was not expected to be a permanent change, but rather a change of scenery, perhaps after the death of William Forsyth a year earlier, and the loss of several of the Irvington group artists who had moved away for one reason or another. The list of artists who relocated away from Irvington over the past year included Frederick Polley, Martha Lee Frost and Carolyn Bradley.

The novel presentation would allow for more informal interaction between artist and public and allow a peek behind the curtain of the creation process by laying the studio confines bare.  Transportation between the locations by lent automobiles was arranged to shuttle persons around the various studio homes.

Dorothy Morlan's studio on Lowell east of Arlington, would host her work and that of painter Simon P. Baus. The Wheelers, Clifton and Hilah, along with Robert Craig, would be showing at the Wheeler home, also on Lowell, but west of Ritter. William Kaeser would show his work at his Emerson Avenue home. Constance Forsyth, at her home (and that of her late father), at the corner of Emerson and Washington, would show her work, and that of Robert Selby and Helene Hibben. Charles G. Yeager would host his own work and a sculptural grouping by Paul Baus (so of Simon) at his studio on Campbell Avenue.

In an unnamed review of the show in the December 13, 1936, Indianapolis Star, a thoughtful writer, possible Lucille Morehouse, provides a detailed summary of the open studio event, with her added suggestion of the most efficient route of travel among the studios.

The first stop is Morlan's two-room studio, situated in the side yard just east of the family home on Lowell Avenue. The cottage studio, in it park-like setting of mature shade trees, had a gallery-like  entry room and a back studio work room.  In the entry area, eight paintings by Simon P. Baus were arranged, including in the most prominent spot, the large Portrait of Grace Julian Clarke, a work that was a recent prize-winner from the L. S. Ayers 'downtown' exhibit. Baus had additional works of various subjects, including landscapes, most notable a large mountain scene called Near Estes Park, some floral pictures and additional portraits including one called Taos Indian.

For her part, in the work room, Morlan exhibited several large landscapes from earlier years, included two views of the Maine coast, her Old Mills piece painted near Philadelphia, highlighted earlier in this series, and several Southern Indiana views of the Ohio River. 

A recently painted river view, the large 32 inch by 42 inch canvas Symphony in Gray and Green was included, and described in detail,

“...an Ohio River landscape subject, an interpretation of November in which clumps of dark green evergreens, the green of alfalfa fields, and dark olive green of fields in the foreground, together with silvery sky and water and bits of melting snow suggest the title...”

 A year later, the 10th Annual Irvington Artists exhibit returned to Carr hall for exhibition. Dorothy Morlan's contributions were primarily new mountain scenes created from sketches or completed plein air in the Rocky Mountains in the preceding months. Although not noted, perhaps not known, at the time, it would be the last of the annual shows of the group of artists that would later be called the Irvington Group. Perhaps due in part to loss of the indomitable William Forsyth, or the continuing economic strains of the Great Depression, or whatever combination of changes in the personal circumstances of the various artists, the once popular annual event would end after ten years.  

Lucille Morehouse's December 5, 1937, Indianapolis Star column on the day of the show's closing, describes Morlan's mountain pictures,

“July in Estes Park, one of Miss Morlan's most beautiful mountain scenes, is a good example of cloud-patterned mountain slopes. Glade in the Rockies, with its slender white trunks of aspens outlined against the almost perpendicular mountain walls, is an effective bit of mountain painting.”

Morehouse notes that the largest of the paintings, A Mountain Tarn, was painted on location in the Rockies as opposed to in studio later, from sketches.  Regarding the mysterious title, 'tarn' is a variation of an old Norse word that describes a small lake or pool in the mountains, formed in a glacially-carved hollow.

Interesting One-Off Shows.

During the mid to latter '30s, several start-up and pop-up art exhibitions debuted in Indianapolis. The shows covered the range of current styles practiced by local artists, including realist/academic, impressionist, modernist/expressionist and the newer social scene schools. Dorothy Morlan participated in many of these exhibits.

In February of 1935, Emmerich Manual Training High School celebrated its 40th anniversary with an exhibition of artworks consisting of three parts; student class works preserved over the years, works by  leading artists in the school's collection that had been either acquired by outgoing graduating classes of students or donated by the artists themselves, and finally art works on loan for the show from alumni of the school. 

Noteworthy portraits in the show included a painting of Otto Stark, a beloved early art instructor at the school by Wayman Adams, and a large canvas of school namesake, Charles E. Emmerich, by T.C. Steele, a mainstay on the walls of the school library for many years.

Dorothy Morlan's contribution was a recent landscape painted near Madison, Indiana, now in the school's permanent collection, that had been created under the previously mentioned New Deal art project and Corcoran exhibit.

Lucille Morehouse wrote about the Manual event in her February 21, 1935 Star column,  and discussed another painting of note in the exhibit – the most-recent donation to the school's collection (presented on the date of the 40th anniversary) – the  John Hardrick canvas Among the Vines. The painting had been acquired by an African-American alumni group of Manual High School and depicted a girl, dressed in red, in a setting of vines and red berries. 

The painting has been recently seen in the 2025 exhibit John Wesley Hardrick –  Through the Eyes of an Artist show at the Indiana State Museum. The painting, one and the same I believe,  with the currently titled Little Brown Girl, in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. It hangs currently, as of this writing, on view in a public gallery of the museum.

Of side note to Morlan's federal work project canvas noted in the Manual exhibit, was her contribution to the 28th Indiana Artists exhibition at Herron, and mentioned by Lucille Morehouse in her March 17, 1935, newspaper column.  Morehouse described the painting as a, “big, sober composition dominated by long, shed-like buildings whose roofs are whitened by a light fall of snow.” The piece called Civilian Conservation Camp draws further emphasis of Morlan's, and other artists, output tied to the W.P.A. Projects at the time.

An interesting one-week show was previewed by Lucille Morehouse in her October 7, 1935 Indianapolis Star column. The Street Art Exhibit would showcase works by many local artists in the storefront windows of participating business along Pennsylvania Street from 16th Street to Washington Street. As part of the overall show, an additional display of works by women artists would be held at 333 Pennsylvania at the Architects and Builders building. Dual in nature, the women artists show would have both living artists and deceased artists represented in a memorial of gathered works. 

Artists of the Irvington and Brown County groups would be represented in the shows, as well as other artists in the Indianapolis area. Participants would include Irvingtonians Dorothy Morlan, Simon P. Baus, Constance Forsyth and Frederick Polley – Brown County artists Dale Bessire, Carl C. Graf, Marie Goth and V. J. Cariani – and Indianapolis artists Cecil Head, John Wesley Hardrick, Gordon Mess and Elmer Taflinger – just to name a few of the over eighty participants. 

The following year, a reactionary show was organized when a large group of artists, regularly appearing  and even receiving awards in local exhibits, were shut out of what was arguable the city's keystone exhibit, the 29th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron. In response, the Rejection Exhibit, was organized by Damian Lyman of Lyman's Fireside Gallery of Indianapolis. The show was open only to artists whose entire submitted works were rejected by the jurors of the Herron show.  There were an unusual number of artists so affected that year, and so the show was mounted, similar to others around the country of late, and perhaps inspired by the original Salon de Refuses in Paris many decades prior when avant-garde artists created their own scene after being snubbed by the officially-sanctioned, academically-oriented Paris Salon.

Of all artists in the Rejection show at Lyman's, two of Dorothy Morlan's paintings were on the receiving end of a bit of critical punditry by a writer named Anton Scherrer regarding the Rejection Show, when he says of Morlan's pictures at Lyman Gallery,

“Walter Pater, (a 19th Century British art and literary critic) in his most oracular mood, once wrote an essay to the curious text that all art aspires to the condition of music. We were reminded of it the other day at the Lyman Gallery when we saw Dorothy Morlan's picture labeled 'Maestoso.'  Miss Morlan picks names like 'Maestoso' and 'Largo' to drive home her point. It isn't necessary. We caught on right away. 

Like music, Miss Morlan's art is curiously devoid of substance, but it has the stuff of which dreams are made. And dreams, no matter what materialists may say, are more than intangible emotions. Given definite direction they may turn out to be the art of Albert Ryder and Augustus Tack and, maybe, of Dorothy Morlan, too.

If Miss Morlan's pictures were entirely successful, their importance could scarcely be overestimated. They are by no means entirely successful – not yet, anyway. We are still too conscious of paint. But they have their appeal and it is those who believe with Browning that 'a man's reach should exceed his grasp.' ”   

About the same two paintings, Lucille Morehouse wrote in her column in The Indianapolis Star a few day earlier on March 29, 

“Dorothy Morlan's large decorative landscape – unusual because of its rhythmical as well as imaginative quality, and its harmony of dark green tones – has been displayed before under the title Marching Tree.

When Miss Morlan entered the canvas this year, she gave it a musical title Maestoso. (meaning performed in a majestic manner). Her other rejected canvas, displayed...at Lyman's, was also an interpretation of a movement in music and was entitled Largo.” 

Morehouse adds about Morlan, generally, as pertains to her snubbing by the two New York artists who made up the jury that rejected her work from the Indiana Artists show, 

“Miss Morlan is enough of a philosopher – and also has enough sense of humor, along with good sound sense – not to let one turn-down or even a dozen turn-downs by a jury turn her aside from a definite course in her career.”

Morlan was joined in the reject pile, most notably, by Simon P. Baus and Marie Goth, the entirety of whose submissions were also passed-by at the Indiana Artists show.

In another special show, in honor of the nationally celebrated Art Week, 1938, an exhibition of self-portraits by Indiana artists was shown at Herron the first week of November that year. According to Lucille Morehouse in her October 10, 1938, Star column, artists scheduled to participate included Dorothy Morlan, John Hardrick, Wayman Adams, Edmund Brucker, Cecil Head, Oakley Ritchey, Marie Goth, Constance Forsyth and others, 49 in total.

In a review of the show a couple of weeks later, Lucille Morehouse does not mention Dorothy Morlan as participating. The actual number of artists appearing was 43, so Morlan may have been among the six missing artists. It would not be surprising if she had second thoughts, given the entirety of her mature work was in landscape.

Morehouse cites John Hardrick's self-portrait as perhaps the best of the bunch. She also gives Earl Beyer a nod for most original picture with his innovative composition of a round shaving mirror that reflects his upper face, and a still-life of foam, razor and brush hinting at the rest.  

Far Afield – Colorado Rockies and British Isles.

Over the 1930s, many Indiana artists traveled to and painted the Colorado Rockies as can been noted in picture titles mentioned earlier in this series. The vicinity of Estes Park, in particular, was an artists' hub. Dorothy Morlan would begin spending considerable time in those mountains, and in painting them back home, as the decade came to a close. Her working travels would also take her to England around this time.

She had a small mountain painting, Glade in the Rockies, included in the 31st Annual Indiana Artists show at Herron in March 1938. 

In an exhaustive column appearing July 16, 1939 in The Star, Lucille Morehouse discusses Dorothy Morlan's recent mountain paintings. The artist spent four months in Colorado in 1937, sketching many scenes to be used as basis of the new oil paintings created in her Irvington studio.

Of Morlan as a mountain painter, Lucille Morehouse writes,

“Her mountains have an enduring permanency ...solidly constructed...with a realistic significance that is true to nature. An additional spiritual quality is an attribute that is interpreted with both force and gentleness.”

Morehouse describes three paintings in specific detail. Everlasting Hills, a picture with a Biblical title found in the Book of Psalms, portrays the forms, color and magnificence of the Rockies.  High Meadows in the Rockies is a large horizontal canvas, 30 x 42 inches, while Tarn in the Rockies is a vertically upright composition, a bit smaller, decorative in design, showing the mountain pond, a dark blue green, extending from side to side in the picture, topped by a treeline of evergreen, and capped by distant mountain peaks in gray-violet. The decorative nature of the painting, as noted by Morehouse, is emphasized by the placement of foreground tree branches stretching over a turquoise sky.  

The art writer also emphasizes the musical quality of Morlan's mountain work, a tune sung by Morehouse and other critics in prior observations of the painter's expressive and lyrical landscapes. She says generally about the work, 

“The lover of music will find in almost every one of Dorothy Morlan's landscapes a feeling for music – such is the rhythm and harmony with which she composes when working in form and color.”

And in particular about High Meadows in the Rockies, 

“As the eye comes back to the foreground, after dwelling upon the delicate tints and undulating forms of the middle distance and the distance, the contrast is like a clash of cymbals and blare of trumpets following the soft liquid notes of the wood-winds in orchestral music.”

Lucille Morehouse seems caught in a lofty, Wagnerian revelry when discussing Morlan's Rocky Mountain highs.

Morehouse also reports Dorothy Morlan followed her summer in Colorado with one in the British Isles the following year. She made many charcoal sketches on locations and was beginning to use them as basis for a new body of landscape works at home. One such finished paining, Evening. Isle of Skye was reproduced as part of the Star article. 

The greatest decade of the Great Depression comes to an end with Dorothy Morlan hitting a high note. What portends the artist and the world in the decade to follow, fate would decide, and will be discussed in the final part of this series on Indiana's first modernist painter.

Mark Diekhoff, August 2025

 

Dorothy Morlan in the Early 1930s - Indiana's First Modernist Painter, Part 4

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

Dorothy Morlan in the 1910s – Indiana's First Modernist Painter, Part 2

Dorothy Morlan in the 1910s

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

Irvington Historical Society

The Hermitage - Brookville, Indiana