Ruthven Byrum – An Anderson Artist's Formative Years

Ruthven Holmes Byrum as a young man

Idyllic Adventures of an Artistic Boy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In The Anderson Herald,

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

And in The Indianapolis Star, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Study at the Chicago Art Institute and First Exhibits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On a Bigger Stage.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And about landscape,

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

She sums up her thoughts and first impressions,

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

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

Autumn on the White River, Ruthven Byrum

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apple Blossoms, Ruthven Byrum

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

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

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

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

Glacier Laker, Ruthven Byrum

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

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

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

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

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

She then describes portions of the picture,

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

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

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

 

The End of the Beginning.

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

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

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

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

Mark Diekhoff, December 2025

Lake and Mountains, Ruthven Byrum, AWI Collection

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

Art Collection of Irvington Historical Society

Self Portrait by William F. Kaeser

Exhibit of Artworks from the Irvington Historical Society Collection

Currently at the Bona Thompson Center, is the exhibit An Artistic Legacy: Selections from the Irvington Historical Society Collection.  The show presents a selection of artworks from its permanent collection or on loan. 

The show coincides with the concurrent exhibit The Lost Photographs of Osbert Sumner, which continues at the same location.

Works include historic examples by members of the Irvington Group which was active from 1928 through 1937, and noteworthy pieces by more recent and contemporary artists, most with strong ties to Irvington.

Installation view detail from An Artistic Legacy show,
including Dorothy Morlan's Grey Landscape, far left

A wonderful Dorothy Morlan painting, of what may be a bend of the Ohio River, shows a bluff above a couple of cottage roofs, covered in snow, looking down over a vast river valley. The picture, Grey Landscape in this hanging, is called In the Valley (Harmony in Gray), 1933, in the book Skirting the Issue by Newton and Weiss. It is indeed musical in its interplay of varying shades of blue and gray, from very light in the skies and on the water, to more medium gray in the distant river banks, and finally a turquoise in the foreground that hosts a few thin trees that cling to a few leaves on the uppermost tips of their branches. The artist was painting near the Ohio in this period, as her Through the Trees Near Hanover appeared in the 36th Annual Indiana Artists exhibit at the Richmond (IN) Art Museum in 1934.

There are two portraits of Irvington Group painter William Kaeser. One is his own Self Portrait, c. 1960, showing him at middle age, graying hair, smoking a pipe wearing a gray cardigan sweater. The canvas is brightened and its mood enlivened by the bright orange shirt he wears, and the way it plays off the small painting's teal background. Most known for his early social realistic landscapes and circus motifs, the portrait displays his sure and fluid handling of paint, where his transitions from light to shade appear skillfully executed by his touch.

Portrait of William Kaeser by Cecil Head

The second Portrait of William Kaeser, c. 1940. is by Cecil Head. Although Head did not exhibit in the Irvington Group shows, the Whiteland artist had a long association with Kaeser. They shared studio space, along with Indianapolis artist Floyd Hopper, in downtown Indianapolis on Market Street in their early days in the 1930s, and continued to exhibit together in their final years some forty years later, in a group they called The Five. 

Head's portrait shows Kaeser nearly life-size, as a young artist smoking a pipe. The play of light and shadow seems the primary study of the painting, with Kaeser's white shirt collar, the side of his neck and face and the glint off the stem of the pipe catching the brightest attention of the artist's brush. Kaeser's face, turned away, is lost in the shadow of the dark surrounding background. The portrait is similar to a self portrait by Head, and a portrait of he did of Hopper, from the same period, both exhibited decades later at the Southside Art League.

Sycamores on West Farm by Frederick Polley

Another Irvington Group artist, Frederick Polley, is well represented in the show, with three works of three varying media; painting, etching and drawing. The artist revealed his own art origins in a 1920s newspaper article that was profusely illustrated with many of his etchings. Working as a telegraph operator in a small Illinois town, he observed an artist, new to town, sketching various buildings for a feature in the newspaper. He was inspired to try his hand at sketching and found that he had talent for drawing buildings. It was a discovery and a passion that would lead to his own career in future years, when he provided etchings and drawings to be published in the Indianapolis Sunday Star across from the editorial page, for years.

In this exhibit, his colorful oil painting, Sycamores on West Farm, is first to capture one's attention with its color. The autumn scene is of a rolling slope of foreground, so often seen with him, and in this picture, a retreating row of sycamores. The gleaming white bark is bright in sunshine, amid an otherwise warm study of the fading colors as summer turns to winter. Tan and beige ground, some final yellow leaves, brown shadows and dark orange treelines in the hazy gray distance.

Polley's etching, Getting Out in the Country, c. 1927, was one his works that appeared in the Sunday Star.  There is a poetry to his composition of a towering, almost foreboding, tree on one side, mirrored by its diminutive twin on the other, in the deep, receding perspective. Between the two, the tiny hamlet of a farm –  house, barn, shade tree and split rail fence –  that huddles beneath the open expanse of open sky.  The etching portrays the same rolling topography that is familiar in many Polleys, with the massive foreground tree atop a grassy rise that plunges the eye toward the more distant and detailed narrative of the homestead at the center the piece. 

 

The Ice House, Irvington by William Lawson

A current view of Irvington, by a current resident artist, is seen in the oil painting The Ice House, Irvington, 2019, by William Lawson.  Born in Indianapolis, he studied at Herron, and currently maintains a studio on an upper floor of the historic drug store building at the intersection of Bonna and Audubon. Lawson has been painting in Irvington since his return to Indiana in 2018 after living and painting in Seattle, Washington for a number of years.

Lawson paints his Ice House, not from Ritter Avenue facing the street, but from the other side, along the railroad tracks behind the building. He often finds points of interest off the beaten track as his many paintings of the city's alleyways attest.  Views aside railroad tracks are also recur in works by this artist over the years. The light of early spring is captured as it shines on the simple, harmonious color of the scene.  The red block tower contrasts with the emerging grass. The precise stiffness of the telephone poles and roof-lines is softened by the thin billow of clouds, the fuzzy treeline in the distance and the dusty gravel along the tracks.  An old tire and other litter are not unsightly, but noteworthy to his brush. The railroad tracks do not escape, but run through. They seem to summon somewhere. Either direction, come or go, something else to see.

North Arlington Avenue at Pleasant Run by Rachel May Blount Conner

Perhaps the oldest painting of the neighborhood in the collection is Rachel May Blount Conner's North Arlington Avenue Bridge at Pleasant Run, 1885. The rustic scene, painted in a self-taught folk art style, may first appear alien to any current views at that location.  But walks along the creek in the area of Pleasant Run Golf Course do show the similar details of exposed tree roots along the washed away creek-side and eroded walls on steep inclines beside the water. The open green surrounded by trees like in her painting still exist in the southern edge of the golf course today.  The main interest in the painting is its capture of the rudimentary bridge and its stone block abutments at either end that traversed the creek at that time.

The Bona Thompson Center by Ginny Taylor Rosner

The Bona Thompson Center, 2007, a gum bichromate photograph on Lanaquarelle paper by Ginny Taylor Rosner was part of a series of works created of Irvington landmarks for the former Legends Restaurant. The work, abstracted by its extreme close up presentation, shows vines growing up the side of the building and is a study in cream yellow and green.  

Robert Selby's 1929, The Forsyth's Backyard is wildly painted with expressive slashing strokes. The picture captures the spring season with pink blossoming trees and bright new leaves. Selby exhibited with the Irvington Group, and was son-in-law to William Forsyth and brother-in-law to Constance Forsyth, both of whom are also represented in this show. The Backyard is of the Forsyth home at the corner of Washington Street and Emerson Avenue, which is the location of a gas station today.

The exhibit also contains work by three other Irvington Group members, all watercolor landscapes. Clifton Wheeler's Hillside with Cabin, Hilah Drake Wheeler's Devil's Gultch – Estes Park,  and Charles George Yeager's Untitled view of a village beside a lake surrounded by rocky hills.

Benton House by Kathleen Biale

The exhibited collection also includes works by Harry Davis, John Wesley Hardrick, Florence Bartley Smithburn, Patte Owings, James Lynch, E. Roger Frey, Kathleen Biale, Phyllis Zimmerman, and Carl Zimmerman. and continues through the end of the year.  

Mark Diekhoff, November 2025

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

John Wesley Hardrick – 'Through the Eyes of an Artist' at The Indiana State Museum

A Thousand Words on John Wesley Hardrick.

 

John Wesley Hardrick at Indiana State Museum

Interesting works by John Wesley Hardrick have popped up at auction in Indianapolis over the past several years. Knowing little about the artist I was happy to come across notice of his Indiana State Museum exhibit shortly before its end June 29.  

The show's  arrangement is both beautiful and thoughtful. Paintings, both large and small, grouped in a way to tell the story of Hardrick's long life in dedication to his art.  Its title promises a showcase of the vision of the artist. It actually delivers so much more. Not only the amazing sights captured in his paintings, but also an insightful revelation of his person. 

John Wesley Hardrick "Through the Eyes of an Artist"
Indiana State Museum, left to right - Thou Good and Faithful Servant 1930, Portrait of Irvena Harvey Ming 1929, Going Fishing c. 1940s, Hay Wagon on the Farm 1935, and Hale Woodruff's 1960s Unknown Title landscape

 

Innovative Eyes, Virtuoso Touch.

We see in his landscapes that Hardrick developed his own vocabulary for color. For me, it's as if he saw the world, not color blind or predefined by tradition, but color enhanced, as if pulsating with some magical lifeblood.  His palette seems to includes hues not only on our own visible spectrum, but maybe infrared or ultraviolet too.  The dark brown of his exposed board support (he rarely paints on canvas in the show), the deep navy blue of the shadow of trees and foliage. His areas of brightest light are green – a neon in the trees, caused by the mixing those dark blue shadows and yellow he used as highlights. It dazzles, its mixing, as if charged by electricity. Overhead, his clouds with patches of sea green, caused, again by his melding the same colors, but diluted with white, more subdued, less charged, more ethereal like the sky. 

detail Hay Wagon on the Farm, John Wesley Hardrick

By varying the tone of these colors from foreground to deepest distance, his enlivens his landscapes with tangible depth.  Follow your eyes, you can walk right into them.  

And the path is often clear. It's right down the middle. For Hardrick also has a signature preference in landscape composition that deviates noticeably from the classic golden ratio seen in tradition. At least in many of his paintings in this show. Like a stage play before our eyes, his scene is flanked and curtained in a balance on either side, with an action that opens in the center. It engages like a soft subliminal vortex, to draw the eye in. 

This is demonstrated by comparing the famous John Constable painting, The Hay Wain, 1821, which uses the classic golden rules methods to meander the view from side to side and front to back across its image. You see Constable's wagon at first glance, but are quickly drawn away down the road and along the stream, back and forth, in a zigzag to the depths of the painting. This traditional composition is also seen in the late landscape painted by Hale Woodruff, (Title Unknown), c. 1960s that hangs in Hardwick's show.  Woodruff's cottages in the lower left draw you into a bright center, that pulls back toward a bright pink, and finally back again to a golden distance.  

Woodruff, most known for his late 1930s Amistad murals in the Talladega College library, shared space with Hardrick and they advertised art lessons when their paths crossed in Indianapolis back in the late '20s. 

Hardrick's Hay Wagon on the Farm, 1935, parts a sea of trees like Moses to reveal a hay wagon and worker, not to grab at attention, but as a main event. You bask in its central scene. The yellow glow of noonday hay, a horse whose only respite is its own cast shadow. The hardworking man and his pitchfork has no shelter from the sun. The American Scene, the regionalist ethos of dignity, labor and the common man, but with Hardrick's unique romantic touch and perspective.

Hay Wagon on the Farm, John Wesley Hardrick

Additional landscapes in the show have this centralized composition as well, such as Winter River and Cabins with a sapphire creek ripping a glacial crevasse through the center of the picture. And Salt Lick Creek, in which the endless days of summer seem to live in youthful splendor beyond the red autumnal leaves at each side. In the center, as if to reiterate the impression, not a hint of leaves changing color are reflected on the eternal river's sheen.  

Winter River and Cabins, John Wesley Hardrick

 Blue Lagoon, 1935, again, has a systematic up/down, left/right balance that leads to the exact center of the picture. The shade ends there, as does the mere reflection of sky upon the water. A sun dazzled beach at the end of the lagoon. There is something sublime, something Caspar David Friedrich, about being placed at the epicenter of numinous beauty. 

Similarly, in (Title Unknown) Waterfall with Figures, an immense, powerful waterfall dominates the center of the picture, craggy rocks shore at the sides. A tiny group of figures are so infinitesimal in the composition, they are nearly lost in the  spectacle of water.  Effortless, casual strokes sketch in three anatomically precise people, amazing in their two-tone simplicity. The artist's secure feel for his brush is evident in his brushwork. And while your eyes are honed in, look up the river. There is nothing smaller than infinitesimal except for the second group of figures way down the way. Impeccably painted. See, people gather, then they gather again, in groups of three, visual echos, in a Mandelbrot journey up the river of life. Or maybe just a great fishing spot Hardrick happened upon. But it's hard to imagine catching anything with a current running so fast. Other than what Hardrick caught in his untitled painting– a tour de force of a view.  

detail (Title Unknown) Waterfall with Figures, John Wesley Hardrick

Handshakes, Hugs, and a Heart for Heavy Lifting.

The portraits, the people pictures by Hardwick in the exhibit show not only a variety of sitters and situations, but also serve as insightful snapshots of aspects of the artist himself. The show's curator has accomplished a wonderful narrative in the placement of the paintings. 

We see in them, the ever story of Hardrick's love of family and community, his faith, even pastimes he enjoyed. And the broad societal milieu that opened up to him as a gifted artist, that likely would have remained out of reach to a taxi cab driver, which he was as well at times, to put food on the table. 

Hardrick was not your everyday cabbie, though.  In a world of interesting people and wondrous sights, he was an artist-injected one. Sketchbook with him, equipped and ready to transcend the daily grind, and capture quick portraits of passengers or landscape motifs that caught his attention along the way between fares.

We see in Indianapolis Street Scene such a sight.  As if caught from his taxi cab glance in the middle of a downtown intersection, a honey-dipped scene mesmerizing in its golden wind. Three people again – Hardrick sees a group of three.  A trinity of windblown saints just trying to a cross the street. The inexplicable epiphany of artists,  marvelous to behold.

detail Indianapolis Street Scene, John Wesley Hardrick

Hardwick's portrait of his neice Trili, 1942, shows a girl, pretty in a fancy pink dress and bow, painted  with the swift and sure handling we see in his floral subjects in the show. The puffy bow, her frilly skirt could be peony flowers at full bloom. To paint flowers best be swift and sure, they fade quickly, just as sure as the girl will blossom into a young lady in the blink of an eye. 

Such a woman is revealed in the stunning, society-type painting Portrait of a Young Lady.  The painting's sophisticated composition of extended side-view of body, but with head looking over the shoulder at the viewer, is a bit Egyptian. It recalls in my mind the unfinished painting by Jacques-Louis David, begun in 1800, of a young lady I remembered as Josephine Bonaparte, but was actually a Madame Récamier. Cascading fabric of beautiful gowns, a long bare arm on each lady extended to the knee. Elegant bare neck and an allure of indifference in the eyes. Hardrick's sitter is unnamed, but perhaps someone with recall something in some visual memory somewhere that will rediscover who she is. Until then, she is the blossom of a debutante, a quinceanera, of girl to young lady, universally.

detail Trili, John Wesley Hardrick

Outward Reaching Hands.

In 1927, Hardrick's painting Little Brown Girl won the second prize in in the fine arts category in a competition sponsored by the William E. Harmon Foundation, noted in its support of  African-American arts. It delights with the colorful exuberance of Matisse or Derain. 

Little Brown Girl, John Wesley Hardrick

The award winning painting was a source of pride and joy for Hardrick's Indianapolis faith-based and artistic communities and they united efforts to fund the purchase of the picture and its eventual donation in 1929 to the John Herron Art Institute (now the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields). 

Almost 100 years later, belated, this show.

And a current artist, Mason Archie, who follows in the footstep of those before, as we all do, every step.  His The Road Less Traveled #12, 2020, has Hardrick's gleaming golden road, but not in a city center, but a country landscape of a type loved by both men. It's not golden by a rule of composition, but it's golden in the glow of the sun on its bare rutted dirt.  The tired tracks of tires or wagon wheels, or just people walking side by side.  The golden sunset, or is it dawn, of an artist on the road.

Mark Diekhoff, June 2025