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| AI image by Gemini for illustrative purposes only |
About six years ago I was on a walk through my Irvington neighborhood, accompanied by artist and painter, William B. Lawson. Lawson was acting as a guide to noteworthy houses and sites along the way, several of which had ties to a prior art history unknown to me. Even though I had been a resident of the neighborhood since the early 1990s, I was almost entirely unaware, even ignorant, of the history of the town.
We were on our way to the Kile Oak, a local landmark among others that had escaped my attention to that point in time.
The Kile Oak really is magnificent, as I was to discover, and I’d recommend a visit if you haven’t already, particularly if you live within walking distance.
As we were leaving the shady space beneath the centuries old tree, Lawson directed my attention to a home across the way. Nondescript, a weathered-white cottage on a slight rise from the road.
“Lucille Morehouse lived in that house,” Lawson said, pointing.
A 'Newspaper Nose' and Her Call to Adventure.
In one of the earliest art columns penned by Lucille E. Morehouse in the Indianapolis Star, she was on a walk. The date of the column is Sunday, April 13, 1913.
She invites the readers along for her stroll in a pedestrian-friendly downtown Indianapolis in search of a few groceries to fill the “little, speckled market basket” on her arm. On her quaint shopping list was “a tiny bit of cheese done up in tinfoil, a paper bucket of baked beans−always the baked beans−and always just a nickel’s worth.” Add on a few bananas and oranges and “some homemade doughnuts, at the little stand away back in the Alabama Street part of the Market House.” Finally, she almost forgot, she tells us “...and, oh, dear me, the half pound of butter at 40 cents the pound!”
The most ordinary scene is set. The unremarkable and timeless routine of grocery shopping.
And then, the inexplicable.
We call it the sixth sense today. Or perhaps gut instinct in days gone by. Lucille Morehouse called the primordial tug at her being her ‘newspaper nose.’
And for good reason, by the date of her column that Sunday in April 1913, when she was in her early forties, she had logged decades of experience as a newspaper pro. First as the editor of the Purdue Exponent student newspaper while in college, then as a society editor in the Lafayette Morning Journal during her post-graduate teaching days, and finally, again as the society editor, for the Milwaukee Journal in Wisconsin when she relocated to that city to teach later on.
Ms. Morehouse describes vividly the 180 degree instant her mundane trek toward doughnuts and butter took an about-face toward what, only time would tell, her art world life on the brink of beginning.
“There was no other choice than to follow the nose. It led me past the Monument and into a little art shop, then back into a tearoom−under the pretense that I was tired out and needed a cup to refresh me.”
Indeed, although her journey would be uniquely her own, the inciting moment of her road less traveled was at the classic hero’s starting line−that dead end, tired-out point in dire need of refreshment, on the verge of every new adventure.
A Nationwide 'Armory Show' Kind of Buzz.
Indianapolis was an art town in April 1913. For nearly twenty years the local Hoosier Group painters, including T.C. Steele and William Forsyth, had been making their name as a result of frequent and well-received exhibitions in Indiana and also large regional cities such as Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Pittsburgh. They earned their notoriety, perhaps popularity and even their moniker as a result of their many annual exhibitions at The Art Institute of Chicago in the late 1890s up to that present day.
Just a few weeks earlier in February and March of 1913, art, a new and frightful art, took America by storm when what has become known as the Armory Show opened in New York City.
Controversy and debate raged in the American art world and in the pages of the American press in the seismic wake of the exhibition's opening. After the NYC stint, a large number of the most shocking European artworks from the exhibit had moved on to Chicago, continuing to generate mocking reviews and derisive headlines for the weeks leading up to the day of Ms. Morehouse's walk.
The International Exposition of Modern Art, its official name, shocked visitors, many would argue, with demented visions never imagined outside of the fever dreams in lunatic asylums. Cubism and Futurism were the wild and indecipherable rebels coming for the kings of Realism and the pretty princes of Impressionism. In the same violent and confusing coup, Post Impressionism was taking on Neo Impressionism, Fauvism, Pointillism, Symbolism and whatever the heck, whoever the heck. It was one helluva fight, one helluva sight.
It is not likely such a notorious and ungainly ruckus would have escaped the curious attention of a seasoned newspaper lady such as Lucille Morehouse.
So when she found herself in the back room of the little art shop, being offered a tea, by a proprietor, who happened to be a friend of a visiting modern art painter from out East in Boston, and when she was offered a chance for a personal meeting with that beguiling out of town specimen... he was a indeed or supposedly a painter of the new art, post art, whatever the hell...how could she say no?
And she didn't.
Enraptured, She Became an Artist, Herself.
William Emile Schumacher was the post impressionist painter, anticipated by the city's folk for the entire week preceding, and fresh in on the train down at Union Station. In town for his exhibit at the John Herron Art Institute.
Lucille Morehouse describes their meeting in a most amazing way. She imagines herself as an artist, indeed a painter, and describes herself creating his portrait as a way of introducing him to her readers. This was long before selfies made everybody's appearance blasé. Keep in mind that in 1913, movies were barely invented and photography was still somewhat new.
Morehouse begins her 'portrait' with the artist's hair. “I would first put on the canvas a little fringe of bang, a very thin fringe of bang...”
Then she moves on to the face. “...two eyes (I would not make fifty, as some of those futurists might do...)” and “they would be very bright and look with a very direct, searching gaze.” She would paint a nose, elongated, and “...of course, I'd draw a mouth, just to keep my picture from being too much criticised.”
Then the rest of Mr. Schumacher she would attenuate and attenuate until he was drawn out “...very long and very thin.”
She paints in a background of colors, cheerful and joyous, bright and beautiful, á la Matisse from the sound of it.
Thus concludes the effusive picture from the imaginary artist's enlivened eyes. Perhaps Ms. Morehouse fanned herself in dainty gloves in faux bedazzlement, in the presence of such a creator. A ruse to inflate the impressive man's ego a bit, and loosen the lips on his under-described mouth? Savvy, she seems, that's for sure. Because she gets a lot out of him. And what follows is not so much an interview, or even a conversation. It is an eruption of artspeak from W. E. Schumacher. A monologue of self-vindication, his artist's statement, you could say.
Evolutionary Brevity, Twainsian Humor and Bullsh*t Detection.
W. E. Schumacher implores and then declares, right out of the gate, “...don't call me a cubist or a futurist...I am an evolution...”
He explains, in layman's terms, although professorial in tone, the strati-graphic layers of art movements foundational to his state of being. Impressionism to neo impressionism to post impressionism and beyond. Beyond, the place atop and rarefied, that he has attained.
A puckered brow on Ms. Morehead's face seems to draw out further detailed definitions and magisterial explanations from the artist in what seems a losing battle to just be understood.
In her homespun Hoosier way, she relays her amusement at the tortured machinations of his wordcraft by improvising a few sound bites of her own. She shorthands his three hallowed impressionisms, for brevity's sake, for the benefit of her readers, wink wink. What all art history majors would call the 'isms' in art, she calls the 'imps.' You get the impression, though, that it's more a troll than an authentic editor's call, her devilish use of 'imp.'
It might seem a harsh treatment to an artist more adept in the visual realm than the newspaper lady's world of words. But her tone is playful and common sense, Twainsian you could say, where everybody is playing and everybody knows it's a game. It's the art world, after all, where a picture's worth a thousand words. And with the advent of futurism, maybe a million.
Morehouse steers for the middle to end her column. She tones down her brilliance. No more storytelling, improvisation or satire.
She reports that Mr. Schumacher and his art can be seen at various locations around the city, including his temporary residence with a family over at Woodruff Place, a lecture at the (Indianapolis) Propylaeum, and additional artworks displayed at the Adams-Downing Company on Monument Place.
She also advises that Mr. Schumacher intends to return to New York or was it Boston, somewhere out east, to continue lecturing, and perhaps start an art school some day. Post Imp, of course.
If Not a Star, a Spark.
This very early art column by Lucille E. Morehouse demonstrated her virtuosity as a writer. She must not have amused only herself but the paper's readers because The Indianapolis Star would soon dedicate an ornate banner to her byline, Art & Artists, and within a year or so, she was officially 'In the World of Art by Lucille E. Morehouse' in the Sunday edition for decades to follow.
Her many years penning society columns must have served well her preparation by midlife for that inspired moment when she and her newspaper nose ventured into an art shop instead of buying doughnuts.
And what of the acorn of her inspiration that would lead to a thirty years change of plans? Again, the Kile Oak comes to mind.
Mark Diekhoff, May 2025
See also
