William F. Kaeser – His Many Art Exhibitions in 1935

Near Irvington, William F. Kaeser, 1934  
source The Edge of Town  - Painting the Indiana Scene 1932-1948, Indianapolis Art League, 1989

Every Show, Everywhere, All at Once.

One cannot really imagine  a busier year for a young and unknown artist than that of 1935 for William F. Kaeser (pr. KAY-zer). The sheer continuity and multitude of his exhibitions that year is a testament to the hard work, talent, and enthusiasm of his eager youth. Kaeser was an immigrant, from post hyper-inflation,Weimar Germany, who, over the three years previous to 1935, had earned degrees from Herron Art School and Indiana University, and founded, through New Deal works projects funding, the Indianapolis Art Students League and became its founding instructor.

His first exhibition in 1935 was the 28th Annual Indiana Artists show at Herron Art Institute. One of two jurors that year was none other than Grant Wood of Iowa, the sensational new 'regionalist' painter whose American Gothic brought him nationwide fame in 1930.

According to Lucille Morehouse's In the World of Art column in The Indianapolis Star on March 17, 1935, William Kaeser's contribution to the show was a picture called Hawthorne Yards. She categorized the Kaeser work as among a group of  

“Pictures of buildings, either of industrial type that have interest in pattern and color, or of old houses of the 'shabby genteel,' Victorian type or those that are otherwise appropriate to the popular style of today.”  

Morehouse seems to be referring to the  'popular' style referred to variously as American Scene, Social Realism or Regionalist manner employed by Kaeser, and other local artists of late, or more importantly at the time, Grant Wood and Thomas Hart Benton, its leading and founding members.

The title of Kaeser's work, Hawthorne Yards, the first picture of his career to receive critical comment, must refer to the railroad interchange yards bounded by English Avenue to the north, Ritter Avenue to the east, Prospect Avenue to the south and Sherman Drive to the West on the east side of Indianapolis. The area remains to this day as the CSX Hawthorne Yard, and was, then and now, in close proximity to Kaeser's Irvington neighborhood home. 

A Many Splendored Rubber Plant.

A scant week or so later, William Kaeser had a one-man show at Lieber Gallery in Indianapolis that was covered by the competing art critics for The Indianapolis Star and The Indianapolis Times.  On March 15, in the Notes on Canvas in the Art World column, John W. Thompson of The Times, commented on the novelty and talent of a new artist on the scene, William Kaeser, 

“Every so often a young artist pops up from seemingly nowhere and shows promise of doing something just a little bit different from the way 'it's being done.' Just such an artist is William F. Kaeser , who will open a two-week show at H. Lieber galleries Monday...(He) did not make his pastel drawings of Irvington scenes. He went out along White River where people live in most anything they can throw together.

His pastel work is new. It has a new color aspect, a new feeling and a new depth. 

His Matisse-like backgrounds, his broad strokes of sunlight are unusually pleasing.”

Hooverville - Curtisville, William F. Kaeser, 1934
source - The Edge of Town, Indianapolis Art League, 1989

It's not all rainbows and unicorns for Thompson, though, when he offers mild criticism of Kaeser's composition choices, at times, and figures,

“He has a tendency to crowd a bit too much into one drawing...(and) Although Mr. Kaeser has one or two figures in his show, he had better stick to other types of drawing. He hasn't nearly the mastery of body composition and graceful lines in his figure drawings as are beautifully evident in the others.”

The writer's main praise is directed at Kaeser's still lifes, when he writes,

"...his Corn Plant, and his Rubber Plant are two of the loveliest still lifes seen lately.”

Rubber Plant, William F. Kaeser, 1935
source The Irvington Group - 1928 - 1937, Irvington Historical Society, 1984

For her part, Lucille Morehouse comments about Kaeser's sixteen large pastels, and two watercolors showing at Lieber in her March 24 Star column. Of the work, she says,

“Suburban views, river front scenes, shacks in the slums districts and some very carefully-thought-out flower and still life subjects, together with a lively portrait of a farm girl and a study of the nude have been painted with a careful consideration of design and as artistic a regard for color harmony and contrast.”

Morehouse lists some of the artworks displayed as: At the Edge of Town, House on the Hill, Along the Canal, Suburban Church, Loafing in the Shade, Red School House, Corn Plant, Rubber Plant and Narcissus.  

She also mentions Kaeser and his wife will drive to New Orleans for a summer sketching holiday (the resulting artworks of which will figure into Kaeser's busy exhibition schedule later in the year, as we shall see).

During the following months, selections from the 38th Indiana Artists Exhibit, including Kaeser's Hawthorne Yards, would be traveling to Richmond and then Muncie. In April, the first stop was presented by the Richmond Art Association at the city's Morton High School. Then on May 9, The Muncie Morning Star announced that the show would be presented at the art galleries of Ball State College. The Muncie newspaper column reported that some of the paintings in the show were criticized by the exhibit's co-juror, Grant Wood, as being “exponents of localism” as opposed to the 'regionalism' he championed by his own practice.

A May 10, Indianapolis News article announces the concurrent showing of William Kaeser's work in a one-man exhibit in the Hoosier gallery at John Herron Art Institute and as part of the 42nd Annual American Art Exhibition at the Cincinnati Art Museum. 

The Herron solo show is described in two Indianapolis Times articles. The first on May 17, describes the showstopper, at least to the reviewer John Thompson's eyes,

“Mr. Kaeser, whose greatest talent is the application of color, has one outstanding piece, Rubber Plant, a lovely still life depicting the rubber plant, potted, standing on a table on which there are several fruits and a drinking mug. The strong colors, the perspective, the naturalness of the placing of the objects used, these make the picture more than just another still life.”

The second Times coverage appears on May 24, in which a photograph of the pastel The Gravel Pit is shown. In the short accompanying blurb, the artwork of Kaeser in the Herron show is described,

 “Daring and striking use of color is the high point of pastels by William Kaeser now on view at Herron Art Museum. This one, The Gravel Pit, contains the broad strokes, the patches of bright color, and the strength of good drawing necessary for a successful pastel.” 

The Gravel Pit, William F. Kaeser, 1935
source - The Indianapolis Times

The Indianapolis Star reports that a large oil still life, unnamed and not described, is the picture by Kaeser included in the American Art Exhibit in Cincinnati. It mentions other artists chosen for the exhibit, including Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Edward Hopper and Wayman Adams.

Three articles in The Indianapolis News and The Indianapolis Star, from August 29 through September 3, cover the award winners and entries in the arts competition in various categories at the Indiana State Fair that year. William Kaeser was to win the still life oil painting category with his, by now somewhat locally famous, Rubber Plant. He is a winner as well, in the pastel category, but it is unknown whether it is for one of his pictures of the Louisiana coast (from his summer holiday, presumably) or his shacks – both of  which were included in the show, according to Lucille Morehouse, in her September 3 column.

William Kaeser was a participating artist in the novel public art event the first two weeks of October, in downtown Indianapolis, in celebration of National Arts Week. A large section of Pennsylvania Street, between Washington Street to the south and 16th Street to the north was set up as an outdoor strolling gallery with the street window exhibition of work by Indiana artists. 

Once Upon A Time in New Orleans.

Often a great storyteller, Indianapolis' great art critic, Lucille Morehouse, covered William Kaeser's solo show of New Orleans vacation work that appeared at Lyman's Fireplace Gallery for two weeks in mid-October, 1935. Her wonderful narrative begins,

“Watermelon boats on Lake Pontchartrain and river steamers on the Mississippi were transferred to paper in short order, with all their interest of colorful setting and picturesque groups of workmen, as soon as the young Indianapolis artist, William F. Kaeser, unpacked his painter's kit and got to work with his pastels, early last June, at the end of a journey to New Orleans for two week's painting vacation.”  

Morehouse continues to weave a playful yarn about the long drive of Mr. and Mrs. Kaeser from Indianapolis to the Crescent City as an introduction to the Lyman show in her thorough October 13 art column. 

The exhibition contained fourteen pastels from the recent New Orleans series, with the addition of one large local scene, Old Power Plant, Kentucky Avenue and West Street, that was completed over the summer after the artist's return from Louisiana.

As way of recent background, Morehouse writes of Kaeser,

 “In was in his pictures of tumble-down shacks in the outskirts of Indianapolis, as well as the vigorously painted still-life compositions...within the past year or two...that his individualism in work with color and design asserted itself and gave promise for future accomplishment.”  

Morehouse then provides her observations about various of the individual works in the show. She begins with a pastel that is reproduced in black and white in the paper, Fisherman's Paradise. It shows a ramshackle fisherman's cottage built upon stilts, amid the zigzag of wooden boardwalks, all necessary due to the marshy conditions of coastal region a few miles north of New Orleans. Menacing conical clouds hover on high, and thrust toward the viewer, as they did the artist as he raced to finish his picture before the approaching storm.

Fisherman's Paradise, William F. Kaeser, 1935
source - The Indianapolis Star

Mississippi Levee: On Road to Baton Rouge (now revealed as) a recent first-place winner in the pastel misc. category at the Indiana State Fair. Set in bayou country, the picture showed a curving 20 foot levee and more distant houses of a nearby fishing village.

About Roof-Tops and St. Patrick's Tower, Morehouse writes, “(The work) was painted from the hotel window.” and looked out over a balcony and patio. Banana Conveyor, she writes, is an industrial composition “illustrating the industrial method of unloading the fruit that comes from the tropics.”

“Dock, harbor and boat” themes dominate the compositions, Morehouse writes.  Remaining works  in the show,  she lists in part as; Melon Boat with Side-Boards, Dredge and Train Ferry on Mississippi, The El-Lago, Steamship Sixola,  Yachts - Lake Pontchartrain Harbor, Ferry Boat at Landing and Boats Near the Drawbridge. 

The month following the Lyman's show, an exhibit of Indiana artists was organized in honor of the 20th birthday of the Indiana Artists Club. The show was to include about 200 works by about 100 hundred artists and would shown in the eight-floor galleries of L. S. Ayers & Company in Indianapolis.

An Indianapolis Times review by John W. Thompson under the rather dubiously-intentioned headline 'Indiana Artists Club Exhibit Isn't Bore It Used To Be,' begins by bemoaning the predominance of the  Brown County style in recent prior shows, which he describes as “...beech trees...autumn landscapes swathed in sunlight, or a tumble down...shack with tinted trees in the background and a soft haze over all.”  The writer may have just been piling on, as a year before Grant Wood had dismissed much of Indiana's art as "local color." Nevertheless, Thompson, writes that since about that time, and perhaps as a result, “it's all different now.”

Kaeser's contribution to the show was Watermelon Boats, the best of the pastels, according to Thompson, who described Kaeser as “an Irvington artist whose work has become increasingly popular the last few years.”

Labor + Love = William Kaeser.

William Kaeser's final exhibit of 1935 took place in his home community in Irvington, at the 8th Irvington Artists Exhibition on the second floor of of Carr Hall on Washington Street. The show was covered by Lucille Morehouse in her art column of December 9, 1935 in The Indianapolis Star. 

Kaeser displayed five pieces which summed up his busy year. First, probably by popular demand, was Rubber Plant, for a final encore (at least that year). He also showed an oil landscape Farmers, and the New Orleans pieces Fisherman's Paradise, and presumably renamed Mississippi Levee and Mississippi Dredge.

The Irvington Artists show, the final show of 1935, had a keynote talk by director of the museum at John Herron Art Institute, Wilbur Peat. He talked about 'Forgotton Relationships,' and called for a closer union between “the beautiful in art and everyday objects of utility.”  It was a credo shared by artists such as the tireless and hard-working William Kaeser – with his great love of labor that year – he was able to document the toil and sweat of his fellow man, with his gravel pits, his power plants, his river dredges, his banana conveyor lines. 

His work was a homage to labor, a depression-era vision of the American scene, the social reality – whatever you want to call it. A self portrait, in a way, the vision of an artist for whom work was both an ultimate ideal and a way of life. 

Mark Diekhoff, September 2025 (Labor Day)

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Dorothy Morlan in the 1940s – Indiana's First Modernist Painter, Part 6

seated Helen Hibben, standing left to right, Dr. S.J. Carr,  Simon Baus, Clifton Wheeler
and Dorothy Morlan

Dorothy Morlan in the 1940s and Beyond 

By the beginning of the 1940s, Dorothy Morlan was approaching her mid-fifties in age. She had been painting and exhibiting continuously for over three decades, ever since her debut while yet a student at Herron Art School in 1906. She had been honored with several solo shows over that span of time, admirable, as a trailblazing woman artist, when such shows were still called 'one-man' exhibitions, even by Indianapolis' well-known female art critic, a trail-blazer herself, Lucille Morehouse.

Morlan had thoroughly studied the local landscape through her tireless painting in the Whitewater River region south of Richmond and the Ohio River area near Hanover. She returned over and over again to studies of the flatland fields, the treelines and creeks and the endless skies near her Irvington home.  The area was still rustic around the edges and a rural idyll on the outskirts eastern Indianapolis at that time. She had painted more distant sights during extended painting sojourns along the coast of Maine and high country in Colorado. Her travels, whatever the reason – educational or personal – resulted in additional artworks around Indiana depicting the Wabash River valley at the border to Illinois, and around the country, from the Philadelphia mill country in the east and all the way to California.

She had exhibited with the Society of Western Artists in Chicago and around the Midwest, at the Indiana Artists at Herron Institute, at the Hoosier Salon, the Irvington Artists and countless regional shows in Richmond, Muncie, Lafayette and Evansville, to name just a few.  Morlan had also been chosen to participate in national shows in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.  

Expressive themes such as solitude and  expansiveness  – the order and splendor of nature  – were core forces at the root of her pictures and permeated her work throughout her career. She painted only the landscape. The color blue especially, and the variations of its color wheel neighbors; grays and greens and slates – and winter, that most solemn of seasons – captivated her artistic impulse. Nature's was the voice that spoke to her. 

She learned from influential masters of the Hoosier Group, primarily J. Ottis Adams, in her early years, and William Forsyth, as teacher, neighbor and fellow exhibitor. She learned the noble task of humble artist, with bent knee, before the wonder of the world.

Palm Beach and New York City.

In 1940, Dorothy Morlan would spend the winter season in Palm Beach, Florida with friend and fellow artist Miss Bertha Lacey. According to the Palm Beach Post, February 15, Miss Lacey had just completed her work on a portion of Indiana State House mural depicting a Civil War theme.  However, a later Indianapolis Star article dated May 29, 1940, reports that the mural project was in the Fountain County (Indiana) Courthouse, where Miss Lacey assisted mural painter Eugene Savage in the project. Both Dorothy Morlan and Indianapolis Star art critic Lucille Morehouse attended the dedication ceremony for the completed mural with a keynote address by Wilbur Peat of the John Herron Art Museum.

Around 1941, a new art gallery would be launched in New York City, headed by longtime New York sculptor and teacher, Naum Michel Los.  According to the Brooklyn Eagle paper, December 21, 1941, the enterprise was called Sixtieth Street Gallery.

A year later in December 1942, the Courier and Press (Evansville, Indiana) reported  That Dorothy Morlan had a show of thirteen paintings at Sixtieth Street Gallery in New York from November 30 through December 12. The show consisted primarily of her out-of-doors views of the Colorado Rockies and Ohio River in Southern Indiana. 

After the New York show in 1943, select paintings from the exhibit traveled to locations in Ohio, the state of her birth. Locations including Youngstown and Springfield, according to various news reports, including her hometown paper, The Salem News, in the April 27, 1943 edition.

October of Her Years.

As the mid-1940s approached, men in uniform appeared more and more in the papers as America was once again at world war.

The exhibition schedule of Dorothy Morlan decreased, at least to the extent that it was reported in the reviews. She was showing, by this time, only in the Hoosier Salon, which was held in the Wm. H. Block store in Indianapolis.

Perhaps her snub by the annual Indiana Artists exhibit at Herron a few years prior had soured her on that event, or perhaps she had submitted work, but it had either not been accepted or not remarked upon by the critics. The scant evidence is, more than likely, her travels and time spent for long periods in Colorado had affected her ability to exhibit in Indiana over those years.

As Lucille Morehouse reports in her art column on January 23, 1944, in The Indianapolis Star, in which she was covering the 20th Annual Hoosier Salon held at Block's, 

“In a gallery hung with oils there's a medium-sized vertical landscape design, founded on realism, in which the light gray-green of foreground field and its clumps a dark green pines and white-trunked birches, its distant deep blue mountain range, beyond which is a glimpse of snow-clad peaks, all combine to produce an effect of serenity, of dignified calm.”

Morehouse reveals that the painting is by Dorothy Morlan, in a picture called Glade in the Rockies in May.  

The description sounds familiar to a painting described earlier in this series by Morehouse in a past column, which may indicate Morlan's unrelenting efforts to capture the ephemeral moods of the mountains. She had been returning to Colorado and the Rockies again and again. Her dogged fixation on a place and a theme, much as Cezanne and his Mont Sainte-Victoire some fifty years prior. Indeed, Morehouse further reports that Morlan had just returned to her Irvington home after living two years in Colorado. 

The art critic reports further that, the previous year, Morlan had her first solo show in the East at a New York City gallery which received favorable reviews in New York papers and Art Review magazine, presumably the Sixtieth Street Gallery show.

One year following, Morehouse again discusses Dorothy Morlan in the context of the Hoosier Salon at Block's, the 21st annual, in her January 28, 1945 review. In discussing the artist's picture October, she writes,

“Miss Morlan's creative landscape is red-orange...also red-brown that blacken in the depth of shadows far back under closely placed trees. The foreground is a mass of deep, rich green. Level fields reach far into the distance – on a vary narrow strip of canvas – under a lowering sky, blue-gray and portentous.”

Lucille Morehouse may be describing a painting now called Mood of Autumn in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. If not the same painting, then nearly so.

Morehouse concludes her remarks on this picture, and the last noted Hoosier Salon of Morlan's career, with additional words on Dorothy Morlan herself, the seasoned artist, her longtime Irvington neighbor, and her fellow female trailblazing spirit, with this acclamation,

“Dorothy Morlan has been regarded as one of Indiana's most gifted women artists. October proves her ability to interpret a wild mood of autumn.”

Requiem for Singing Skies.

A young girl at her father's side. She sees him draw – marks upon the paper – a scene stolen from the world –  its earth and air, its lines, its exquisite design – enshrined in the leaves of a treasured sketchbook, to pour over later in amazement.

Dorothy Morlan was to enjoy a last major exhibit in Indianapolis in 1946. The John Herron Art Museum, along with the Art Association of Indianapolis and the Indiana Artists' Club was presenting a series of two-person shows from spring to fall that year.

Once chosen by the museum and a committee, the artist was free to act as juror and select their own works for the show. Morlan's show was scheduled, along with Muncie artist Hill Sharp, for the second iteration of the spring line-up, following Clifton Wheeler and Marie Goth.

Always an attentive observer of Dorothy Morlan's work, Lucille Morehouse would write a final time about the artist's pictures in her March 2, 1946, Indianapolis Star column about the two-person show.

“Dorothy Morlan's work as a landscape painter might be classified into several periods that include both grave and gay. Her latest painting, included in the seven richly colored oils on display, approached a type of imaginative design that borders on fantasy, and yet is linked to 'the good red earth' by its solidity of construction, its truth to natural forms in mountain peaks, meadow slopes and winding streams.”

About another picture, perhaps an even deeper foray into the realm of fantasy, Morehouse says of The Hound of Heaven,

"The artist said she was not trying to interpret the poem by Francis Thompson which has the same name, but that his 'strangely beautiful' poem stimulated her as she developed the design. As the 'hound' leaps through the sky, farm animals flee frantically across the green meadow slopes.  The black tree masses of the foreground have been treated in a fantastically decorative manner by thin curving white lines – suggestive of trunks and branches – that might have been made with an ancestral quill pen in the early Spencerian handwriting.”

Morehouse discusses another canvas, smaller, again fantastic in theme, The Afternoon of a Faun, which continues the new theme of adding creatures to her landscape by adding the mythological faun beneath the writhing branches of a musical willow in the fore. Additional works include Autumn Sweeps Out to Sea and The Burning Bush. 

Morehouse describes in more detail the two final contributions to the show by Dorothy Morlan. 

Of Requiem, Lucille Morehouse writes these fitting  lines about a Dorothy Morlan painting,  

“...inspired by an unusual light on a mountain peak in Colorado...the glory of silver and rose tones transfigures the blackness of middle-distant ranges and foreground pines so that the depths become reddened and enriched with deep dark color."

And about Here Where the World is Quiet she writes, 

“The first line of Swinburne's poem 'The Garden of Proserpine' suggested the name – has gently rolling hills, a deep blue stream that widens into a pool, guarded by fantastic trees, and, in the far distance, above the long horizontal line of level country, is another shorter horizontal line of silvery smoke from a passing train that is not in sight.”

At that moment in time, the latest war over, a new era for America was set to begin. A moment when European artist refugees, having traveled to our shores, brought even newer modernist ideas of surrealism and abstraction. Those latest modes of painting, reactive, birthed as a defense mechanism to the raw horrors of wars and crimes too terrible to conceive, let alone portray head-on in art. It was a neurotic moment infused with angst and anxiety that would change the direction of art forever, and establish for the the first time, with the emergence of the New York School, the preeminence of America in art.

And at that same moment, Dorothy Morlan paints an evolution to the expressive modernism she had always pursued. Her expressive interpretation of music and sight, feeling and color, mythos and nature. She seemed at a crossroads, an existential predicament shared by everyone on earth since the invention and use of the atomic bomb. 

Not long after the 1946 show, Dorothy Morlan was to suffer a debilitating stroke that left her unable to paint. The details are lacking, but it is mentioned in two books covering Morlan; The Irvington Group, 1928-1937 in a piece by Sheri A. Patterson, and Skirting the Issue by Judith Vale Newton and Carol Ann Weiss.    

It is somewhat surprising that Dorothy Morlan's condition was never mentioned by Lucille Morehouse in her Indianapolis Star columns in the years that followed. The careers of the two women intertwined to an amazing degree, and the fact that they were Irvington neighbors for fifty years or more would lead one to believe that Morehouse knew intimately the details of Miss Morlan's medical case. But any knowledge along those lines seems to have remained private.

Dorothy Morlan was to die in October of 1967.

(It is noted that that neither Dorothy Morlan's notice of death or her obituary in the Indianapolis newspapers mentioned any prior medical emergency from years past or details about her final years.) 

A last photograph of Dorothy Morlan appeared in the September 24, 1951, Indianapolis News. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Irvington Union of Clubs, a pictorial spread was printed. The undated photograph shows past participants of the Irvington Artists exhibitions sponsored by the Club.  Miss Morlan, and fellow artists Simon Baus and Clifton Wheeler, are admiring Helen Hibben holding an artwork, while longtime exhibition host and sponsor Dr. S. J Carr looks on.

******* 

Morlan first appeared in print at age twenty with her impressions of the last day of February, 1902. In particular, her astute observation of a winter morning giving way to spring. Her writing, infused with poetry, sang of the movement of clouds and the mood of a changing wind. 

Her last words appeared fifty-five years later in an October 2, 1957,  'letter to the editor' of The Indianapolis Star. 

There is no poetry to be found, unfortunately, in her well-reasoned remarks about the meaning of democracy versus republic as she weighed-in obliquely on the Little Rock segregation debate. Her mind seems rational and coherent, but in a topical manner absent any expression of dream, any feeling of solemnity, any awe. Her medical condition seemed to have sapped her introspective spirit by then. These last public remarks come across as shouting at the clouds, clouds that sang to her their beauty for so long.   

Postscript.  

Printed July 21, 1947, Lafayette Journal and Courier

50 Years Ago Today (in the Lafayette Morning Journal)

“Miss Lucille E. Morehouse, a graduate of Purdue, has taken a position on the Lafayette Journal staff, and will devote most of her time to society and literary work. She is regarded as a young lady of more than ordinary ability.”

Printed January 28, 1958, Indianapolis News

Fifty Years Ago (1908)

“A painting by Miss Dorothy Morlan of Irvington was accepted for the exhibition of the work of American artists at Philadelphia.”

Mark Diekhoff, August 2025

See Also:

The Irvington Group, 1928-1937 

Skirting the Issue by Judith Vale Newton and Carol Ann Weiss.    

both books available at the Irvington Historical Society

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