Brown County is a county in Indiana which in 2020 had a population of 15,475. The county seat is Nashville.
The history of Indianapolis spans three centuries. Founded in 1820, the area where the city now stands was originally home to the Lenape. In 1821, a small settlement on the west fork of the White River at the mouth of Fall Creek became the county seat of Marion County, and the state capital of Indiana, effective January 1, 1825. Initially the availability of federal lands for purchase in central Indiana made it attractive to the new settlement; the first European Americans to permanently settle in the area arrived around 1819 or early 1820. In its early years, most of the new arrivals to Indianapolis were Europeans and Americans with European ancestry, but later the city attracted other ethnic groups. The city's growth was encouraged by its geographic location, 2 miles (3.2 km) northwest of the state's geographic center. In addition to its designation as a seat of government, Indianapolis's flat, fertile soil, and central location within Indiana and the Midwest, helped it become an early agricultural center. Its proximity to the White River, which provided power for the town's early mills in the 1820s and 1830s, and the arrival of the railroads, beginning in 1847, established Indianapolis as a manufacturing hub and a transportation center for freight and passenger service. An expanding network of roads, beginning with the early National Road and the Michigan Road, among other routes, connected Indianapolis to other major cities.
Theodore Clement Steele was an American Impressionist painter known for his Indiana landscapes. Steele was an innovator and leader in American Midwest painting and is one of the most famous of Indiana's Hoosier Group painters. In addition to painting, Steele contributed writings, public lectures, and hours of community service on art juries that selected entries for national and international exhibitions, most notably the Universal Exposition (1900) in Paris, France, and the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904) in Saint Louis, Missouri. He was also involved in organizing pioneering art associations, such as the Society of Western Artists.
John Ottis Adams was an American impressionist painter and art educator who is best known as a member of the Hoosier Group of Indiana landscape painters, along with William Forsyth, Richard B. Gruelle, Otto Stark, and T. C. Steele. In addition, Adams was among a group that formed the Society of Western Artists in 1896, and served as the organization's president in 1908 and 1909.
William J. Forsyth was an American Impressionist painter who was part of the "Hoosier Group" of Indiana artists.
Otto Stark was an American Impressionist painter muralist, commercial artist, printmaker, and illustrator from Indianapolis, Indiana, who is best known as one of the five Hoosier Group artists. Stark's work clearly showed the influence of Impressionism, and he often featured children in his work. To provide a sufficient income for his family, Stark worked full time as supervisor of art at Emmerich Manual High School in Indianapolis from 1899 to his retirement in 1919, and as part-time art instructor on the faculty of the John Herron Art Institute from 1905 to 1919. Stark frequently exhibited his paintings at international, national, regional, and local exhibitions, including the Paris Salon of 1886 and 1887; the Five Hoosier Painters exhibition (1894) in Chicago, Illinois; the Trans-Mississippi Exposition (1898) in Omaha, Nebraska; the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904) in Saint Louis, Missouri; and international expositions (1910) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Santiago, Chile. He also supervised the Indiana exhibition at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition (1915) in San Francisco, California. Stark remained an active artist and member of the Indianapolis arts community until his death in 1926.
The Coffin House is a National Historic Landmark located in the present-day town of Fountain City in Wayne County, Indiana. The two-story, eight room, brick home was constructed circa 1838–39 in the Federal style. The Coffin home became known as the "Grand Central Station" of the Underground Railroad because of its location where three of the escape routes to the North converged and the number of fleeing slaves who passed through it.
The Brown County Art Colony is an artist colony formed in Nashville and Brown County, Indiana.
The Hoosier Salon is an annual juried art exhibition that features the work of Indiana artists and provides them with an outlet to market their work. The Hoosier Salon Patron's Association, the nonprofit arts organization that organizes the event, also operates a year-round galleries in New Harmony, Indiana and at one time in Wabash and Carmel, Indiana. These spaces host exhibitions of Salon artists throughout the year, as well as workshops and demonstrations. An artist must have lived in Indiana and must be a member of the Hoosier Salon arts organization to become eligible for the Salon's exhibitions. The Hoosier Salon has exhibited art from many of Indiana's most notable painters, sculptors, cartoonists, and mixed-media artists, including Hoosier Group artists, several members of the Brown County Art Colony, and other artists with ties to Indiana.
The Columbia Club is a private club located on Monument Circle in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The current structure was built in 1925 as the club's third home on the same site.
The Society of Western Artists was founded by William Forsyth, T. C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams, John Elwood Bundy and fourteen other artists in 1896. Most of these were painters, Impressionists, primarily active in the American Midwest.
The Gene Stratton-Porter Cabin, known as the Cabin at Wildflower Woods and the Gene Stratton-Porter State Historic Site, is the former home of Gene Stratton-Porter, a noted Indiana author, naturalist, and nature photographer. The two-story, fourteen-room cabin, which was built in 1914, is located at Sylvan Lake near Rome City in Noble County, Indiana. Stratton-Porter lived full-time in the cabin from 1914 through 1919, then relocated to homes in California, where she continued to write and founded a movie studio. She returned to Wildflower Woods in Rome City for brief visits until her death in 1924. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.
Jessie Marie Goth was an American painter from Indianapolis, Indiana. Best known for her portraiture, Goth was the first woman to paint an official portrait of an Indiana governor that was installed in the Indiana Statehouse. Goth became a full-time resident of Nashville, Indiana in the 1920s and was active in its Brown County Art Colony. She became a charter member and former president of the Brown County Art Gallery Association in 1926 and a cofounder of the Brown County Art Guild in 1954. Goth died from injuries sustained in a fall at her home in 1975.
Selma Neubacher Steele was an American educator and writer from Indiana who was the second wife of Hoosier Group artist T. C. Steele. She is best remembered for her efforts to landscape the grounds and establish the gardens at the House of the Singing Winds, the Steele home and studio in Brown County, Indiana. It 1945 she donated the property to the Indiana Department of Conservation to established the T. C. Steele State Historic Site. Her remains are buried beside her husband's in the T. C. Steele Memorial Cemetery at the state historic site near Belmont, Brown County, Indiana.
The T. C. Steele State Historic Site is located in rural Brown County, Indiana, one and a half miles south of Belmont, between Bloomington and Nashville, Indiana. The property was the studio and home of Hoosier Group landscape and portrait artist Theodore Clement Steele (1847–1926) and Selma Neubacher Steele (1870–1945), the artist's second wife. Shortly before her death in 1945, Selma donated the property on 211 acres of land to the Indiana Department of Conservation to establish a state historic site in memory of her husband. The property was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1973 as the Theodore Clement Steele House and Studio. The Indiana State Museum operates the historic site, which is open to the public and offers guided tours of the home and studio.
Ada Walter Shulz was an American painter, whose Impressionistic painting style primarily featured themes of mothers, children, and barnyard animals. Her paintings won awards at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1916 and 1917 and the annual Hoosier Salon exhibitions of 1926 and 1928. Her paintings were also selected for magazine covers for Woman's Home Companion and Literary Digest. The Terre Haute, Indiana, native studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the Académie Vitti in Paris, France. In 1917 she moved from her longtime home in Delavan, Wisconsin, with her artist husband, Adolph Shulz, and son Walter, to the Brown County Art Colony in Nashville, Indiana. In 1926 she became a founding member of the Brown County Art Gallery Association in Nashville. She was also a member of the Chicago chapter of the Society of Western Artists. Her paintings are held in several collections, including those at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Indianapolis Museum of Art (Newfields), the Indiana State Museum and Historic Sites, the Ball State University Museum of Art, the Dailey Family Memorial Collection of Hoosier Art at Indiana University, the Brown County Art Gallery and Museum, and the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette, among others.
Four Seasons is a series of four murals - Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter - painted in 1914 by Indiana artist T.C. Steele, which feature the landscape of Brown County, Indiana. The paintings are located on the Eskenazi Health campus, near downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, and are part of the Eskenazi Health Art Collection.
Evelynne Bernloehr Mess Daily was an American etcher, printmaker, painter, illustrator, and art educator from Indianapolis, Indiana, who founded the Indiana Society of Printmakers in 1934. Along with her first husband and fellow artist, George Joseph Mess, she was active in the Indianapolis and Brown County, Indiana, arts community. Awarded an honorary doctor of philosophy degree from Colorado State Christian College in 1973, and a recipient of a Sagamore of the Wabash award in 1987, she was also a past president of the Indiana Federation of Art Clubs and a former secretary of the Indiana Artists Club. Her work is represented in several permanent collections that included the Library of Congress, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indiana State Museum, the Indiana State Library, the Indiana University Art Museum, the Richmond Art Museum, DePauw University, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
George Joseph Mess was an American painter, printmaker, commercial artist, and art educator. The Cincinnati, Ohio, native began his career as a commercial artist and teacher; however, he became nationally known for his work as an etcher, printmaker, and painter. Along his wife, Evelynne Mess Daily, he became a prominent member of the Indianapolis and Brown County, Indiana, arts communities. Mess produced mostly Impressionist-style landscapes as a painter, but he was especially known for his aquatint etchings and prints of rural scenes in the modern styles of the 1930s and 1940s. Mess was also a founder of the Circle Art Academy, a commercial art school in Indianapolis, Indiana, that operated from 1927 to 1932, and founded a local engraving company. Mess was the recipient of several prizes and awards for his art from the Hoosier Salon, the Herron Art Institute, the Indiana State Fair, and various state and local arts clubs. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Indiana Historical Society, and Minnetrista, among others. His illustrations also appeared in several print publications.
