American Impressionism was a style of painting related to European Impressionism and practiced by American artists in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. American Impressionism is a style of painting characterized by loose brushwork and vivid colors. The style often depicted landscapes mixed with scenes of upper-class domestic life.
Herron School of Art and Design, a school of Indiana University, was ranked 59th overall by U.S. News and World Report among graduate schools of fine arts in 2016.
John Elwood Bundy was an American Impressionist painter known as the "dean" of the Richmond Group of painters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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. Adams grew up in central Indiana, but received his formal art training at the South Kensington School of Art in London and spent seven years in Germany, where he attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. Adams formed the Muncie Art School with Forsyth, but the school closed after two years. Adams also assisted in planning and taught art classes at the John Herron Art Institute, which later became the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, and gave informal art lessons at the Hermitage, his studio-home near Brookville, Indiana.
Richard Buckner Gruelle was an American Impressionist painter, illustrator, and author, who is best known as one of the five Hoosier Group artists. Gruelle's masterwork is The Canal—Morning Effect (1894), a painting of the Indianapolis, Indiana skyline, but he is also known for his watercolors and marine landscapes of the Gloucester, Massachusetts, area. In 1891 Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley commissioned Gruelle to illustrate two of his more notable poems, "When the Frost is on the Punkin'" and "The Old Swimmin' Hole," which were published in Neighborly Poems (1891). Gruelle is also the author of Notes, Critical and Biographical: Collection of W. T. Walters (1895), which provides a detailed description of Baltimore industrialist William Thompson Walters's extensive art collection.
William J. Forsyth (1854–1935) 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.
Francis Focer Brown was an American Impressionist painter, as well as professor and head of the Fine Arts Department at Ball State Teachers College in Muncie, Indiana from 1925 until his retirement as Professor Emeritus in 1957, and was director of the Ball State Art Gallery until 1946. He exhibited his work at the Hoosier Salon shows between 1922 and 1964, winning several awards for his oils, pastels, and watercolors between 1925 and 1945. He also won prizes for works he exhibited at the John Herron Art Institute and the Richmond Art Museum in 1922. In addition, he exhibited his work at the Herron School of Art Museum, Ball State University, Indiana Art Club shows, and the Indiana State Fair, as well as exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1922 and 1923, and Cincinnati Museum of Art between 1922 and 1925.
Beulah Elizabeth Hazelrigg Brown was a Hoosier painter, educator, and textile designer who is best known for her bold, colorful, abstract patterns for fabrics, as well as figure, genre, landscapes, and floral still-life paintings in watercolor, her preferred media. Winter snow scenes, which she began painting in 1949, were another of her specialties. She also made decorative naïve paintings in her later years.
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 year-round galleries in Carmel, Indiana and New Harmony, 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.
Clifton Wheeler (1883–1953) was an American Impressionist artist from Hadley, Indiana. Wheeler was known for having been a participant in the City Hospital mural project, and having been a member of the Hoosier Group and the Irvington Group. Wheeler was a private pupil of William Forsyth, and was also known for having contributed to Indianapolis’ public art scene multiple times throughout his career as an artist.
Simon Baus (1882–1969) was an American Impressionist from Indianapolis. Baus participated in the Indianapolis City Hospital project. Baus was also a member of the Irvington Group.
The Eskenazi Health Art Collection consists of a wide variety of artworks composed of fragments from the 1914 City Hospital mural and artwork project, artworks added over time, and newer pieces which include works created for the new Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital and campus in 2013. Other works have been added occasionally; there are also artworks at the clinics throughout Marion County.
Martinus Andersen was an American Impressionist painter known for his Indiana landscapes. He also had a career as a professional photographer in New York.
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.
Florence Bartley Smithburn was an American painter and printmaker.
Lucy Taggart was an artist and art educator from Indianapolis, Indiana, and the daughter of Thomas Taggart, a successful hotelier and influential Indiana politician. Recognized as a talented and versatile artist during a career that spanned the first three decades of the twentieth century, she studied with several noted artists, such as William Merritt Chase, John Henry Twachtman, Kenyon Cox, William Forsyth, Otto Stark, Charles Webster Hawthorne, Cecilia Beaux, and Harriet Whitney Frishmuth. Taggart, who was especially known for her portraiture, received the John Herron Art Institute's J. Irving Holcomb Prize in 1922, the Hoosier Salon's Merit Award for figure composition in 1925, and the Hoosier Salon's Merit Award in 1926 for best picture painted by a woman. Her work is represented in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.
The Haan Mansion Museum of Indiana Art is a public museum in Lafayette, Indiana, housing the largest collection of Indiana art anywhere in the world. The museum is located in the Potter-Haan Mansion at 920 E State Street. The museum's collection includes over 100 paintings by Hoosier Group, Indiana Regionalism artists as well as ceramics, antique furniture and decorative items. The museum is a member of American Alliance of Museums.
Julia Graydon Sharpe (1857-1939) was an American female portrait artist.
