Will Vawter
Below: autumn landscape oil painting. Right: small snow scene etching. From the Brown County Art Gallery’ s permanent collection.
Poet and landscape artist, Mary H. Murray, was interested in a romance with Riley, but feelings were not mutual. She met Vawter through Riley, and their relationship led to marriage in 1906. Vawter and Riley shared a taste for alcohol. It’ s said that Mary moved her husband to Brown County when she discovered it was a dry county. They found 57 acres to their liking on Town Hill, a half mile south of Nashville, and made it their home. For the next fifteen years Vawter worked on magazine illustrations.
Will Vawter was loved by the local folks, but Mary was viewed as an eccentric and bitter woman. She was given to filing lawsuits against anyone who offended her. In 1923, Vawter divorced Mary and left their farm to move into two rented rooms in downtown Nashville. One served as living quarters and the other as his art studio.
He began“ keeping company” with a long-time friend, Ola Genolin, who was the widow of the town’ s first druggist. To his friends’ delight, he proposed to Mrs. Genolin and they were married in September 1923. Northeast of town, the couple built a new home and studio. They traveled frequently, but Vawter was a fixture of the community, playing checkers and chess at Miller’ s Drug Store.
With the Brown County Art Colony at hand, and the friendship, encouragement, and support of artists such as T. C. Steele, Adolph Shulz, and Gustave Baumann, Vawter pursued his interest in oil painting. He became as successful in this medium as he was in illustrating and printmaking. He had a loose, impressionist style and caught the spirit of Brown County’ s countryside— the Peaceful Valley— on canvas. He exhibited and won the prize for best winter scene at the first Hoosier Salon exhibit in 1925. He was a charter member of the Brown County Art Gallery Association. The tourists who made their way to Brown County loved to watch Vawter at work. When this became a distraction, Vawter locked the door.
Brown Countians still talk about Will Vawter painting as he sat in his car, reaching overhead and cleaning his brushes on the auto’ s ceiling upholstery as he worked.
When T. C. Steele died in 1926, it was Vawter who carried Steele’ s ashes to his burial site. When Vawter died suddenly of pneumonia fifteen years later on February 11, 1941, in Nashville, the tight circle of artists were shocked
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Nov./ Dec. 2015 • Our Brown County 41