T. C. Steele
Selma and T. C. Steele at their Brown County home.
~ by Tom Rhea
Hoosier artist Theodore Clement Steele left a legacy as a portrait artist, educator, organizer, and mainly, as a landscape painter in love with the rolling hills of Brown County, where he died in 1926 on the property now known as the T. C. Steele State Historical Site. After rigorous training in old and new European styles, he brought unique flavor to impressionist landscape painting during a time of rapid change in America. His success became greatly significant for broader art movements across the country.
T. C. Steele( born 1847) came of age in rural Indiana at a time when opportunities to pursue an arts education in America were few. Even artists with significant careers were self-taught and largely itinerant. After the Civil War, though, the art world developed a cosmopolitan curiosity, and art students swarmed to training in Paris and Munich. Among the upper classes, the tradition of a Grand Tour of European capitals came into vogue, and the American museum movement gathered steam in the 1870’ s, with major museums opening in Boston and New York.
Having shown artistic promise at an early age, T. C. Steele received his initial arts training through private lessons in Greencastle, Indiana, and Chicago. After several years supporting himself as an art teacher and portrait painter, his reputation attracted thirteen contributing sponsors to the cost of sending him to the Royal Academy in Munich, Germany. In the summer of 1880, Steele departed the US accompanied by a wife and
50 Our Brown County • Sept./ Oct. 2015 three children. John Adams and William Forsythe joined him, both fellow artists of the Hoosier Group. Although the Royal Academy was strongly academic in its teaching, many artists were exposed to the bold painting style of J. Frank Currier. An American painter who stayed in Munich for years after his schooling, he worked with the Hoosiers during summer break following their first year at the Academy, introducing them to plein air( outdoor) painting.
The impact of Munich training shows clearly in Steele’ s masterwork,“ The Boatman,” submitted at the end of studies as a kind of final exam, and currently housed at Indiana University’ s