By Rose McIlveen
The artist who took a long look at what the Old World had to offer and chose to come home to Indiana is the subject of an exhibition currently on display at the IU Art Museum in Bloomington.
"Theodore Clement Steele, An American Master of Light" is a sort of homecoming for the artist. From 1922 until his death in 1926, he came to the IU campus in Bloomington every winter as an artist-in-residence and visiting professor. He and his wife were given a bungalow near the campus, and he set up his studio on the top floor of what was then the library and is now Franklin Hall.
Kathy Foster, curator of 19th- and 20th-century art at the Art Museum, believes that Steele's residency at the university arose from a friendship formed between then IU President William Lowe Bryan and the artist while Steele was painting Bryan's portrait in 1907.
How did a regional artist with a talent for painting portraits develop a national reputation and an "alter ego" because of his Impressionist-style paintings?
Born on a farm in Owen County, Steele showed promise at an early age. After he received a classical education at the Waveland Academy, he went farther afield for some additional training.
"Apparently he studied in Cincinnati, briefly, and in Chicago," said Foster. She added that marriage and additional responsibilities took him to Michigan, where he painted portraits before moving back to Indiana. He settled in Indianapolis where he had access to plenty of potential patrons.
"There he was a practicing portrait artist. The portraits from this period are a little bit provincial, not very graceful, but he clearly made a go of it as an artist," said Foster.
There must have been some entrepreneurship inside of him, as well, since he sailed for Europe with funding from patrons and remained there for five years, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts at Munich.
"Steele won a gold medal as a student in 1884 as he came to the end of his academy years. And his figure painting was fabulous. Although he clearly had skill before he left Indiana, he really grew while he was in Munich," explained Foster.
It is clear from looking at the paintings in the exhibition that Steele's style in painting landscapes began to change. Prior to that time, according to Foster, he spent a good six or seven years painting landscapes in a kind of middling conservative style, based on observation, but somewhat composed and organized in a traditional fashion.
"The story goes that he went to the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 and saw a big collection of actual French Impressionism paintings. There is no reason to think he'd ever seen a real Impressionist painting until that time," Foster said.
He was still doing conventional portraits, but the landscapes began to change. She described what happened. "It's almost like an alter ego. The portraits are so different from the landscape work. One day he could go out and paint a dark and dignified realist portrait, and the next afternoon he could go out and paint an Impressionist painting. It's very interesting how he held both of these skills simultaneously."
Steele was elected to the National Academy in New York and the exhibition will be mounted there after it closes in Bloomington on Sept. 29. It was organized by the Evansville Museum of Arts and Sciences and made up of more than 40 works, most of which are from private collections.