photo by Cindy Steele
T.C. Steele Site Visitors
~by Julia Pearson
The new Singing Winds Visitor Center.
T
heodore Clement Steele, an impressionist painter and one of the most famous of Hoosier Group painters of the 20th Century, was born September 11, 1847 near Gosport, Indiana. His masterpieces in Indiana landscapes and formal portraiture are listed in many websites, catalogues, and museum and private collections. He was the eldest of eight children of Samuel Hamilton Steele, a farmer and saddle maker, and Harriett Newell Evans Steele. In 1852 the family moved to Waveland where Steele’s interest in art quickened. Steele received a gift of a small paint set from an uncle and began his first formal art training at the Waveland Academy at the age of twelve. He also began playing the flute. Family stories reported that young Theodore associated colors with sounds. When he saw a painting he associated it with a sound or musical piece. Likewise, images came to mind when he listened to music. When his father died at the age of 38 years, Theodore took over much of the farm work. Steele would tie colored ribbons to the plow handles so that he could watch them in the wind and see the effect the fluttering had on surrounding colors. Steele married Mary Elizabeth Lakin, a fellow Waveland student and nature lover, on Valentine’s Day 1870. They raised two sons, Brandt—whose given name was “Rembrandt” after the Old Master—and Shirley; daughter Margaret was called Daisy. With the support of patrons, the entire family went to Europe where Steele received additional art training at the Royal Academy in Munich, Germany from 1880–1885. Upon returning to Indianapolis and throughout the 1890s, Steele devoted the summer months
20 Our Brown County • July/August 2019
Bob and Barbara Stevens. courtesy photo to painting landscapes, the winter months to portraits. His reputation brought commissions to paint many noteworthy Americans. In 1889 Steele opened the Indiana School of Arts at the northwest corner on Monument Circle in Indianapolis. His wife died in 1899. In 1907 Steele purchased hilltop acreage near Belmont, Indiana, between Nashville and Bloomington, where local builder William Quick would build the home/studio. In late May, Steele stayed in Bloomington to paint the portrait of William Lowe Bryan, president of Indiana University. On August 9 of that year, Steele wed Selma Neubacher, when the Brown County house was completed. His bride would later describe her first trip to the hilltop home: “I was stunned by the dramatic spectacle spread out before me. There was a sweep of great distances. There were cloud shadows of deep purple hue passing rapidly over one range of the hills to the other.”
