T.C. Steele

A member of The Hoosier Group, T. C. Steele painted Indiana’s landscapes with Impressionist brushstrokes in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Committed to the arts his whole life, Steele served on various public art boards and juries and wrote and lectured extensively on art. Steele trained as a painter in numerous Midwestern art schools as well as in Munich, Germany before settling in his home state of Indiana, where he made a living off of portrait commissions. Steele’s bright, high-contrast landscapes showcased the diversity of Indiana’s natural and urban environments and began to receive nation-wide acclaim: in the 1880s, he was part of an exhibition at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Indiana requited Steele’s love for the state by appointing him Indiana University’s first artist in residence and maintaining his 211-acre painting studio as a historic site after his death.