Elizabeth Driggs Bacon (1881-1928)

Elizabeth "Beth" Driggs was born on February 1, 1881, in Indianapolis, Indiana. From 1902 to 1905, she taught Saturday classes for children at the Herron School of Art in her home city. That's where she met her future husband, Louis A. Bacon, an art student and supervisor of manual training in the elementary schools of Indianapolis. In 1912, Louis Bacon resigned his position to take a job with Atkinson, Mentzer and Grover, a publisher of textbooks and other books based in Chicago. (Harry E. Wood succeeded him in his position with the Indianapolis schools.) The change came not long after Elizabeth Driggs and Louis A. Bacon were married on June 17, 1911, in Indianapolis. The couple had one daughter, Honoria.

Elizabeth Driggs studied at the Art Students League under William Merritt Chase; at the Art Institute of Chicago under John Johansen, Martha Baker, Frederick Richardson, Frederick Warren Freer, and John Vanderpoel; and at the Brandywine School under Howard Pyle. Baker, Vanderpoel, and Pyle died in in the same year, 1911.

Elizabeth Driggs Bacon was a painter of portraits, landscapes, and still-life. She also created large, decorative scenes from mythology. She exhibited in Indianapolis and Richmond and in Chicago with the Hoosier Salon. Elizabeth won prizes at the Hoosier Salon and at the Indiana State Fair in 1926. The latter was first prize for a poster in color. The titles of her paintings exhibited at the Hoosier Salon include "The Apple Tree," "Theft of the Grapes," "Gazelles," and "The Boar Hunt." She was also a member of several art organizations.

In 1922, Elizabeth Driggs Bacon co-founded Orchard Country Day School, an experimental first grade in Indianapolis. One of the other co-founders of the school, Mary Stewart Carey, donated her home and apple orchard, located at 5050 North Meridian Street, for the school. It is still in operation as The Orchard School and is located at 615 West 64th Street.

In addition to being a teacher and artist, Elizabeth Driggs Bacon was a writer and editor. Her subject of course was art. In 1922, she served as art critic for the Indianapolis News. From 1926 to her unexpected death in 1928, she wrote the weekly newsletter and edited the monthly bulletin of the John Herron Art Institute.

Elizabeth Driggs Bacon died eighty-seven years ago this month, on March 15, 1928, in Indianapolis. She was just forty-seven years old.

A very poor image of art by Elizabeth Driggs Bacon. Images of her art are otherwise unavailable to me.

Text copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Frank Vietor (1919-2006)

Francis E. "Frank" Vietor was born on December 21, 1919, in Poland, a small town in Clay County, Indiana. He served as a photographer and illustrator in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, including time in North Africa and Italy. After the war, he worked as an illustrator with Paton Studios in Indianapolis and graduated from the Herron School of Art in 1948. A decade later, in 1958, he and Jim Bradford formed their own advertising studio, Bradford and Vietor, in Indianapolis.

After many years as an advertising artist, Frank Vietor began painting landscapes and pictures of trains. "I've always loved trains," he wrote in 1984, "and we have a model railroad layout in the garage which competes with the car for the space." Working in acrylic and gouache (opaque watercolor), Vietor specialized in scenes of small towns. "The small towns I paint are typical of midwest rural America," he explained. His small-town landscapes typically show a view from a distance, where town gives way to country.

Frank Vietor died in March 2006 at age eighty-six.

"Summertime," a small painting that looks like a piece of advertising art or commercial art, but alone might be considered a genre painting.

"Man with a Jug"

A very charming still-life called "Indiana State Fair." Again, this painting has the look of a commercial work of art, perhaps the cover of a booklet, but is capable of standing on its own.

"Railway Landscape," a small painting of a large and powerful subject and one of Frank Vietor's specialties.

"Winter in Brookville"--Frank Vietor wasn't the first Indiana artist to paint in Brookville, an old town in the eastern part of the state, nor will he be the last.

Images courtesy of Fine Estate Art. 
Text and captions copyright 2015, 2024 Terence E. Hanley