Robert Weaver (1913-1991)

The 2012 Peru Amateur Circus and Circus City Festival are underway this week, July 14 through 21 in Peru, Indiana. To coincide with those events, I would like to write about an artist of the circus, Peru native Robert Weaver.

Robert Edward Weaver was born on November 15, 1913, in Peru, Indiana, winter home of America's circuses, now designated as the Circus Capital of the World and home of the International Circus Hall of Fame. Weaver earned his bachelor of fine arts degree in painting from the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and studied fresco painting at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Although he traveled to Mexico and Europe, kept a studio in Greenwich Village, and served in the U.S. Navy during World War II, Weaver always returned to Peru and his role of promoting the circus and his hometown's unique place in the culture of the circus.  

In addition to being a hometown booster, Weaver worked as a painter, muralist, sculptor, commercial artist, and illustrator. His work appeared in national magazines, including The Saturday Evening Post, Sports Illustrated, Good Housekeeping, Child Life, Children’s Playmate, and The Brownie Reader. He executed a number of murals in Indiana and at the Alameda Naval Air Station in California. He also exhibited his work in Washington D.C., Pittsburgh, at the Hoosier Salon, and at the San Francisco World's Fair. Weaver earned numerous awards and honors over his five-decade career. He also taught painting, mural design, drawing, and illustration at the Herron School of Art and served as chair of the Department of Illustration.

In 1960, Weaver led a revitalization campaign in Peru that included a downtown beautification project and the establishment of the Circus City Festival, Inc. (CCFI), an organization in which he served as president. The CCFI was instrumental in the foundation and promotion of the Peru Amateur Circus and the Circus City Festival, held each July in Peru. Weaver died on July 18, 1991, in New Bern, North Carolina. His work was subject of a segment of the television show Across Indiana in 1995. In 2010, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra debuted a concert piece by James Beckel, Jr., the slow movement of which was inspired by a 1952 painting by Robert Weaver entitled "Daniel (In the Lion's Den)." And of course this week, young performers will display their talents in the Peru Amateur Circus, the handiwork of Peru's circus painter, Robert Edward Weaver.

"Circus Poster," an oil painting by Robert Weaver in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

"Bull Man," an acrylic painting by Weaver. Note that--oddly enough--the image of the eye of the elephant in the foreground is repeated not only in the eye of the elephant in the background but also in the cuff of the bull man's trousers. 

Written by Terence Hanley and Bridget Hanley of Proficient Pen

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Roy Anderson Ketcham (1894-1969)

For an update on this article, see my article of November 21, 2014, here.

Roy Anderson Ketcham was born on November 11, 1894, in Sandborn, Indiana, and grew up in Indianapolis, where he delivered newspapers for the Indianapolis Star and attended Shortridge High School and the Herron School of Art. Ketcham furthered his art education in New York and at the Académie Julian in Paris. He returned to the United States feeling apathetic and suffering from tired eyes. Repairing to his parents' farm in Loogootee, Indiana, Ketcham spent the next five years behind a mule-drawn corn cultivator, mulling over his recent education and contemplating his future career. While on the farm, he took up painting again and got back into the game with studies at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art during the 1920s.

Described as "a strapping big blond--a good cross between an Apollo and a college football center," Ketcham painted landscapes and portraits, twice winning the Indianapolis Star prize for outstanding portrait at the Hoosier Salon. He lived and worked in Chicago for many years as an artist for the Chicago Sun-Times and an illustrator of children's books and magazines. His credits included illustrations (with Frank C. Papé) for the book The Child's Story of Science by fellow Hoosier Ramon "Uncle Ray" Coffman and for the magazine Junior Home.

Roy Anderson Ketcham died in November 1969 in Schoolcraft, Michigan. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures by Ketcham, but I have the following caricature of him by another Hoosier, Paul Plaschke. The image is from a blog called This Old Pallette.

Text copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Cassilly Adams (1843-1921)

This month marks the 136th anniversary of the Battle of Little Bighorn, or as the victors called it, the Battle of the Greasy Grass. On June 25, 1876, a sizable force of American Indians camped near the Little Bighorn River in eastern Montana met and crushed the United States Seventh Cavalry under George Armstrong Custer, killing him and 267 of his officers, men, and scouts. The popular image of the battle at Little Bighorn comes from a lithograph made by the German-American artist F. Otto Becker (1854-1945) and mass produced in 1896 by the Anheuser-Busch Company of St. Louis, Missouri. Becker's image, entitled "Custer's Last Fight," is justifiably famous. Lost and almost forgotten today is the work that preceded and inspired it. Also called "Custer's Last Fight," it was painted by Cassilly Adams, an Ohio artist laid to rest in an Indiana cemetery.

Cassilly Adams was born on July 18, 1843, in Zanesville, Ohio. His father was a Massachusetts-born lawyer, descended from President John Adams. As a young man, Cassilly Adams served in the United States Navy during the Civil War, first as a Master's Mate, then as an Acting Ensign in the Mississippi Squadron, aboard the U.S.S. Osage. He studied at the Boston Academy of Art and the Cincinnati Art School and made his living as a landscape artist, designer, and engraver. By 1880, Adams was living in St. Louis. In 1884-1885, he painted a monumental canvas--16 1/2 feet by 9 1/2 feet--depicting the Battle of Little Bighorn. (There were also two end panels depicting Custer as a small boy and in death.) The idea was for the painting to be a traveling exhibition and subject of a lecture for paying customers. That venture fell through, and the painting went to a St. Louis saloonkeeper, and, upon his death, to the Anheuser-Busch Company. Otto Becker was brought in to turn Adams' painting into a popular lithograph. In his book One for a Man, Two for a Horse, author Gerald Carson called Adams' work "the most popular exemplar of American saloon art." It was also used to sell patent medicine. Unfortunately, Cassilly Adams' original painting, "Custer's Last Fight," is no longer with us. Anheuser-Busch presented it to the Seventh Cavalry, which proceeded to lose it despite its immense size. The painting was rediscovered, lost again, found again, restored during the Great Depression, and finally put on display at the officer's club at Fort Bliss, Texas. On June 13, 1946, almost seventy years to the day after the Battle of Little Bighorn, the painting was destroyed by fire.

Little is known otherwise of Cassilly Adams. He worked in Cincinnati and Toledo as a designer and engraver and painted numerous scenes of Indian life. The 1920 census found him in Marion County, Indiana. At age seventy-seven, he was occupied as a farmer. He died the following year, on May 8, 1921, in Traders Point and--like Custer and his men--sought the high ground, for Cassilly Adams now lies buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, located at the highest point in Indianapolis.

An adaptation of Cassilly Adams' painting "Custer's Last Fight," here used to advertise M.A. Simmons Liver Medicine. The original painting is now lost. Images of it can be hard to find. 

Instead we have Otto Becker's lithograph, also adapted from Adams' original painting. This image, from 1896, is often attributed to Adams. Robert Taft discussed images of the battle in the pages of the Kansas Historical Quarterly in November 1946 (Vol. 14, No. 4) and in his book, Artists and Illustrators of the Old West: 1850-1900 (1953). You can read Taft's article and see other images on the website of the Kansas State Historical Society, here.

Three images of Indian life by Cassilly Adams.

Postscript (July 15, 2012): "Custer's Last Fight" by Cassilly Adams, an image from Dr. Robert Taft's Artists and Illustrators of the Old West: 1850-1900 (1953). This version is from a restoration made in 1938. I wonder if there is an extant image of the original painting or of its two flanking panels.

Postscript (Feb. 5, 2015): Author Myron J. Smith, Jr., has cited this article in his new book, Civil War Biographies from the Western Waters: 956 Confederate and Union Naval and Military Personnel, Contractors, Politicians, Officials, Steamboat Pilots, and Others (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 2015). Mr. Smith has given an interesting account of Cassilly Adams' military career during the Civil War. You can see a preview of Mr. Smith's book on Google Books.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

National School of Illustrating

At one time, Indianapolis was a leader in the arts. During the late 1800s and early 1900s, prominent Indianapolitans banded together to establish the Art Association of Indianapolis, the Society of Western Artists, the Indiana Artists Club, and other art institutions. In 1893, Modern Art, a magazine of the arts and crafts movement and the first of its kind, began publication in Indianapolis. During that same decade, the second Indiana School of Art, under William Forsyth, operated out of studios in downtown Indianapolis. Although that school closed its doors in 1897, its successor, the Herron School of Art, opened in 1902 and is still in existence as part of Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis. One of the most significant developments in Indiana art of the 1890s was the arrival of the Hoosier School, composed of William Forsyth, Otto Stark, T.C. Steele, J. Ottis Adams, and Richard B. Gruelle. Less well known is that during the 1890s, Indianapolis newspapers took advantage of recent technological developments to begin printing cartoons and illustrations in greater numbers. In that first decade of more advanced and reliable reproduction of artwork, newspapers in Indianapolis hired men who would make their names known in the world of book design, illustration, cartooning, and other graphic arts. They included Frederick Coffay Yohn, Arthur Sinclair Covey, Bruce Rogers, Kin Hubbard (Abe Martin), Johnny Gruelle (Raggedy Ann), and Sidney Smith (The Gumps).

If newspapers and magazines were to fill their pages with illustrations, they would need well trained illustrators, and lots of them. Schools of art flourished in late nineteenth century America, but their instruction was concentrated in the fine arts. Commercial art held a place far down on the list of worthy artistic endeavors. I have found references to a school of illustration operating in Indianapolis in the 1890s or early 1900s. There may have been more than one in fact. But there isn't any mention of such a school in The Encyclopedia of Indianapolis or other sources I have checked. Then I found two advertisements for the National School of Illustrating:

The first advertisement is from 1900, the second from an unknown date, but perhaps about 1902. The Butler University yearbook of 1899 refers to the National Illustrating Company as "the oldest, largest and leading engraving house in the state." A directory of Indianapolis from about the same time lists the institution as a company of engravers, electrotypers, designers, and artists. A man named Carl Anderson was listed as director of the school. Carl Anderson was also the name of the cartoonist who drew the pantomime comic strip Henry, but I don't see how the chronology of his life would have placed the cartoonist Carl Anderson in Indianapolis in the early 1900s. I hope someone can tell me differently because I would like to add Anderson's name to my list of Hoosier cartoonists.

The "Heeb System" was named for Emmett Jerome Heeb, also known as E.J. Heeb. Born on June 11, 1858, in Fayette County, Indiana, Heeb was an educator, publisher, auctioneer, and businessman. At one time or another he was affiliated with the Indianapolis College of Law and the National Correspondence Schools. The National Correspondence Schools had their offices in the When Building, located at 28 to 40 North Pennsylvania Street in Indianapolis (1), an address inclusive of the addresses shown in the first advertisement above. Coincidentally or not, the When Building was the work of John Tomlinson Brush, a prominent businessman and himself an artist. The 1906 directory of Indianapolis informs us that Heeb founded the Indianapolis Business University in 1850, an impossibility given his year of birth. In any case, the school offered instruction and training in every kind of business, including not only illustration and cartooning, but also bookkeeping, stenography, telegraphy, banking, law, pharmacy, writing, and advertising.

Heeb died in Los Angeles on March 29, 1950. I don't know what happened to his National School of Illustrating. I'd like to find out more about the school and its students. Some studied by correspondence, some in residence. Cartoonist Nate Collier (1883-1961) did both. William F. Heitman (1878-1945) may have been with the school as well. The name Indiana Illustrating Company, cited in articles about Heitman, may simply have been misremembered long after the school had given up the ghost.

Note

(1) Source: The Journal Handbook of Indianapolis: An Outline of History by Max Robinson Hyma, pp. 210, 211-212.

Text copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Mary Chilton Gray (1888-1969)

Marie L. Chilton Gray, better known as Mary Chilton Gray, was born on November 22, 1888, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her mother, Georgette P. Gray, was a social worker and superintendent at the Indianapolis Home for Friendless Women. She also worked at the Indianapolis Orphans Asylum and the Indiana Industrial Home for the Blind. Mary Chilton Gray studied off and on at the Herron School of Art between 1902 and 1911. Only thirteen years old in the spring of 1902, she was one of the first students at Herron. Among the other artists of note in that inaugural class were William Merle Allison, Fanny L. Burgheim, Harry Carlisle, Helen Eaton Jacoby, and Tempe Tice. The instructors were William Forsyth and Otto Stark.

Mary Chilton Gray was a painter active in Indianapolis as late as 1930. She exhibited in the Hoosier Salon in 1931 and 1933 and lived in Taos, New Mexico, for ten years as part of an artist's colony that at various times included Georgia O'Keeffe, Ansel Adams, Nicolai Fechin, and D.H. Lawrence. The height of her career came in Denver where she worked for the Colorado Museum of Natural History and the Denver Art Museum as a muralist and illustrator. Her books include three from the Denver Museum of Natural History Popular Series: Fossils: A Story of Rocks and Their Record of Prehistoric Life by Harvey C. Markman (No. 3), Ancient Man in North America by H(annah) M(arie) Wormington (No. 4), and Prehistoric Indians of the Southwest, also by H.M. Wormington (No. 7). You can see photographs of Mary Chilton Gray on the website of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, here. The photographs show the artist alone, with staff members, and--of special interest--preparing dinosaur murals at the museum. Mary Chilton Gray was married to Robert J. Mendenhall, a commercial artist. She died in Denver on November 9, 1969, at age eighty.

"The Shadow Taos Pueblo," a watercolor by Mary Chilton Gray.

Three illustrations of Southwestern Indian dress and dance.

The cover of Fossils by Harvey C. Markman, with a cover design and illustration by Mary Chilton Gray. Photographs of her murals appear inside.

Finally, a floral still life from about 1942.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Lottie Lyons Grow (1884-1981)

Lotta Lyons Grow, nicknamed "Lottie," was born on July 22, 1884, in Hymera, a small town in Sullivan County, Indiana. Her father was a farmer, her mother a homemaker. Lottie graduated from Central Normal College in Danville, Indiana, in 1904 and taught high school in Hymera for five years. She also attended the Herron School of Art and Marian College, both in Indianapolis, and the St. Louis Art Institute. In 1910 Lottie married Walter Smith Grow (1880-?), an osteopathic physician, and afterwards lived in Indianapolis. In 1911, a month after their daughter Bernadine was born, the Grows set off for South America, returning in 1912. Tragedy struck the Grow family in 1932 when Bernadine, a student in Chicago, died at age twenty. I don't wonder that biographical details are missing from the life of Lottie Lyons Grow for the following half decade.

From 1937 to 1944, Lottie wrote a column for Indiana Club Women, and from 1938 to 1946 for Art Digest. She also contributed to News Week. She is supposed to have been the first in Indiana to give art programs on radio and television. During World War II, she served in hospitals in the Pacific Theater and promoted art therapy for wounded servicemen. Like so many Hoosier artists, Lottie painted and sketched in the hills of Brown County south of Indianapolis, where she kept a studio. She also exhibited in the Hoosier Salon. A painter and graphic artist, Lottie created landscapes, floral paintings, and etchings. She also authored three books, at least one of which she illustrated herself. They were: Cameos of Deer-Lick in Brown County Hills (1957), Over the Split-Rail Fence (1971, illustrated by the author), and Beckoning Trails (1979).

Lottie Lyons Grow lived for nearly a century and passed away on November 2, 1981, in Wabash, Indiana. She was ninety-seven years old.

Three works by Indiana artist Lottie Lyons Grow (1884-1981).

Text and captions copyright 2012 Terence E. Hanley

Josephine Hollingsworth (1903 or 1904-1964)

Josephine Hollingsworth was born in 1903 or 1904 in Lebanon, Indiana, and as a child lived in New Castle and Indianapolis. She attended the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and graduated in 1926 after four years of study, making her one of the first class at Herron to receive a Diploma in Fine Arts (DFA). As a student and after graduating, Josephine taught art at Beech Grove, Shortridge High School, and George and Gordon Mess' Circle Art Academy. She also studied with Carolyn Ashbrook and Indiana University extension.

In 1929, Josephine set out for Chicago where she landed a job with a publisher of children's books. Her illustrations appeared in a book on natural history, a series of twelve readers for children, all fairy tales, and Pioneer Fire Makers by Bella VanAmburgh. Josephine also did advertising art for Indianapolis businessman Russell Fortune for publication in Good Furniture magazine. While in Chicago, Josephine continued her education at the Art Institute of Chicago.

On May 4, 1930, she married Howard Ross Poulson in Indianapolis. They had two children, Thomas Layman Poulson (b. 1934), a professor of biology at Yale University, and Carolyn Jo (Poulson) Hofstad. (See the comment below.) Jo Poulson lived with her family in Winnetka, Illinois, and Manhasset, New York. (See the postscript below.) She died on March 5, 1964, while visiting her mother in Miami, Florida.

A bookplate design by Indiana illustrator Josephine Hollingsworth.

Postscript (Dec. 6, 2012): I have found a little more on Josephine Hollingsworth Poulson, also known as Jo Poulson. After moving to the Chicago area and marrying H. Ross Poulson, Jo studied watercolor painting under Francis Chapin, a well known Chicago artist and a teacher at the Herron School of Art (1938). In March 1942, she returned to Indianapolis for a one-woman show of her watercolors at the Hoosier Art Galleries in the State Life Building. Prior to that, she had exhibited in the Hoosier Salon. She painted not only landscapes but also street scenes, circus scenes, and subjects as varied as a floral still life and a navy destroyer. At the time of her one-woman show, Jo Poulson was living in Winnetka, Illinois, and rearing a family.

This watercolor by Jo Poulson is in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Postscript dated December 6, 2012.
Revised and updated on December 6, 2019.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2019 Terence E. Hanley