James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916)

The Riley Festival takes place this weekend, October 4-7, 2012, in Greenfield, Indiana. The four-day festival commemorates the life and work of "The Hoosier Poet," James Whitcomb Riley. Born on October 7, 1849, in Greenfield, Riley was at one time among the most popular and beloved of American poets. In addition to being a poet, Riley was a newspaper columnist, a public speaker, and--in his younger and leaner days--a sign painter and house painter. He is supposed to have painted the old house across the street from my family's own home.

Riley authored scores of poems which were collected in more than three dozen books. Among his most famous poems are "The Old Swimmin'-Hole," "Little Orphant Annie," and "The Raggedy Man." The last two titles inspired two younger men--Hoosiers both--in their own works. Harold Gray created "Little Orphan Annie," a comic strip that ran in newspapers for nearly ninety years. Johnny Gruelle and his family were behind Raggedy Ann, the little rag doll so well loved by American children, and drew her name from those two poems. The poem "Little Orphant Annie" is memorable for its refrain

An' the Gobble-uns'll git you

  Ef you

    Don't

      Watch

        Out!

Riley was an artist himself, but he left the illustration of his books to those more accomplished than he. They included Howard Chandler Christy, Ethel Franklin Betts, E.W. Kemble, and A.B. Frost. Perhaps no other illustrator is more closely identified with Riley's work than Will Vawter (1871-1941). Though twenty-two years separated them, Riley and Vawter were friends, based in part on their shared memories of childhood in small-town Indiana. Born in Virginia, Vawter grew up in Greenfield, Riley's home town. In 1899, Riley wrote to Vawter: "Simply you are divinely ordained to succeed. And now as I forecast you must prove it." With that, Vawter became Riley's handpicked illustrator.

Other Indiana illustrators who contributed to Riley's books included Virginia Keep Clark (1878-1962), William F. Heitman (1878-1945), and two artists of the Hoosier Group, Richard Buckner Gruelle (1851-1914) and T.C. Steele (1847-1926). (R.B. Gruelle was Johnny Gruelle's father and a friend of Riley. The two men lived close by each other in Indianapolis and Riley was a frequent visitor in the Gruelle home.) Mary Catherine McDonald (1852-1897), about whom little is known, was another Riley illustrator. Riley was also a mentor and benefactor to younger authors, including poet and illustrator Evaleen Stein (1863-1923) of Lafayette, Indiana. Among the more accomplished of Riley's illustrators was Franklin Booth (1874-1948). His full-color drawings for Riley's fantasy poem-play, The Flying Islands of the Night (1913), are simply breathtaking. Booth's interest in and knowledge of architecture are on full display in these drawings. His trademark trees, clouds, and floating and flying objects can be found in almost every image. You can see all of Booth's illustrations on a blog called "Golden Age Comic Book Stories," here.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1913), an adopted Hoosier, an author, and an artist himself, defined reading as:

The general body of what one reads. In our country it consists, as a rule, of Indiana novels, short stories in "dialect" and humor in slang. (From The Devil's Dictionary.)

If you substitute "poems" for "short stories" (thereby throwing Riley into the mix) and recognize that George Ade was the leading author of "humor in slang," you'll see that Indiana authors were a dominant force in American literature in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. James Whitcomb Riley played his part in that. If he isn't well known anywhere else today, he is remembered at least in his hometown this weekend.

James Whitcomb Riley, "The Hoosier Poet," commemorated in a U.S. postage stamp in 1940.

And on a cigar box lid, on which he is called the "Hoosier Bard."

As a young man, Riley worked as a sign painter and house painter. Here is an advertisement in his own hand from 1871.

Riley was no mean artist, as this advertisement for McGrillus' Blood Tonic demonstrates. The image is from 1872 and was part of an exhibition at the Lilly Library in Bloomington, Indiana, in 2011. You can read more on the website of Indiana Public Media, here.

Will Vawter was Riley's hand-picked illustrator. This image is from Farm Rhymes (1903).

In my list of Indiana artists who illustrated Riley's poems, I shouldn't forget Cobb Shinn (1887-1951) of Fillmore and Indianapolis. During the postcard craze of the early 1900s, Shinn created hundreds of designs, including this one and the one below for a series entitled "Riley Roses."

Franklin Booth illustrated Riley's book The Flying Islands of the Night from 1913. The book was published by Bobbs-Merrill of Indianapolis.

The Flying Islands of the Night was a rare chance for Booth to work in color. The results compare favorably with the work of any American illustrator of his day. Like Riley, Booth was the son of a hard-nosed military veteran with little understanding of his interest in the arts. Both men got a comparatively late start in life and worked for newspapers before finally meeting with success. Interestingly, neither ever married.

Text copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Grace L. Hamman (1895-1987)

Grace L. Hamman is another of countless artists who seem to have been lost and forgotten. Daughter of a jeweler and sister of a musician, she was born on December 29, 1895, in Goshen, Indiana. She served as art director of the Goshen High School Crimson, a monthly published during the school year. A member of her high school class of 1912, Grace went on to study at Goshen College and the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. As an art student, she worked in animation for Camel Studios of Chicago. After graduating from the American Conservatory of Music in 1924, she sang on the stage, also in Chicago.

In 1927, Grace Hamman married the widower Ora A. Berkey and lived with him on his farm near St. Joseph, Michigan, until his retirement in 1966. Grace Hamman died on August 29, 1987, in Three Rivers, Michigan. Mr. Berkey lived nearly a century and passed away in 1989. Grace L. Hamman was a painter and an illustrator, but images of her art have apparently not yet made it to the Internet.

Copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Katharine Gibson (1893-1960)

Katharine Gibson was not an artist but a writer of children's books. I have decided to post a biography of her because I found a book by her at a secondhand store, a book by an author I didn't know as an Indiana author. The book is called Bow Bells, a beautifully made volume illustrated by Vera Bock (1905-2006) and published in 1943. When I looked up Katharine Gibson on the Internet, I found nothing of value. Fortunately Bow Bells includes a book jacket bio. I also found her in Indiana Authors and Their Books, Ohio Authors and Their Books, and The Junior Book of Authors. This is her introduction to the Internet.

Katharine Gibson was born in Indianapolis on September 13, 1893, and grew up in a family of architects. She worked in the education department of the Cleveland Museum of Art from 1916 to 1946. In 1932 she married Frank Scott Corey Wicks, a Unitarian minister. The couple traveled "a good deal, especially in England." When not traveling, they lived in Indianapolis (as of 1951). Her first book was The Golden Bird and Other Stories from 1927. Fifteen others followed, including To See the Queen (1954), illustrated by fellow Hoosier Clotilde Embree Funk (1893-1991). She also wrote fiction and non-fiction for national magazines. Katharine authored a charming autobiographical sketch in the Junior Book of Authors (1951). Indiana Authors and Their Books lists her works, the last of which was Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Stamp Book (1957). Katharine Gibson died three years after its publication, in Cleveland. Today is her birthday. Happy Birthday, Katharine Gibson!

The frontispieces of Bow Bells by Katharine Gibson, illustrated by Vera Bock.

Text and captions copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Portia Howe Sperry (1890-1967)

Everyone knows Raggedy Ann, the little rag doll with red yarn for hair and a red felt heart pinned to her breast. Raggedy Ann was born from the imagination of Indiana illustrator Johnny Gruelle in 1915. Nearly a hundred years later, she is beloved by children (and grownups) everywhere. Far less well known is Abigail, the Log Cabin Doll, another Indiana doll created by Portia Howe Sperry and designed to help children learn to dress themselves. 

Portia Howe Sperry was born on June 21, 1890, in Chicago and educated at Milwaukee-Downer College as a teacher of physical education. She married Ralph W.E. Sperry in 1914 and lived in Fort Wayne, Indiana, from 1914 to 1917. She returned to take up permanent residence in 1929, at the outset of the Great Depression. When her husband's piano factory closed, Portia moved her family to the backwoods of Brown County, Indiana. Eventually she took over the management of a shop called Brown County Folks, where she sold handicrafts. Portia also began developing a doll called Abigail, with a face designed by local artist L.O. Griffith, manufacturing by local Brown County women, and packaging donated by the Quaker Oats Company. The doll was christened at the Nashville House on February 27, 1932. In 1938, Albert Whitman and Company of Chicago published a companion book, Abigail, by Portia Howe Sperry and Lois Donaldson and illustrated by Chicago artist Zabeth Selover. The inside dust jacket of Abigail summarizes the story:

A story of covered wagon days which the whole family will enjoy. Father, mother, two older brothers, Susan, a little girl of ten, and her baby brother travel overland from Kentucky to a new home in Brown County, Indiana. 

And who is Abigail? The most enchanting companion a little girl going to a new home could have--a cloth doll dressed as a little girl dressed in 1835.

Abigail is still made by the Sperry family, and the book named after her is still in print. You can read more about the doll, the book, the business, and the woman who created all three at the website Abigail Doll, at www.abigaildoll.com.

Portia Howe Sperry died on April 21, 1967. A plaque in Nashville, Indiana, commemorates her life and work.

The cover and the double-page spread that opens the story of Susan and her doll Abigail as they travel to Brown County, Indiana. These drawings by Zabeth Selover are from the seventh printing of the book, 1967. Note the container for the doll: the Quaker Oats Company provided a double-length oats carton for the original Abigail doll. Portia Howe Sperry and her helpers covered the cartons in wallpaper and affixed a handle to them for easy carrying.

Text copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Walter H. Gallaway (1870-1911)

Walter H. Gallaway was one of the most accomplished of Indiana illustrators from the early twentieth century. He drew cartoons and illustrations for the three main humor magazines of his day, Puck, Judge, and Life, while his talent for cartooning landed him in a tug-of-war between Hearst and Pulitzer papers in New York City. Because of that, he became one of the first artists from the Hoosier State to draw a Sunday comic strip. Sadly, Walter Gallaway died at age forty and his name has almost been forgotten.

Walter H. Gallaway was born in Pendleton, Indiana, on October 10, 1870, and moved with his family to Indianapolis at age fifteen. He didn't care for high school and left after two years to study art under William Forsyth at the Indiana School of Art. At age twenty, Gallaway set out for New York City, determined for a career in the theater. He studied at the Art Students League but was forced to return to his Indiana home for lack of finances after only a year. During the last decade of the nineteenth century, Gallaway drew pictures for the Indianapolis News, using his position as a springboard for a return to New York. By 1900 he was back in the Big Apple and sharing living quarters with Frederick Coffay Yohn, a fellow Indiana artist.

For the next several years, Gallaway bounced back and forth between the New York Journal and the New York World. He also cartooned for the New York Herald and the Boston Herald. In addition to drawing cartoons and illustrations for those two papers, Gallaway contributed to humor magazines, as well as to Munsey's Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. He joined the ranks of early Sunday comic strip cartoonists with Citizen Fixit, Absent Minded Augie, Louis Laughs, and Was There Ever a Boy Like Barney Blue, all between 1903 and 1908. The only native-born Hoosier that I know to have preceded him as a comic strip artist was Roy W. Taylor of Richmond.

Walter Gallaway died on September 7, 1911, at his home in Westport, Connecticut, and was buried in Brooklyn.

Text copyright 2012, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

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