The Hoosier Group

An Impression of Indianapolis
Painting depicting a woman walking down a tree-lined dirt path and holding a red umbrella.
Meridian Street, Thawing Weather, T. C. Steele, 1887.
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A collage of photographs and paintings of five individual men.

T. C. Steele, William Forsyth, Otto Stark, J. Ottis Adams, and Richard Gruelle dominated the Indiana art scene in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as regionalist painters working within the Impressionist movement.

Their passion for capturing the natural beauty of their Indiana home brought the five painters together for an exhibition in Chicago in 1894, where they became known as the Hoosier Group. These five artists left behind an enduring body of work and became teachers of the next generation of Indiana artists, impacting Indianapolis, the state, and beyond.

Throughout this exhibit you will explore the lives of each member of the Hoosier Group, how they impacted the Indianapolis art scene, and how their role as teacher helped foster new Indiana artists.