Theodore Clement Steele

Steele's Beginnings
The Artist
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Steele's Beginnings

Born in Owen County, Indiana in 1847, Theodore Clement Steele began painting at an early age and studied art in Chicago, IL and Cincinnati, OH. Steele moved to Indianapolis, IN in 1870 and married Mary Elizabeth Lakin.

The Steeles lived in Battle Creek, MI where the artist produced commissioned portraits as well as landscape compositions. By 1873, the couple returned to Indianapolis, where Steele set up a studio. Steele, like numerous important artists of his day, traveled abroad to study in Munich with the European masters as well as the artists/teachers of the American schools such as Frank Duveneck, William Merritt Chase, and William Trout Richards.

The Artist

Steele studied in Munich at the Munich Art Academy and lived abroad with his family from 1880 to 1885. Trained abroad in a manner similar to many late 19th and early 20th Century American artists in the history of American Impressionism, Steele was associated with the preeminent landscape painters of the American Impressionist art circles located in Cos Cob, CT, Long Island, NY, Cape Cod, MA, and New Hope, PA. In 1885, the Steele family returned from Munich and relocated to Indianapolis, IN. 

Steele gave instruction in art and established an art school in cooperation with Sue Ketcham and William Forsyth from 1889 to 1895. By this point in his career, Steele realized that he could earn a living from portrait commissions, but his most important compositions and primary interest was landscapes. 

By the 1890s, Steele was a nationally recognized artist. Exhibition record include shows at the Hoosier School at Huntington, IN and the Society of Western Artists at Chicago, IL. After the death of Steele’s wife, he purchased two hundred acres of land in Brown County, the site of many of Steele’s most important and highly sought after landscape paintings. Theodore Clement Steele was associated with Indiana University at Bloomington, IN and was made an honorary professor there. Steele continued to make art until his death in July 1926.

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