The Hoosier Group: Indiana’s First Impressionists

Having cultivated the most extensive collection of Hoosier Group paintings in the world, the Haan Museum of Indiana Art is pleased to announce its upcoming exhibition featuring figural works by esteemed painters T.C. Steele, Richard Gruelle, William Forsyth, J. Ottis Adams, and Otto Stark.

While the five never formally organized as a group, they were forever linked after Chicago art critic Hamlin Garland referred to them as the ‘Hoosier group’ in his praises of an 1894 exhibition. They celebrated the quiet beauty and charming mundanity of life in Indiana, developing a distinctly American style of impressionism, for which they are now so well known. The Hoosier Group ultimately became the premier representatives of ‘modern art’ in the Midwest.