"Not Necessarily a Tramp Studying Art"

Clifton Wheeler (1883-1953) was born in Hadley, Hendricks County, Indiana, in 1883.  While in the fourth grade, his family moved to Mooresville when his father, Alonzo L. Wheeler, purchased the Banner Flour Mill on East High Street (at the railroad tracks, where the car wash is located today).  The Wheeler family lived in the house on the southwest corner of the intersection of Indiana and High Streets.

 

Clifton Wheeler (Photo Courtesy of the Indiana Historical Society)

 

 

Rose and Alonzo L. Wheeler when they lived on Lockerbie Street in Mooresville

 

Banner Mills on East High Street, Mooresville (Built in 1868)

 

Wheeler House, 7 West High Street, Mooresville, Indiana

(Built 1895; Renovated 1915) (2008 Photo)

Banner Mills Advertisement (Mooresville Times, January 28, 1910)

 

In a letter (1945) to the Art Museum of Greater Lafayette (Indiana), Clifton Wheeler wrote, “When I finished high school I was reluctantly allowed to come to Indianapolis to William Forsyth’s studio for a year. Forsyth and my doctor aunt, who lived in New York, assured my parents that I would not necessarily be a tramp if I studied art and at last they sadly agreed that I might go to New York for a year to art school.”

The ArtSmart Indiana website states, “Wheeler had studied under Forsyth at the Herron Art Institute. He then studied with William Merritt Chase in New York City and went to Europe twice to study. Around 1911 he returned to Indiana with his wife, and they built a home and studio in Irvington, an eastside Indianapolis neighborhood where Forsyth and other artists also lived. He became an instructor at the Herron Art Institute, in charge of the antique class. . . .  Wheeler had no special technique or subject, but his decorative work was well known, and he had murals all over the country. His murals at the Indianapolis Circle Theatre and City Hospital ([later] Wishard) are among his best work. His landscape paintings—especially his snow scenes—are held in high regard.”

 

Self-Portrait (Undated) by Clifton Wheeler

The Road Through the Woods (1924) by Clifton Wheeler

 

Paul Hadley, another Mooresville artist who also taught at Herron Art Institute, considered Clifton Wheeler to be the best of the Hoosier Group school of artists.

To see more Clifton Wheeler paintings and drawings, visit the ArtSmart Indiana website or see these search results.