T. C. Steele and the House of the Singing Winds

On a spring day in 1907, two people, an Indiana artist well known for his portrait and landscape work and his bride-to-be, stood atop a hill overlooking Brown County’s lush and wild landscape. The artist, who had expressed to his betrothed his need for a new location for his work, turned to her and proclaimed: “My dear, if you think you can manage to live in this wilderness, we will build our home here—on this hill.”

Anticipating the adventures that lay ahead for the couple, the young bride, whose brother had regaled her with tales about the area’s “primitiveness and picturesqueness,” told her future husband that living on the hilltop “could be made very simple, living so far away from everything—just among the trees and clouds.”

Theodore Clement Steele, famed member along with William Forsyth, Otto Stark, Richard Gruelle, and J. Ottis Adams of the Hoosier Group of American regional impressionist painters, and, Selma Neubacher, the artist’s second wife, went on to purchase two hundred and eleven acres near Belmont in the Brown County hills. There they built their home, dubbed The House of the Singing Winds for the aural treats produced as the wind blew through the wire of the screened porches surrounding the house.

The couple, married on August 9, 1907, later added a large studio to accommodate Steele’s work, landscaped the surrounding hillsides, and created several acres of gardens encompassing the home. “We felt and believed,” said Selma Steele, “that here in this hill country were evidences of character in the outdoors that would command of us our best and finest spirit.”

Honored during his career by election to the National Academy of Design and service as president of the Society of Western Artists, T. C. Steele was born in Owen County, Indiana, on September 11, 1847, the first child of Samuel and Harriett Steele. As a youngster, Steele lived near Waveland, a village he described as “a community of more than ordinary intelligence and situated in a charming and pleasant country of prosperous farms.”

Educated at the Waveland Collegiate Institute, Steele, from an early age, displayed an aptitude for drawing. By the age of thirteen he was teaching drawing at the institute and, five years later, he was listed in the catalog for the school as the teacher of Drawing and Painting in the preparatory department. Graduating in 1868, Steele went on to study painting for a brief time in Chicago and Cincinnati. In 1870 he married Mary Elizabeth “Libbie” Lakin, who had been a fellow student of his at the Institute. Drawn by the promises of some painting commissions, the young couple lived in Battle Creek, Michigan, for a time before returning to Indiana in 1873, settling in Indianapolis.

For Steele, as he confessed to his journal, the two great qualities an artist had to possess to “pass the point of mediocrity” were mechanical skill matched with a “deep love of the beautiful.” Struggling to live up to these qualities and make a living as an artist, Steele, through his work as a portrait painter, drew the attention and patronage of Indianapolis businessman Herman Lieber, who often exhibited the young painter’s work in his store, the H. Lieber and Company Art Emporium.

Developing a reputation for his portrait work, Steele also won the attention of the local press. A reporter from the Indianapolis Saturday Herald described Steele as a “tall romantic-looking fellow” and as “an ideal artist in personal appearance, wearing his hair and whiskers long, after the manner of Bohemians generally.” Steele, who in 1877 had joined with John Love to form the Indianapolis Art Association, left America in 1880 to study at the Royal Academy of Art in Munich, Germany, a trip sponsored by Lieber in association with other Indianapolis businessmen.

Upon his return to Indianapolis in 1885, Steele continued to earn his living as an artist, receiving commissions for portraits and also teaching art; for a time he worked with fellow Hoosier artist Forsyth at the Indiana School of Art. Winning recognition as part of the Hoosier Group through an 1894 exhibition in Chicago, Steele, a year later, stopped teaching in order to devote more time to his work. Drawn more and more to landscape painting, he joined with Adams to purchase the Hermitage in Brookville. Writing to his daughter about the area, he said that the “haze makes this country seem like some enchanted land, and as we ride about I feel more as if I were listening to some beautiful story and that my fancy was picturing it—that it was not real at all.” Shortly after receiving the honor of appointment to a commission to select which American paintings were to be included in the Paris Universal Exposition, Steele suffered the loss of his wife, Libbie, who died on November 14, 1899.

Steele’s move to Brown County, and his marriage to Selma, began a new phase in his life and work. Writing to his fiancée as he supervised construction of their new home in the hills in May 1907, Steele cautioned her not to expect too much from the property at the beginning of their life together. “Houses may be bought,” he wrote, “but homes grow and out of the heart’s depths. Memories cluster about them, so that when we give them up, there is a pain that will not go down. Rest and contentment and recreation live in the home, and out of it we get the inspiration and strength for the work in the world that tells. I look forward to this home for both of us, as a source of inspiration.”  

The location proved to be a boon for Steele’s painting. Shortly after the newly married couple moved into their home, they settled on a routine. The morning was used for individual work—Selma painted, too—and the afternoon for tramping around the countryside. “Before many days,” she noted, “even this plan was broken—for the painter was overwhelmed by the number of paintable subjects to be done. Soon there were enough canvases started to cover the hours of almost the entire day.”

The day started early for the artist, as he believed that during “a work season” no landscape painter should be in bed after four o’clock in the morning, his wife said. After an early lunch, Steele would rest for a short time, usually by reading, listening to music, or walking with his wife. Back to work in the afternoon and early evening, Steele often tramped far into the woods in order to capture the right subject. “I marveled at his capacity for work,” Selma said of her husband, adding that she came to realize that he possessed a rare gift. “It was like an inner flame that kept his whole being—mind, body, and soul—ever alive to the shifting scenes around him,” she observed.

From 1907 to 1921 the Steeles spent the spring season at their Brown County property and wintered in Indianapolis. In 1922, when Steele became artist in residence and an honorary professor at Indiana University, the couple established a home in Bloomington.

While working on a painting of a peony arrangement at his Brown County home in May 1926, Steele fell seriously ill. After a trip to a clinic in Terre Haute failed to offer any relief, the Steeles returned to their home on the hill on the Fourth of July. The painter died at eight o’clock in the evening on July 24, 1926. For comfort, Selma Steele recalled something her husband had once said to her during a time of sorrow: “Don’t you know there are some things one cannot reason out?”