The Richmond Group Artists
February 4th – June 3, 2023
The Richmond Group Artists
In anticipation of RAM’s 125th Anniversary (June, 2023) we are displaying a large number of works by the Richmond Group Artists in the Reihman/Cravens Gallery and balcony foyer, who were an integral part of why Richmond Art Museum began and still exists today.
The Richmond Group was comprised of eastern Indiana artists, whose attentiveness for their community reflected in their subject matter of local people, greenery, and distinctive landscapes. They developed a distinguishing, Impressionistic style, uninfluenced by other art movements in Indiana or elsewhere beyond the Midwest. The Richmond Group often referred to themselves as a group of outdoor sketchers and plein-air artists, and was informally recognized as the Rambler’s Sketch Club and dubbed by the local newspapers as the Conner Sketch Club or the Richmond Sketch Club (20). The Richmond group was working an earnest ten years before Hoosier Group artists (17). A newspaper article in 1876 affirmed, “There must be something peculiar in the atmosphere of Richmond which develops native talent. Certainly we know of no other city of its size which numbers so many artists who have distinguished themselves by producing works of merit” (21).
Artists of the Richmond Group displayed here include John Elwood Bundy, George Herbert Baker, Maude Kaufman Eggemeyer, Charles Conner, and John Albert Seaford. Their works exhibited here give us a glance into their lives, experiences, and perceptions of their vibrant Indiana landscapes and communities.
Richmond Group artists John Elwood Bundy, Charles Conner, Ellwood Morris, and Micajah T. Nordyke attended the first organizational meeting of the Richmond Art Association and played an integral role in its development (23). For thirteen years, an annual exhibition was held in the Garfield School building. Classrooms were converted into art galleries; desks were removed and blackboards were covered with fabric so that the artworks could be properly displayed. The earliest exhibitions were of artworks loaned by local residents. It was through the Richmond Art Association’s determination and efforts that over a hundred paintings were exhibited in the annual exhibition of 1902, including painting by artists in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, and cities across Indiana (23).
In 1903, Ella Bond Johnston visited former Richmond resident Daniel G. Reid, his success having made him a multimillionaire, in New York and requested his help with the Richmond Art Association. From then on, he provided finances that enabled the Richmond Art Association to acquire artwork by well-known American artists (23).The association went on to begin work on with the local school cooperation to incorporate art galleries into the new high school (25).
Selections taken from The Richmond Group Artists by Shaun Thomas Dingwerth