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News / Winter 2020 Newsletter / Featured Painting: Oregon Coast

by

The Art of Steele

On the Oregon Coast
1902
Oil on canvas
50.8 cm x 60.96 cm | 20.0 in x 24.0 in

In July of 1902 Steele and his daughter Daisy left for the West Coast to visit his mother and brother in Oregon, and his son Shirley who was living in Redlands, California.  They traveled west by train and he painted most every day after arriving.

In a letter dated September 28, 1902, to Carl Lieber from Redlands, California, Steele wrote:

“After two weeks spent in the mountains, … we went to the Oregon coast, and from the very first I experienced a fascination for its wonderful beauty that I scarcely felt before… I brought away fifteen canvases… I am satisfied that I never did a better thing than in breaking away from my Indiana work for a while.”1

1The House of the Singing Winds, Selma N. Steele, Theodore L. Steele, Wilbur D. Peat, Indiana Historical Society, 1966.