Path Through the Woods

Theodore Clement Steele, American, 1847–1926
1900
Oil on canvas
45.72 cm x 71.12 cm x 2.54 | 18 in x 28 in x 1 in
Signed and dated lower right, T.C. Steele / 1900
By permission, David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University
Gift of Mrs. Edmund Burke Ball
Accession number: 0000.345.000

This painting is in the collection of the David Owsley Museum of Art at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana which includes the thirteen paintings by T.C. Steele listed below. These paintings represent three genres: portrait, landscape, still life.

• Portrait Study, signed / 1884
• Tennessee Mountain Land, signed / 1899
• Path Through the Woods, signed / 1900
• Portrait of John Ottis Adams, about 1900
• Untitled (landscape with houses), 1904
• Frosty Morning – Brookville, signed / 1905
• A Summer Day, signed / 1906 
• Edge of the Field (a.k.a. Summer Pasture), signed / 1918
• Vase of Flowers, signed / 1919
• Afternoon in Late Autumn, signed / c. 1920-1922
• Peonies in a Dark Red Bowl, signed / 1923
• Untitled (Landscape, road on a hill) / n.d.
• Untitled (Landscape, cow on road) / n.d.

This painting Path Through the Woods was owned by Mrs. Edmund Burke Ball (Bertha Crosley Ball) of Muncie, Indiana. (Edmund B. Ball is in Ball brothers’ photo below). 

Frank C. Ball, one of the five Ball brothers who established Ball Corporation in the 1880’s. The Ball family were American industrialists and philanthropists and their product most widely recognized still today are “Ball jars” which are used for canning.

The former Indiana State Normal College, Eastern Division was named Ball State University in 1965 in recognition of the family generosity. Ball State is one of a few public colleges in the US that includes a family name. 

Exhibition

South Bend Art Association, Indiana, “Indiana Painting Exhibition,” September 11-25, 1966, no catalog.

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Special thanks to the David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.