William Forsyth (artist)

William J. Forsyth (1854–1935) was an American Impressionist painter who was part of the "Hoosier Group" of Indiana artists.

Forsyth was the first student of the Indiana School of Art in Indianapolis and entered the Munich Academy along with T. C. Steele and J. Ottis Adams in 1882. He later returned to Indiana in 1888 and was instrumental in founding the Herron School of Art in Indianapolis, serving as an instructor there until 1933. He died March 29, 1935 and was subsequently buried in Section 39, Lot 298 Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis, Indiana. Driving east from the SW corner of Section 39,a pink granite monument has been erected to honor the memory of Forsyth (several rows back), together with a bronze bas-relief portrait of the artist (attached thereto).

It was perhaps no accident that William Forsyth described his teacher, John Love, as a "tall, . . . blond giant." He was the opposite, and many of his friends and students, and even his daughters, thought that explained a lot about his personality, described by one as that of a "little cocky bantam rooster" whose stature was shorter than most men, which many believed was the catalyst to a "feisty way about him, to make up for his height." - (Judith Vale Newton, The Hoosier Group (Indianapolis, Eckert Publications, 1985), 131.)

Forsyth's "feistiness" earned a reputation for a quick temper and for being "ornery", a lover of a good argument. Wilbur Peat, describing the Indianapolis art scene in the 1870s in his "Pioneer Painters of Indiana," remarked that "it is doubtful if the city had anyone among its youthful citizens, with so much zeal for things artistic as he (Forsyth), and with such determination to reach the top in the practice of painting" (p. 205). Short in stature, Forsyth became very well known in the history of art in Indiana, and especially among those artists buried at Crown Hill.

Forsyth was born in California, Ohio, a small town along the Ohio River, not far from Cincinnati. The view of the river was among his earliest memories, and to see it again in his adult life, always elicited a wave of strong emotions. Much like Jacob Cox, he soon began drawing on any canvas that was available, which at first was too often the walls of the family home. But rather than punish him, his parents assigned a large mantel in a vacant room, especially painted black for the purpose, as the appropriate place for his artistic expressions. Among the scenes Forsyth recalled sketching there with colored chalks were pictures of the civil war soldiers he would see marching home past as he played outside.

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