Bundy, John Elwood – American Artist

John Elwood Bundy (American, 1853 to 1933)

John Elwood Bundy came to Indiana as a young boy from his birthplace in Guilford County, North Carolina. He was raised on a farm in Morgan County near Monrovia, where he attended Quaker schools and worked as a farmer. When he was twenty, he took art lessons in Indianapolis from portraitist Barton S. Hayes, then continued on to New York City to copy paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. By some accounts, he also worked as a photographer for a period, though it is unclear whether such employment coincided with his stay in New York, or whether it post-dated his marriage in Indiana to Mary Marlatt in 1875.

In 1888, he moved to Richmond where, for eight years, he headed the Art Department at Earlham College. In 1895, just three years before he produced this still life, Bundy resigned from his teaching position to be able to devote himself more thoroughly to painting. Later in life he became one of the first artists to paint the Indiana dune country at the base of Lake Michigan.

The artist exhibited widely across the United States: in 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the Pennsylvania Academy; in 1911 and 1916 at the National Academy of Design; in 1903 and 1907-1914 at the Chicago Art Institute; in 1925 at the Hoosier Salon; and in 1902 with the Society of Western Artists.

Information courtesy of Heritage Auction Galleries, June 2009.

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