Ada Walter Shulz (American 1870-1928)
According Shari Finnell’s Indianapolis Woman Magazine article, Skirting the Issue, “Shulz’s interest in the arts started early. As a young girl, she put off her chores as long as possible so that she could paint. Her widowed mother was a major influence, moving the family to Indianapolis so that her daughter could better develop her talents at Shortridge High School. Later, her mother moved to Chicago so that Shulz could study at the Art Institute of Chicago. After marrying Adolph Shulz, Ada Walter Shulz devoted herself to being a wife and mother. A Chicago reporter commented that her ‘art was replaced by clubs, by housework, by those things that interest most women.’
Information courtesy of Jackson’s Auction Company and Skinner Inc., September 2005.
A prominent Indiana artist, Ada Shulz began her studies at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1889, under John Vanderpoel. She traveled with Vanderpoel’s class in the summer of 1892 to Delavan, Wisconsin, where she met her future husband, Adolph Shulz. In 1894, the two were married, and remained in Delavan for the next twenty years, although they began summering in Brown County, Indiana in the 1910s. They moved there permanently in 1917. Adolph specialized in landscape painting, and Ada chose the mothers and children of Brown County as her subjects. She favored painting outdoors, in bright sunlight, and her lush, expressive portraits of children reveal a tremendous sensitivity to the warmth and light of the Indiana summer.
Information courtesy of Treadway Toomey Auctions, September 2000.