Old Swimmin’ Hole painting
Beginning in 1912, William Bixler of Anderson, Indiana, began painting pictures of “Hoosier Poet” James Whitcomb Riley’s “Old Swimmin’ Hole” in Greenfield, Indiana, a location Riley immortalized in a poem of that name in 1883. The poem begins:
“Oh! the old swimmin’-hole! whare the crick so still and deep
Looked like a baby-river that was laying half asleep,
And the gurgle of the worter round the drift jest below
Sounded like the laugh of something we onc’t ust to know
Before we could remember anything but the eyes
Of the angels lookin’ out as we left Paradise;
But the merry days of youth is beyond our controle,
And it’s hard to part ferever with the old swimmin’-hole…”
Paintings like this one, made around 1915, were given to schools all over the country that donated money to build a statue to commemorate Riley in Greenfield. Over 5,000 paintings were given to schools that contributed. The statue was erected in 1918 in front of the Hancock County Courthouse.
