Frank Dudley dedicated forty years of his professional life as a landscape painter to the promotion and preservation of the Indiana Dunes, which were threatened by encroaching industrial development along the Lake Michigan shoreline. He was a charter member of the Cliff Dwellers, joining in 1907 along with Daniel Burnham and the prairie landscape architect Jens Jensen, who advocated for the Forest Preserves surrounding Chicago. The following year, Dudley took part in the Palette and Chisel Club’s production of Chicago Beautiful, An All Hog Stag, which anticipated Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago by bringing attention to the despoiling of Chicago’s lakefront. Dudley’s perseverance in painting the Dunes was rewarded when he received the Art Institute’s prestigious Logan Medal in 1921. His triumph came in 1923 with the establishment of the Indiana Dunes State Park.

(Text adapted from James R. Dabbert’s summary of his book, The Indiana Dunes Revealed, The Art of Frank V. Dudley.)