Portrait painter Antoine Sébastien Plamondon was born in St. Roch, Québec in 1804. Plamondon began his art career at the age of fifteen, apprenticed to Joseph Legaré (1795-1855). Legaré was restoring paintings which had been shipped to Québec from France to be safe from the French Revolution and Plamondon learned to paint by helping him. In 1826 his talent was recognized by Vicar-General of Quebéc and he was sent to France to study further. there he studied under Paulin Guérin (1783-18550 who was portrait painter to Charles X. Travelling to Venice, Florence and Rome, he copied works of early Italian painters before returning to Québec. He painted over fifty portraits of upper bourgeoisie of Québec City. He is represented in collections across Canada such as Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, McGill University, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Art Gallery of Ontario and in many private collections. He died in Neuville, Québec in 1895.
Born in Orillia, Ontario, to Scottish parents, Franklin Carmichael studied art at the Ontario College of Art with William Cruickshank (1848-1922) and George Reid (1860-1947) and then went to Toronto Technical School with Gustav Hahn.(1866-1962)
He was an apprentice artist with a commercial advertising company called Grip Ltd., which is where he met Tom Thomson (1877-1917), Arthur Lismer(1885- 1969), J.E.H MacDonald (1873-1932) and Frederick Varley (1881-1969). After World War I, he, and several other artists from Toronto area founded the Group of Seven. On weekends, they would travel to northern Ontario and sketch landscapes.
Franklin Carmichael also founded the Ontario Society of Painters in Watercolour (1925) and the Canadian Group of Painters (1933). As head of Graphic and Commercial Art, he taught at the Ontario College of Art from 1932 until he passed away in 1945.
According to the National Gallery of Canada website, Paul-Émile Borduas is one of the most important figures in modern Canadian art.
Borduas' early career was spent mostly as a church decorator, assisting Québec painter and decorator ,Ozias Leduc (1864- 1955). Before going to Europe and studying under Maurice Denis and Georges Desvallieres at École des Art Sacrés in Paris, he took classes in Montreal at École des Beaux Arts and École Technique. His students included Jean Paul Riopelle, ( 1923-2002) Rita Letendre (1928-2021) and Marcel Barbeau (1925-2016) . Borduas was the author of the "Refus Global", an influential manifest calling for freedom of expression and signed by many of Québec's leading artist and intellectuals.
Borduas moved to New York in 1953 which greatly influenced his artistic development. There he saw the work of artists from the New York School of Abstract Expressionists, including American painters Jackson Pollock (1912- 1956) and Markus Y. Rothkowitz aka Mark Rothko (1903-1970). In 1955 he moved back to Paris where he continued to write and paint. He died there in 1960.
Frederick Simpson Coburn (A.R.C.A. 1920, R.C.A. 1927) was born in Melbourne, Québec on March 18, 1871. After attending Saint Francis College in Richmond, he trained as an artist, studying first at the Arts and Crafts School in Montréal, at New York's Carl Hecker School of Art, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Germany, in Paris, and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Belgium.
Like many artists from this time, Coburn achieved recognition first as an illustrator and then as a painter. From 1898 to 1913, he illustrated many literary works, including those of William Henry Drummond, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and Louis Fréchette. Coburn returned to Canada from Europe in 1913. At this time, he began painting Québec landscapes, in particular winter scenes with horses, which became some of his most well-known work.
Coburn's work can be found in The National Gallery of Canada, the National Archives of Canada, the Montréal Museum of Fine Arts, and Bishop's University. As well, his work is found in private collections in the USA, Belgium, Germany, and Japan.
He died in Melbourne, Québec, on 26 May 1960.
Hélène Richard was an Eastern Townships painter and printmaker born in 1937. She died in Sherbrooke in 2017.
Emily Mary Bibbens Warren was born in England in 1869. She became a British-Canadian artist and illustrator. She worked in ink, watercolour, oil, gouache, and graphite. Her favourite subjects included gardens, landscape, and the interiors and exteriors of buildings. She is well known for sunlight beaming through stained glass windows.
Emily Warren instigated a successful movement to have John Ruskin's home, Brantwood, made into a museum. She lectured before Ruskin Societies.
She took a course in architecture by Sir Bannister Fletcher. She graduated from the Royal College of Art, South Kensington. She took certificates in biology, botany and geology. She moved to Canada in 1919 and lived in Ottawa, Ontario. She lived in Montreal, Quebec from 1928 to 1934. She died in Dunrobin, Ontario in 1956.
She was a member of the Royal Society of British Artists, the Royal Watercolour Society, the Old Dudley Arts Society, the Aberdeen Society of Arts and the Society of Women Artists. She was a member of the Committee for Preservation of Memorials in London.
Critical success
In 1921 she was commissioned by Sir Robert Borden to come to Canada to complete two large canvasses. One, a painting entitled Canada's Tribute, The Great War 1914–1919 and two, Placing the Canadian Colours on Wolfe's Monument in Westminster Abbey. The Canada Tribute paintings were initially hung in the Parliament Buildings but have been hung in the Sir Arthur Currie Memorial Hall of the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario since 1947.
She traveled and painted in British Columbia, Belgium, Scotland and France. She exhibited in England. She illustrated Homes and Haunts of John Ruskin by E.T. Cook. She gave lectures in Canada in the 1920s and 1930s illustrated by 1900 handcoloured glass slides reproducing her own paintings. Half of the 1900 slides are in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto, along with an extensive collection of correspondence, lecture notes, and biographical material. Two boxes of slides of drawings of individual generals' faces and of flags, preliminary drawings for her paintings, Canada's Tribute and Placing the Canadian Colours on Wolfe's Monument in Westminster Abbey, are in the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa. She died in 1956.
A.E. Bryant may have been a Bishop's student in the 1950s.
An Italian etcher, archaeologist, designer, theorist, and architect, Giovanni Battista Piranesi was born in Venice in 1720. His uncle, a designer and hydraulics engineer, taught him the art of drawing. During his early years, he studied stage design and intricate systems of perspective composition. Piranesi's prints and drawings reveal his talent for combining dramatic perspectives and architectural fantasies.
When Piranesi was twenty, he moved to Rome and began a careful study of the city's ancient monuments. He began etching inventive views of ancient ruins and modern Roman structures, images that brought him great popularity, and later began a series of etchings of fantastic prison interiors. During his fifties, Piranesi's interest in archaeology took him to southern Italy, where he produced drawings and etchings of Greek architecture. During an expedition, ill health forced him to return to Rome, where he died at the age of fifty-eight.
Piranesi's highly original designs and ideas influenced many artists and literary figures during and beyond his lifetime. Neo-classical designers and early Romantic writers were quick to recognize his eclectic vision. Piranesi's extensive artistic output was dispersed widely through prints sold to Grand Tourists, who often visited his flourishing workshop. His prints were reproduced in great numbers, even after his death. He died in 1778 at the age of 58 years.
John MacNaughton graduated from Bishop's in 1957.
Doreen Lindsay was born in London, Ontario in 1934. She studied at École Technique de Beal, London, Instituto Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico, École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal and Concordia University, Montréal. She has lived in Québec since 1959.
John A. Barwick, born at Toronto Ontario, December 22, 1912, was known for his portraits and winter landscapes of the Laurentian region of Québec, an area just outside of Montréal. Barwick studied under J.S. (1868-1940) and Hortense Gordon (1886-1961) at Wentworth School of Art in Hamilton, Ontario. He came to Montreal in 1945 and worked as a graphic designer for Brigdens Limited, Rapid, Grip and Batten Limited, E.S. & A. Robinson's Limited and many others. As a portrait painter and landscape artist he was represented by the Walter Klinkhoff Gallery and Colbert Gallery in Montréal, and Roberts Gallery in Toronto.
His paintings were shown at Canadian Royal Academy and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts.
Death date (?)
Lilias Torrance was born in Lachine, Quebéc in 1896, the fourth child and only daughter of Alice Mary Stewart Torrance. At sixteen she went to study full time with William Byrmner (1855-1925) at the Art Association of Montréal, where she won a scholarship in Life class in her first year. During the first world war she traveled to London with her mother to help with the Red Cross war effort. During this time she also attended art classes with Alfred Wolmark (1877-1961). After the war, she remained in London and continued to study with Wolmark full time for another 6 months. In 1923 she returned to Europe and studied in Paris with Alexandre Jacovleff (1887-1938) . She was extremely well known for her extraordinary draftsmanship, skill with colour and ability to capture the personality of her clients. She died in Cowansville, Québec in 1980.
Louis Muhlstock was born in Narajow, Galicia, Ukraine in 1904. In 1911, he and his family joined his father who had immigrated to Montréal in 1908. As a teenager, he studied drawing at the National Council of Arts and Manufacturers under the guidance of Edmond Dyonnet (1859-1954) and Joseph Saint-Charles (1868-1956). He then joined the Art Association of Montréal from 1920 to 1928 attending evening classes with William Brymner (1855-1925). During this time, he attended classes at the École des Beaux Arts de Montréal. In 1928 he went to Paris, France and it was there that he studied with Louis-François Bilhoul (1874-1947). Quote “It is with Bilhoul that I really started to paint. He was a very fine, sincere painter, in the tradition of the old masters.” Muhlstock continued to paint, make prints and draw throughout his long lifetime. He died in Montréal in 2001.
David Sorensen was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1937. He studied at the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver School of Art under painter Jack Shadbolt, (1909-1998) architect Arthur Erikson (1924-2009) and sculptor Bill Reid (1920-1998). He moved to Montréal, Québec in 1965, exhibited sculptures at Expo ’67, and held teaching positions at Montréal Museum School of Art and Design, the Saidye Bronfman Centre and Dawson College. During this time he began showing his paintings across Canada and internationally in Mexico, Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines and France. In 1976, he moved to the Eastern Townships of Quebéc with his wife Bella and their family. He taught in the Fine Arts Department at Bishop’s University from 1981 to 2000. His work is represented in Private and Public Collections such as the Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Hamilton Art Gallery, Martineau Walker, (Montréal and Toronto) Avnet Shaw, (New York) and many others.
David Sorensen was inducted in the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1996. He died in Montréal in 2011.
"Silkscreen artists Hans, Peter, and Traudl Markgraf participated in several reproduction programs to promote Canadian art after they immigrated to Canada from Germany in the mid-1950s. The Markgrafs developed a silkscreen process noted for its printing quality and its faithfulness to the original painting. The National Gallery of Canada became involved with the Markgrafs in the mid-1950s when Montreal collector and philanthropist Sidney Dawes introduced then Gallery director Alan Jarvis to the work of the Markgrafs. A collector of the work of James Wilson Morrice, Dawes arranged for the reproduction of Morrice's work, the production of which he financed. The National Gallery also arranged for the Markgrafs to reproduce works by seven other artists from its collection, financed by the Queen's Printer in Ottawa. In 1959, the Markgraf brothers and the Gallery produced a series of "Tom Thomson and Group of Seven" pochoir (silkscreen) prints. Following their partnership with the National Gallery in 1960, the Markgrafs continued on their own, with Hans leaving Canada for Germany and Peter partnering with Artistica, a Montreal-based publisher and distributor of fine art prints, books, and cards. In 1967, the Canada Council partnered with Peter Markgraf to produce prints that focused on contemporary Canadian art. Following this project, the Markgrafs continued to print work for private clients under "Editions Markgraf". In 1977, the Markgrafs moved to Vancouver to work for Bill Ellis of Canadian Native Prints Ltd. They continued to print for individual artists and after 1978, created their own silkscreens of west coast scenery that were later reproduced as lithographs. In the United Nations year of International Cooperation, the Markgrafs printed four Jamaican paintings through Robie Kidd."
1764-1834
George Balteel Fisher was born in England in 1764. He was in the British army beginning in 1782. In 1791-92 he visited Canada, where he painted the View of the River St. Lawrence, and other Canadian scenes. John William Edy (1760-1820), an English painter and engraver, etched six of these Canadian scenes in aquatint. Fisher died in 1834 in Woolwich (London).
W.S. Hatton (fl. 1855-1864) was an artist in Toronto, Québec and Montréal from 1856-62. He executed views of British Columbia mountain scenery 1863-64 and worked mainly in watercolour.
Peter Whalley, the younger brother of George Whalley, was one of the first cartoonists in Canada to display a warped, sardonic sense of humour on the editorial pages of a newspaper when he started drawing for the Montréal Standard in the early 1940s. Whalley, the son of an Anglican clergyman, was born in Brockville, Ontario in 1921. He grew up in Halifax where he attended the Nova Scotia College of Art. He died in St. Jerome, Quebec in 2007.
Source: Excerpted from article" Cartoonist displayed sardonic humour" by Alan Hustak in the Montreal Gazette, 22 September, 2007.
George Nakash was a photographer living in Sherbrooke, Québec. He is the Uncle of the famous Armenian-Canadian photographer, Yousuf Karsh, (1908-2002)
Alfred Ray Burrell was born in Oakland, California in 1877. He studied in San-Francisco at the Partington Art School and Mark Hopkins Institute (1898) and in New York City with William Merritt Chase and Frank DuMond. Upon his return he studied engineering at University of California at Berkeley and worked for ten years with his father in the contracting and heavy construction business. Yielding to the desire to work as an artist, he then returned to New York City where he worked as an illustrator, taught at the Art Students' League and was head of the art department at A.W. Shaw Publishing Company until 1919.
Burrell then spent four years as a member of the faculty at the Hawaiian School of Design in Honolulu. Returning to San Francisco, he continued teaching at the California College of Arts and Crafts and assisted Frank Van Sloun in painting the murals in Bohemian club and in the rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts (1936). Burrell was prominent in the art world of San-Francisco contributing greatly as a teacher and exhibiting locally until his death on 1952.
Allan Aaron Edson was a landscape painter who was born December 18, 1846 on a farm near Stanbridge East, Québec. He moved to the city around 1855, when his parents assumed management of the America House Hotel. In September 1857, Edson enrolled in the new Stanbridge Academy where he took his first drawing courses. His years at Stanbridge were spent mostly around the Pike River which was often the subject of his professional paintings, such as The Pike River Near Stanbridge, c. 1864, at the National Gallery of Canada. He died in Sutton in 1888 and was buried in Mount Royal Cemetery in Montréal.
Thomas Moran was born in Bolton, England and came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, with his birth family in 1844. As a teenager Moran became an apprentice at the Philadelphia engraving firm of Scattergood and Telfer. From there he worked in his brother Edward's studio, who was a Marine painter. Through his brother Edward he became acquainted with Philadelphia artist James Hamilton (1819-1878) and became his apprentice. Moran greatly admired and was influenced by J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851) and in 1861 he traveled to England to study Turner's work at London's National Gallery. Moran was a painter and printmaker of the Hudson River School in New York. During the late 1860's he was appointed the chief illustrator for the magazine which helped him launch his career as one fo the painters of the Amercan West landscape. He died in 1926 at the age of 89 years.
Born in Mexico City, Mexico, in 1934. Studied at School of Painting and Sculpture, La Esmeralda, Mexico City, 1944-47 ; engraving (with Lola Cueto) Mexico City College, 1948. Professor of Drawing, Art School, Latin American University, Mexico City, 1956-57. Artist in Residence, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1957-58, School of Art, San Jose State College, California, 1970 and School of Art Fullerton College, Los Angeles, 1975. Cuevas' works are in collections across the world, such as Museum of Modern Art, New York, Guggenehim Museum, New York, Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel and many more.
Lieutenant-Colonel Joseph Bouchette was born in Québec in 1774. He was Surveyor General of Lower Canada from 1804-1841and an author and map maker. He died in Montréal.
Born in Toronto, with a degree in geography from the University of Toronto, Robert Bateman taught high school for over 20 years, including two years in Nigeria. He has been a keen artist and naturalist form his early days and has always painted wildlife and nature. Since the early 1960's he has been an active member of naturalist and conservation organizations and his art reflects his commitment to ecology and preservation. He left teaching in 1976 to paint full time.