Showing 42 results

Authority record
painters (artists)

Graham, K. M. (Kathleen Margaret)

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/104224007
  • Person
  • 1913-2008

Kathleen Margaret Graham (1913-2008), née Howitt, was a Canadian abstract painter whose work was predominantly inspired by landscape forms. Born in Hamilton, she spent most of her life in Toronto and summered in Algonquin Park. Graham earned her B.A. at Trinity College, University of Toronto. Her husband, Wallace Graham, was a prominent doctor and academic.

K.M. Graham took up painting full-time in 1962, following the sudden death of her husband. She attended night classes at Central Technical School in Toronto, but was essentially self-taught as a painter. She was for many years a volunteer at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and enjoyed the support of a close group of practicing artists. Her friend and mentor, Jack Bush, selected and hung her first exhibition “Homage to Emily Dickinson” at the Carmen Lamanna Gallery in 1967.

In 1971, Graham made her first of many trips to Cape Dorset, where she later became an artist in residence in 1976 and produced several series of lithographs in addition to her works on canvas. From the 1970s through to the 1990s, Graham travelled extensively to Newfoundland and Labrador, which became another major inspiration for her work.

Graham exhibited actively from the 1960s until the 2000s at influential galleries including Carmen Lamanna, The Pollock Gallery, David Mirvish and the Moore Gallery. Her work is found in numerous major public collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the British Museum. She became a member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1973 and was made an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1975.

Challener, Frederick S.

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/68800650
  • Person
  • 1869-1959

Frederick Sproston Challener, painter, was born in Whetstone, England in 1869 and came to Canada in 1870. He studied at the Ontario School of Art, was first exhibited in 1900 at the Royal Canadian Academy and subsequently worked as a newspaper artist. After a tour of Europe and the Middle East in 1898-99, he began working as a muralist and participated in the decoration of the recently completed Toronto City Hall. At the end of the First World War, Challener worked as a painter for the Canadian War Records Department. He made his career chiefly by creating murals for passenger boats, restaurants, hotels—such as Fort Rouillé in the King Edward Hotel,Toronto—office buildings and theatres, including the Royal Alexandra Theatre in Toronto. He also produced easel paintings, watercolours and drawings in a realistic, romantic style. From 1927-1952 he taught at the Ontario College of Art, during which period he made notes and assembled material on Canadian artists. He died in Toronto in 1959. Challener was a member of numerous arts organizations including the Toronto Art Students’ League, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy, Society of Mural Decorators of Toronto and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto (founding member, 1908). His work is in the National Gallery of Canada, the Civic Art Gallery, Winnipeg, the Art Gallery of Ontario and numerous public buildings.

Chambers, Jack

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/42771753
  • Person
  • 1931-1978

Jack (John Richard) Chambers, artist and experimental filmmaker, was born in London, Ontario in 1931. He studied at the Escuela Central de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid from 1957 to 1959. In Spain he met Olga Sanchez Bustos, whom he married in Canada in 1963. They made their home in London and had two children, John (b. 1964) and Diego (b.1965). Chambers’ style of painting and drawing in the 1960s was characterized by a dreamlike quality. Toward the end of that decade, his work became intensely focused on the depiction of reality, often relating closely to source photographs, most of which were taken by the artist himself. Between 1964 and 1970 Chambers also directed eight films. The subjects of his work were often domestic or regional, focusing on his experience in London. In 1967, Chambers founded Canadian Artists’ Representation to try to establish fee scales for reproduction rights and rental fees for works in public exhibitions, and served as president from 1967 to 1975. In 1969 Chambers published his essay “Perceptual Realism”, and that same year, was diagnosed with leukemia. From 1971 to 1977 he worked on “Red and Green,” a study of art and perception (unpublished). Chambers died in London in 1978. His work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and numerous other Canadian galleries.

Ewen, Paterson

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/96324577
  • Person
  • 1925-2002

Paterson Ewen (1925-2002) was a Canadian painter best known for his abstract landscapes and monumental paintings dealing with themes of nature and cosmology. Born in Montreal, Ewen was associated with the mid-century abstraction movement in Quebec. He moved to London, Ontario in 1968, where he lived and worked until his death in 2002.

Ewen briefly attended McGill University, studying geology, but transferred to the School of Art and Design at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in 1948. It was here that Ewen developed an interest in painting landscapes, inspired by his teachers Arthur Lismer and Goodridge Roberts. While attending the School of Art and Design, Ewen met his first wife, Francoise Sullivan, with whom he had four sons: Vincent, Geoffrey, Jean-Christophe, and Francis. It was through Sullivan that Ewen was exposed to the work of the Surrealist poets and Automatiste abstract painters, such as Jean-Paul Riopelle and Paul-Emile Borduas. Ewen married Sullivan in December 1949, and a few months later left art school, dismissed by Lismer in response to an exhibition of Ewen’s paintings at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Ewen held various part-time jobs to support his family during this period, including caretaker and training coordinator at a box factory and supermarket chain. Ewen and Sullivan divorced in 1968, and he moved to London, Ontario. It was in London that Ewen came into contact with local artists such as Greg Curnoe, Jack Chambers, and David Rabinowitch. Their influence impacted Ewen’s art, as he moved from representational landscapes to a more abstract style. It was around this time when Ewen developed techniques that would be a hallmark of his later works, such as the use of plywood gouged with an electric router as a painting surface. He also began using more unconventional materials in his art, including wire and other metals. In 1972, Ewen began teaching painting at University of Western Ontario, where he met his second wife, Mary Handford. The two married in 1995.

In 1982, Ewen was chosen to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale, and he received other recognition in the form of several awards, including the Chalmers Award for Visual Arts and the Toronto Arts Award. In 1996, the Art Gallery of Ontario mounted a retrospective exhibition of Ewen’s works that travelled to the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art. Ewen’s work is in the collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the National Gallery of Canada, the Montreal Museum of Contemporary Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and other museums.

Hagan, Frederick

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/25860986
  • Person
  • 1918-2003

Robert Frederick Hagan, painter, printmaker and educator, was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1918. He was educated at Central Technical School (Toronto) and the Ontario College of Art. From 1941-1946, Hagan was employed as Resident Artist and Master at Pickering College in Newmarket, Ontario. In the spring of 1946, Hagan journeyed to New York for further studies. Later the same year, he began teaching at the Ontario College of Art. In 1955 he became Head of Printmaking, a position which he held until his retirement in 1983. Frederick Hagan has held memberships in the Canadian Society of Graphic Art (of which he was made an Honourary Member in 1965), the Canadian Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, the Ontario Society of Artists, and the Print and Drawing Council of Canada. His work is in the collections of numerous Canadian galleries.

Lismer, Arthur

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/437679
  • Person
  • 1885-1969

Arthur Lismer, painter and art educator, was born in Sheffield, England in 1885. He studied at the Sheffield School of Art 1899–1906 and later at the Académie royale des beaux-arts in Antwerp. In 1911 he immigrated to Toronto where he worked as a commercial illustrator for the Grip Engraving Company and taught at the Ontario College of Art. He married Esther Mawson in 1912 and their only child Marjorie was born in 1913. Lismer's career as an art educator began at the Victoria School of Art and Design in Halifax, 1916–1919, followed soon after by his appointment as Vice-President of the Ontario College of Art in Toronto. In 1920 he became a founding member of the Group of Seven. His best-known works in oil are wilderness landscapes, expressionist in style with a use of raw colour and simplified form. He also produced many works on paper, including several portraits. Lismer established a Children's Art Centre at the Art Gallery of Toronto, where he was educational supervisor, 1927–1938. He was briefly educational supervisor at the National Gallery of Canada, later holding that post at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts from 1941 to 1967. He was assistant professor of fine arts at McGill University, 1948–1954. He died in Montreal in 1969. Arthur Lismer was a member of the Arts and Letters Club, Ontario Society of Artists, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, Canadian Group of Painters, Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, and Federation of Canadian Artists. His work is in many Canadian public collections. Following her father’s death, Marjorie Lismer Bridges devoted a number of years to organizing his archival records and gradually donating them to public repositories. She wrote the “Arthur Lismer source book”, which is included in the fonds.

McCarthy, Doris

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/96208917
  • Person
  • 1910-2010

Doris Jean McCarthy (1910-2010) was a Canadian artist born in Calgary, Alberta, but long associated with the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. She entered the Ontario College of Art in 1925 and studied under Arthur Lismer, JEH MacDonald, JW Beatty and Emanuel Hahn, graduating in 1930. She became an art teacher and travelled widely within Canada and Europe during school vacations. She has been a member of the Ontario Society of Artists, the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour, and was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy. She is represented in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the London Public Library and Art Museum and in many private collections. She received in honorary doctorate from the University of Toronto and was honoured by the City of Scarborough in 1996. During her career she assembled files on Canadian women artists gathered by friends in every province, with the intention of creating a book on the subject. In the early 1990s, realizing that the task was larger than anticipated, she offered her files to her friend, Lora Senechal Carney, a professor in the Visual and Performing Arts at the University of Toronto at Scarborough. Professor Carney also kept files on Canadian artists as background for her research and writing on various topics in North American modern and contemporary art. The files were amalgamated and used by Professor Carney until 2005.

Reid, G.A. (George Agnew)

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/18708433
  • Person
  • 1860-1947

George Agnew Reid (1860-1947) was a Canadian artist, architect, educator and administrator influential in the early 20th century and instrumental in the formation of a number of important Canadian art institutions. Born in Wingham Ontario to a Scottish farm family, he studied architecture and book-keeping at his father’s insistence. In 1878 he moved to Toronto to study art. He was able to extend his art education under Thomas Eakins in Philadelphia, where he met the painter Mary Heister. In 1888 the couple travelled to Europe and studied at the Julian and Colorossi Academies, returning to Toronto in 1889. The house he designed and built in Wychwood Park was his home until the end of his life. In 1890, George Reid began reaching at the Central Ontario School of Art and Design. He eventually became principal and researched new theories of art education in the United States and Europe. Under his direction, the art school became independent of the Board of Education and moved into its own building, which he designed, in 1921. He also served as its first Principal. In 1892, George and Mary Reid built two cottages from his design at the artist colony in Onteora, New York. This led to the design of other summer homes and a small church in the Catskills community. They spent summers at this location until 1917 when the war made travel to the United States difficult. In 1921 Mary Heister Reid died, and in 1923 George Reid married Mary Wrinch, a former student and close friend of his first wife. His later life was filled with accomplishments, including the painting of murals for public spaces in Toronto City Hall, Jarvis Collegiate, the Royal Ontario Museum and elsewhere. He was instrumental in obtaining permanent funding and staff for the National Gallery in Ottawa, and was a force behind the establishment of the Art Gallery of Toronto. He was a member of the RCA, serving as President 1906-1907. He influenced a generation of students, among them C.W. Jefferys, through his teaching and created a number of works that exemplify his generation, including Forbidden Fruit, Mortgaging the Homestead, and The Foreclosure of the Mortgage.

Scarlett, Rolph

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/62357975
  • Person
  • 1889-1984

Rolph Scarlett was a pioneering non-objective painter, jewellery designer, stage designer and educator known for his association with the Guggenheim Museum and Hilla Rebay. Born in Guelph, Ontario, Scarlett had early training in jewellery design through apprenticeship in a family business, and briefly attended the Art Students' League in New York. He returned to Canada for periods of time in the 1910s and 1930s, in between efforts to establish his career as a designer in the United States and internationally. On business travel to Switzerland in 1923, he encountered Paul Klee and became a proponent of pure abstraction in art. Scarlett moved to New York in 1937, becoming acquainted with Hilla Rebay and Rudolf Bauer, and winning a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship. Rebay purchased sixty of Scarlett's works for the collection of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, affirming his significance to the founding collection of what would become the Guggenheim Museum. Scarlett joined the staff as the museum's chief lecturer from 1940 to 1946. Scarlett's work is held in major collections including the Guggenheim Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the de Young Museum.

Varley, Frederick Horsman

  • http://viaf.org/viaf/79427452
  • Person
  • 1881-1969

Frederick Horsman Varley, painter, was born in Sheffield, England in 1881. He studied at the Sheffield School of Art 1892–1900, and at the Koninklijk Akademie voor Shone Kunsten (Académie royale des beaux-arts) in Antwerp for the following two years. After working as an illustrator and art teacher in England, he immigrated to Canada and obtained work as a commercial illustrator in Toronto in 1912, the same year he first exhibited his art work at the Canadian National Exhibition. In 1914, Varley joined Tom Thomson, A.Y. Jackson and Arthur Lismer on sketching trip to Algonquin Park in Ontario. Some of his most famous works resulted from his association with these artists. He participated in the War Art program after the war in 1918 and was a founding member of the Group of Seven in 1920. Although he painted numerous landscapes, his interest lay more in portraiture, which he pursued during the 1920s. Varley moved to Vancouver in 1926 to teach at the School of Decorative and Applied Arts. His landscapes from this period are marked by fine draftsmanship, exotic colour and unusual vantage points. In 1933 he and J.W.G. Macdonald opened their own school, the British Columbia College of Arts, which closed in 1935. Varley lived subsequently in Ottawa and Montreal, returning in 1944 to Toronto. The Art Gallery of Ontario held a retrospective of his work in 1954. He died in Toronto in 1969. Varley was a member of the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto. His work is in numerous Canadian public collections.

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