J.A. Wainwright (1946- ) is a writer of poetry, fiction and non-fiction; and an emeritus Professor of English at Dalhousie University. He published Blazing Figures: A Life of Robert Markle (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press) in 2010.
Robert Stacey (1949-2007) was an art historian, author, editor, picture editor and curator based out of Toronto. He wrote numerous books and articles on C.W. Jefferys and many other aspects relating to Canadian art and graphic design, with titles including The Hand Holding the Brush: Self Portraits by Canadian Artists, Canadian Bookplates, Massanog: the art of Bon Echo, and Sir Daniel Wilson (1816-1892): ambidextrous polymath. Robert Stacey was the grandson of C.W. Jefferys.
Beth (Mary Elizabeth) Southcott, née Woolger, 1923-2004, was an amateur artist and art writer based in the Clarkson area of Mississauga. She was interested in visual art throughout her life, taking courses as a child at the (then) Art Gallery of Toronto and the Ontario College of Art, and later serving as the director of Visual Arts Mississauga. Southcott became interested in Indigenous art as an outcome of a course she took at Erindale College (now University of Toronto Mississauga) in 1975. Her book The Sound of the Drum is an original contribution to the historiography of Anishinaabe art and its reception by settler audiences.
David Phillips Silcox (1937- ) is a Canadian art historian and arts administrator. He has held positions at the Canada Council, York University in Toronto, federal and Ontario culture ministries, the University of Toronto and other academic and cultural institutions. From 2001 to 2013 he was president of Sotheby’s Canada. David Silcox has written books on Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven. His biography of Canadian artist David Brown Milne, Painting Place: the life and work of David B. Milne, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 1996. He is also co-author with David Milne Jr of the catalogue raisonné of Milne’s paintings, for which the David Milne Project was instituted. David Silcox was appointed to the Order of Canada in 2006.
Joan Murray (1943-) is an art historian, curator, author and museum administrator known for her work at art museums including the Robert McLaughlin Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
Edmund Montague Morris (1871-1913) was a Canadian portraitist, landscape painter and author. Born in Perth, Ontario, he studied in Toronto privately as well as at Toronto Art Students’ League 1889-91, and in New York at the Art Students’ League, 1891-92. Between 1893 and 1896 Morris was a student at the Académie Julian and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He returned to Toronto in 1896 to set up a studio and became involved in art societies, including the Royal Canadian Academy (ARCA [associate] 1898), the Ontario Society of Artists, and the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto. A founding member of the Canadian Art Club in 1907, he was its secretary for several years. He was on the council of the Art Museum of Toronto—now the Art Gallery of Ontario—from 1909. Beginning in 1906 Morris produced the works for which he is chiefly known, portraits in pastels of Canadian aboriginal leaders. Many of these, executed during extensive travel in the Canadian West, were done on commission from the governments of Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan to be hung in provincial legislature buildings. Morris also painted landscapes, especially of scenes along the St Lawrence River in Quebec. It was while working at Portneuf near Quebec City that he drowned in August 1913. He is buried in Toronto. His work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa) the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto) and other galleries, especially in Western Canada.
Leslie Mezei (born 1931 in Budapest, Hungary) is a former computer scientist who did pioneering work in the theory and practice of computer art and graphics while he was a professor at the University of Toronto in the 1960s and 1970s. His computer art experiments and writings thereon are among the earliest explorations of the medium. In 1972, Mezei completed the manuscript of a book, Computer Art: An International Portfolio, containing a history and overview of the medium illustrated with reproductions of early computer artwork from around the world.
Robert Nelson Markle (Hamilton, Ontario, 1936-Holstein, Ontario, 1990) was a Canadian artist, writer, educator and musician. He began his studies at the Ontario College of Art (OCA) in 1954, but was expelled before graduation. While at OCA, he met Marlene Shuster, a fellow student, whom he married in 1958. The focus of Markle’s work from his early days was the female nude, particularly burlesque dancers, and Marlene became his primary model and muse. In 1962 Markle had his first group exhibition at The Isaacs Gallery in Toronto, becoming one of the “Isaacs Group” of artists. In 1965, Markle paintings shown in the exhibition Eros ’65 at the Dorothy Cameron Gallery were seized on a charge of obscenity, drawing considerable media attention. In the mid-1960s Markle began to write for magazines such as the Toronto Telegram Showcase, Maclean’s, and Toronto Life, publishing widely on topics as diverse as striptease, hockey, childhood Christmases, and Gordon Lightfoot. Markle also worked extensively as an illustrator, contributing images to magazines and literary journals. His work as an educator included terms at The New School of Art (1966-1977) and Arts’ Sake (1977-1982) as well as OCA and the University of Guelph. From the early 1960s, Markle played tenor saxophone and piano in the Artists’ Jazz Band. In 1970 the Markles moved to a farmhouse outside of Holstein, Ontario, although Robert re-established a studio in Toronto from 1979 to 1982. In 1979, he won a commission to decorate a Toronto hamburger restaurant, which was named Markleangelo’s in his honour. His other large-scale commissions include wall-sculptures for the Ellen Fairclough Building in Hamilton, Ontario, and the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. He executed painted outdoor murals in Owen Sound and Mount Forest, Ontario. Markle was killed in a traffic accident in 1990. Of Mohawk ancestry, Markle used his mother’s spelling of his surname, although it was spelled “Maracle” on his birth certificate. Markle worked primarily in painting and ink drawing, and also explored photography, collage, printmaking, wooden sculpture and neon. He collected folk art, which inspired a number of whirligig works later in his career. His work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the National Gallery of Canada.
Newton McFaul MacTavish (1875-1941) was a Canadian journalist, art critic and early art historian. Born in Staffa, Ontario, he became a reporter at The Toronto Globe in 1896 and was its assistant financial editor until 1900. From then until 1906, he studied English literature at McGill University while working as a correspondent and business representative of The Globe in Montreal. In 1903 he married Kate Johnson. Between 1906 and 1926, MacTavish was the editor of The Canadian Magazine in Toronto. In 1910 he travelled to Europe and visited the Canadian artists J.W. Morrice and John Wentworth Russell in Paris. He subsequently (1922-1933) served as a trustee of the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia conferred honorary degrees on Newton MacTavish in 1924 (M.A.) and 1928 (D. Litt.). From 1926 to 1932 he was a member of the Civil Service Commission of Canada. A founder of the Arts and Letters Club (Toronto), he was also on the editorial advisory board of and contributor to the Encyclopedia of Canada (1932-1935). In addition to his articles, essays and short stories, MacTavish was the author of Thrown In (1923), The Fine Arts in Canada (1925, the first full-length history of Canadian art), and Ars Longa (1938). A fourth work, Newton MacTavish’s Canada, was published posthumously in 1963. He died in Toronto in 1941.
Thomas Roche ("Tommy") Lee was an ephemera collector and amateur art historian who lived at least part of his life in Baie d'Urfé, Quebec. He was the author of Albert H. Robinson, the painter's painter (Montreal, Canada : T.R. Lee, 1956), and produced an edition of Daniel Fowler's autobiography. He also made studies of Quebec church architecture. Lee corresponded for many years with Sybille Pantazzi, Librarian of the Art Gallery of Ontario, with whom he exchanged rare Canadian exhibition catalogues, ephemera, and manuscript material. He died in Toronto in 1977.