Showing 14 results

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.

Randall Speller is a historian of book illustration who worked for many years as a librarian at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

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.

Sybille Oltea Yvonne Pantazzi (1914-1983) was the Librarian at the Art Gallery of Ontario for thirty-two years, a book-collector and a pioneering scholar in the area of Victorian book design. She was born in Romania, traveled widely as a young woman, and settled in Toronto at the end of the Second World War. Among her many interests were book jackets and the artists who created them.

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.

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.

Avis Lang [Rosenberg] (1944-) is an art historian, teacher, curator, writer and editor who lived in Vancouver for many years. In 1972, as a member of the faculty of the Fine Art Department at the University of British Columbia, she wrote to Canadian artist Jack Chambers (1931-1978) beginning a correspondence that led Chambers to invite her contribution to a scholarly monograph on his work. In 1973, Peter Mellen took over the editorial direction for the book and differences of opinion prompted her to resign the project. Her essay, “The Hart of London: a film by Jack Chambers” was included in The Films of Jack Chambers, edited by Kathryn Elder (Cinematheque Ontario and Indiana State University Press, 2002).

Susan Feindel is the author of the Catalogue Raisonné of the Art Work of Helen Galloway McNicoll (1879-1915).