LANDSCAPE ART IN CANADA 



one marvel at his versatility. Franklin Brownell is the true impression- 

 ist ; he paints the winter market scenes, with the farmers, bear-like in 

 furs, driving their sleighs in all the bustle and brilliance of a zero day ; 

 or he will go to the West Indies and re-create the very spirit of the 

 negro throng, chattering and bargaining on the shore of the eternal 

 summer sea. Farquar McGillivray Knowles (p. 24) has painted the 

 fishing life of the St. Lawrence and Canada generally with force and 

 strong colour. Edwin Atkinson, when painting in Canada, takes his- 

 inspiration from the Dutchmen and paints in low tones the darkening 

 twilight and homeward-wending sheep. Archibald Browne, a Scotch- 

 man (p. 13), of the Macaulay Stevenson school, paints the silvery 

 birches and twilight lakes in a tender manner particularly his own, in a 

 country where a riot of colour and breadth of design are salient forces. 

 John Hammond lives at Sackville, New Brunswick, and paints the 

 rolling farmlands and fishing life of his native province. George Reid 

 (p. 29), whose untiring efforts for the painter have been largely instru- 

 mental in the establishment of the Royal College of Art in Toronto, 

 divides his work between interior decoration and landscape painting 

 with quiet and unobtrusive understanding. The silvery green marsh 

 and farm lands of Southern Ontario and Quebec have found in Percy 

 Woodcock precisely the sympathy they need to record their gauzy mists 

 and "dew-pearled" mornings. A. Suzor-Cote (p. 31) and Maurice 

 Cullen are influenced more by the harsh glare or gloom of winter snows, 

 where the bright blue shadows trace their lines on the glaring white ; 

 or black, unfrozen waters reflect the snow-laden sky. Maurice Cullen 

 paints the ice-cutting and many views of the frozen St. Lawrence about 

 Quebec with uncompromising sincerity and earnestness, and there is a 

 hint of tragedy in his work. F. M. Bell-Smith (p. 1 1) has painted the 

 Rocky Mountains in every phase of savage grandeur, and with in- 

 creasing understanding of atmospheric qualities. 



Canada mourns two painters of this generation who died young after 

 exhibiting great promise, Paul Peel and Blair Bruce. The former was 

 pre-eminently a figure painter, the latter left behind landscapes remark- 

 able for their fresh colour and masterly impressionism. 

 The desire for a wider field and greater appreciation at a time when 

 appreciation of Canadian painting was at a premium led a number of 

 painters to the United States and to Europe, where they lived and pros- 

 pered. Horatio Walker is the best known of these and has achieved one 

 of the highest places in American landscape art. Spending most of his 

 time on the island of Orleans in the St. Lawrence, where the traditions 

 and customs of the Breton peasantry still linger, and Millet's subjects 

 may even now be seen, he finds the inspiration for his admirably de- 

 signed and impressively painted pictures of ploughing oxen and peasant 

 life generally. Since the formation of the Canadian Art Club in 1908, 



5 



