LANDSCAPE ART IN CANADA 



many who were able to throw off the mantle and realize that the land- 

 scape round them possessed a character and glory so intensely its own 

 that the European traditions of that day the " grey " day were not 

 applicable to its brilliant sunshine and fierce colouring. Everything was 

 against these men ; Canadians of a generation ago, mostly born in Great 

 Britain or brought up on ultra-British traditions, did not want pictures 

 of the country of their adoption but of "home" ; and if Canada must 

 be painted then let it look as much like home as possible. (Even to-day, 

 though vastly different to the time of which I am speaking, it is the 

 collector's indifference to the art of his own country and his subservi- 

 ence to the acumen of the dealer, who has bought cheaply in the Euro- 

 pean market, that hamper the progress of Canadian painting.) Never- 

 theless, this generation painted Canada ; gradually freeing themselves 

 from European influences, and realizing more and more her character 

 and splendour, these artists opened the public's eyes to the fact that the 

 country of their adoption possessed qualities so lovable and intimate 

 that pictures of it might give them more pleasure than those of the 

 country they had left behind. 



William Brymner, President of the Canadian Academy (pp. 1 7 and 1 8), 

 is one of the foremost of these men and has recently been honoured 

 with the C.M.G. for his work on behalf of Canadian art. Living in 

 Montreal, where he has rendered invaluable service in conducting the 

 life classes at the Montreal Art Association Schools, he paints the 

 country of the old Quebec settlements, and realizes much of the old- 

 world sweetness that clings round them. His work is sincere and pains- 

 taking : there is no striving after novelty or new colour, but the simple 

 truths of nature's changing expression are given with a steady and sober 

 earnestness which remains where much superficial brilliance fades. 

 Brymner has recently been painting the Atlantic from the site of his- 

 toric Louisberg, and a number of successful studies of fog-enshrouded 

 seas and sheep-cropped uplands has been the result. Homer Watson 

 (p. 34), with style and ideals founded upon the traditions of Rousseau 

 and the Barbizon painters so revolutionary in their day paints wood- 

 land Ontario with an individual appreciation of nature's more sombre 

 moods which has won him wide appreciation. 



To Franklin Brownell (pp. 14 and 1 5), perhaps as much as to any of the 

 older landscape painters, has the spirit of Canadian nature been revealed. 

 Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, trained like the others in the 

 Paris schools, Franklin Brownell has lived in Ottawa for thirty years. 

 Now in the full maturity of his colour, whether painting the lonely 

 fishing life and stark grandeur of the lower St. Lawrence, or the lakes 

 and forests of Ontario, the lyrical loveliness of nature's hourly changing 

 mood is revealed to him, and its essentials grasped with a deftness of 

 handling and exquisite sense of colour and arrangement which make 

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