Historical Canadian Art Boxed Notecards

Dubbed “the Canadian Constable” by Oscar Wilde, the self-taught Homer Watson depicted the countryside around Kitchener, Ontario, where he grew up. His pastoral landscapes earned him international fame at the peak of his career. Laura Muntz Lyall was a skilled portraitist and painter of children. She was born in England but raised in Canada on a large farm at Alport on Lake Muskoka. Despite discouragement by her family, she returned to England to study art in London and, later, Paris. Lyall painted her subjects with a modified Pre-Raphaelite style combined with touches of impressionist brushwork.

Born into a privileged Montreal family, Helen McNicoll lost her hearing when she was two years old. Encouraged to pursue her interest in art, she studied in England and traveled to France and Italy. Her luminous, intimate paintings celebrate the world of women and children.

A prominent realist painter, Alex Colville has spent most of his life in Sackville, New Brunswick, and Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Although his subject matter is chosen from his immediate environment—family, pets, the landscape near his home—his approach transcends the personal and regional. Executed with a meticulous precision, his paintings contemplate the ambiguity of human existence.

Published with the Art Gallery of Ontario.