<back     next>      The Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria's  BC Women Artists: Past
Awaiting Copyright Image

Martha Douglas Harris
1854 in Victoria – 1933 in Victoria
Martha Douglas Harris published a book of 20 stories: “History and Folklore of the Cowichan Indians” in 1901 (her mother, Lady Amelia Douglas was of Cree background.) With her cousin, Edith Helmcken, she illustrated a children's book. Her father, James Douglas, was the Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island. Harris studied painting with Georgina de L’Aubiniere and exhibited with the Island Arts and Crafts Society, where she was a founding member. She carved wood sculptures, painted, formed the Lace Club of Victoria in 1919 (members included Emily Carr and Hannah Maynard) and the Women’s Institute Weavers Guild. Her collection of Aboriginal basketry is in the Royal BC museum.
http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=143

Awaiting Copyright Image
Sybil Andrews
1898 in England – 1992 in Victoria BC
Sybil Andrews studied at the School of Modern Art in London, where she became friends with artists involved in a new and exciting “modern” technique called lino-cut printing. Coming to Canada with her husband in 1947, she lived in Campbell River on Vancouver Island where she taught art classes and worked on her own print making. She was so successful at lino-cut prints that she had a one-woman show at the Vancouver Art Gallery the next year. Her work is in collections around the world: the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Gallery of New Zealand and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her work is urban, dynamic and powerful with Futurist and Cubist influences.
http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=5
http://www.aggv.bc.ca/mansion-madness/artist_s_andrews.html
http://www.heffel.com/Auction/Results_Lot_E.aspx?ID=15761
http://www.lesliesacks.com/gallery/artistPages/andrews/andrewsbio.htm

Josephine Crease
1864 in New Westminster - 1947 In Victoria
One of seven sisters, Josephine had the most enduring interest in sketching and painting. The family lived in a large house named Pentrelew. Josephine was close friends with Victoria’s well-to-do female artists such as Sophie Pemberton and she enjoyed sketching trips with them. However, her greatest contribution to the arts in the region was as an arts advocate and as a Board member on several Arts Organizations. She was a founding member of the Island Arts and Crafts Society, served with the Society's School of Handicraft and Design and belonged to the Victoria Sketching Club.
http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=131
http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/exhibits/timemach/galler11/frames/land1.htm
http://collection.aggv.bc.ca/iotd/today.aspx?y=2007&m=6&d=1

Awaiting Copyright
Image

Mary Riter Hamilton
1873 in Ontario – 1954 in Vancouver
Mary Riter Hamilton's decision to become a professional painter was made when she was widowed in 1893. She studied in Germany and France, exhibiting at the Paris Salons and later in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg and Calgary in 1912. In Victoria next, she had a commission to paint the portraits of B.C. Lieutenant-Governors. Her most famous work came just after WW II with a special commission from the Amputation Club of British Columbia to paint battlefield scenes in France for the Veterans’ magazine The Gold Stripe. At the battlefields of Vimy Ridge, Ypres and the Somme, Mary Riter Hamilton lived by herself with the Chinese workers who had been hired to clear the battlefields, painting the horrific scenes of the war – in all, 350 works, which were shown in Paris, Versailles and Canada. She donated all of them to the National Archives in Ottawa. Awarded the purple ribbon of Palmes Académiques by the General Council of the Somme district.
http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=23
http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/traces-of-war/050804_e.html
http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/11/hamilton_mr.shtml
http://www.umanitoba.ca/cm/vol2/no4/hamilton.html
http://collection.aggv.bc.ca/explore/13070


Ina Uhthoff
1889 – 1971
Having studied under Charles MacIntosh at the Glasgow School of Art, Ina Unthoff found Victoria conservative, so she opened an Art School and Studio on Wharf St. It is Unthoff’s teaching that led to the formation of the Victoria School of Art in 1937 under the Department of Education in BC. She also had a lot to do with the development of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. As a writer she became the art critic for the Daily Colonist for years, while still exhibiting her work in Victoria and at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Friends with Katherine Maltwood and Emily Carr, she was involved in the arts of Victoria her entire life. With Emily Carr, Unthoff was interested in pushing the art of painting into more abstracted styles from the older accepted ways of portraying subject matter.
http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=120
http://www.winchestergalleriesltd.com/artists/uhthoff/1/index.php
http://www.maltwood.uvic.ca/k_maltwood/history/inauhthoff.html
http://www.winchestergalleriesltd.com/gallery_art/uhthoff/U1/index.htm
Awaiting Copyright
Image

Nell Bradshaw
1909 in California – 1997 in Victoria
Nell Bradshaw often came to BC from Alberta where she was raised to paint ocean scenes, landscapes and Native Totem Poles. She had studied with Molly Bobak, A. Y. Jackson and Herbert Seibner, and she loved the art of Van Gogh, Jack Shadbolt and the many West Coast carvings she had seen. Nell joined BC’s totem pole painters, moving there in 1955 and becoming a full-time artist after the death of her husband. Her paintings of West Coast Native culture is very rich, very modern; not only were her paintings popular and selling well in the 1960’s, but she was known for her collages and wood block prints.
http://www.pegasusgallery.ca/artist/Nell_Bradshaw.html
                                                                  home     <back     next>