No Man's Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1868-1954 9780887558115, 9780887555251, 9780887555237

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No Man’s Land

No Man’s Land The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton K AT H R Y N A . Y O U N G & S A R A H M . M c K I N N O N

No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton © Kathryn A. Young and Sarah M. McKinnon 2017 21

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database and retrieval system in Canada, without the prior written permission of the publisher, or, in the case of photocopying or any other reprographic copying, a licence from Access Copyright, www.accesscopyright.ca, 1-800-893-5777. University of Manitoba Press Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Treaty 1 Territory uofmpress.ca Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada isbn 978-0-88755-811-5 (paper) isbn 978-0-88755-525-1 (pdf) isbn 978-0-88755-523-7 (epub) Cover and interior design by Jess Koroscil Cover image: (foreground) Mary Riter Hamilton painting on the battlefields, c. 1919–22, R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection; (background) Mary Riter Hamilton, Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold), 1920, oil on cardboard, 19.00 x 23.50 cm, Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-154, C-103585. Printed in Canada The University of Manitoba Press acknowledges the financial support for its publication program provided by the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Department of Sport, Culture, and Heritage, the Manitoba Arts Council, and the Manitoba Book Publishing Tax Credit.

For Angela Elizabeth Davis 1926–1994

Contents viii | list of illustrations xiii | preface 3

| prologue

11 | chapter one

Early Years - Artistic Beginnings, 1868–1901 33 | chapter two

Study in Europe, 1901–1911 58 | chapter three

An Artist’s Career, 1911–1919 82 | chapter four

Painting with Purpose, 1919–1925 118 | chapter five

Missed Opportunities, Shattered Dreams, 1925–1954 145 | epilogue 148 | appendix

Women Artists Who Were Contemporaries of Mary Riter Hamilton 156 | notes 227 | bibliography 265 | index

Illustrations figures 1.

Mary Riter Hamilton as a young woman, c. 1890s. Lorna Stevens private collection. 6

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Mary Riter Hamilton as a young woman, c. 1890s. Lorna Stevens private collection. 8

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Art School in Toronto, 1890s. Mary Riter Hamilton second from right, in lower right-hand corner. E. Wyly Grier in the background behind the students. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 28

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Jean Isabel Culver and Mary Riter Hamilton on board a ship bound for Europe, 1901. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 30

5. Mary Riter Hamilton, Adina Falconer, and Jean Isabel Culver, Berlin, c. 1901–02. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 37 6. Mary Riter Hamilton, Adina Falconer, and Jean Isabel Culver in Venice, c. 1902. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 39 7. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Dans la Neige de Décembre: Les Sacrifices. In Lectures Pour Tous (December, 1905). Reprinted in Mrs. W. Garland Foster, “Coals to Newcastle: Art Another Canadian Product – Mary Riter Hamilton. A Canadian Artist Whose Work Attests the Fact,” The Western Home Monthly (May 1930): 33. Image courtesy of Peel’s Prairie Provinces ( peel.library.ualberta.ca), a digital initiative of the University of Alberta libraries. 49 8. Mary Riter Hamilton in picture-book hat. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank Riter private collection. 65 9. Mary Riter Hamilton in her Winnipeg studio, her mother, and her niece Etta, c. 1912. Lorna Stevens private collection. 66 10. Mary Riter Hamilton drawing an Indigenous man outside her mother’s home in Manitoba, c. 1912. In Mrs. W. Garland Foster, “Coals to Newcastle: Art Another Canadian Product – Mary Riter Hamilton. A Canadian Artist Whose Work Attests the Fact.” The Western Home Monthly (May 1930): 33. Image courtesy of Peel’s Prairie Provinces ( peel.library.ualberta.ca), a digital initiative of the University of Alberta libraries. 69 11. Mary Riter Hamilton in profile, n.d. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 71 12. Mary Riter Hamilton painting in the battle zone with her dogs, 1919–22. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 87

I l lu s t ra t i o ns 13. Mary Riter Hamilton with her dog, Old Bob, at her side, c. 1919–22. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 88 14. Gun locations, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, 1919. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 93 15. Ypres (Menin Gate), c. April–May 1919. Canada Department of National Defence/Library and Archives Canada, neg: PA-004618. 102 16. Mary Riter Hamilton in a battlefield cemetery, 1919–22. R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter private collection. 105 17. Mary Riter Hamilton at an exhibition of her paintings, Vancouver, 5 March 1952. Lorna Stevens private collection. 142 maps 1. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Canada. Design by Weldon Hiebert. Contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada. 12 2. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Travels in Europe. Design by Weldon Hiebert. Contains information from Digital Chart of the World. 34 3. Mary Riter Hamilton’s visits to First World War Battlefields, 1919–22. Design by Weldon Hiebert. Contains information from Digital Chart of the World. 86 plates following page 2 Measurements of paintings and photographs are given in centimetres, height before width 1. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Maternity, c. 1905, oil on canvas, 116.84 x 76.1 cm. City of Thunder Bay Public Art Collection. 2. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Emerald Lake Bridge, n.d., oil on canvas panel, 26.7 x 33.7 cm. From the University of Lethbridge Art Collection; purchased in 1984 with funds provided by the Alberta 1980s Endowment Fund. 3. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Easter Morning, La Petite Penitente, Brittany, c. 1900, oil on canvas, 117.4 x 82.2 cm. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Gift of Mrs. Horace Crawford. 4. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, B.C., 1915, pastel, chalk drawing on paper, 49.4 x 64.9 cm. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria; gift of George and Lola Kidd.

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No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton 5. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Les Pauvres, c. 1909, oil on canvas, 48.40 x 39.60 cm. Museum of Vancouver Collection, PA 59. 6. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Untitled – Cathedral Interior, c. 1908, oil on canvas, 50.5 x 36 cm. Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Gift of Ruth Minshal. 7. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Gold Fish: Reflections, c. 1907, oil on canvas, 36.75 x 45 cm. David Smith, the Smith family, and the Estate of Marjorie Bernice Smith, née Hacking private collection. 8. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Portrait of Monsieur R, c. 1905, oil on canvas, 115.9 x 80.6 cm. Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada, 62.99.2. 9. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Portrait of Madame X, c. 1905, oil on canvas, 116.4 x 89.4 cm. Collection of Glenbow Museum, Calgary, Canada, 62.99.1. 10. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Portrait of Dr. Henry Esson Young, n.d., oil on canvas, 212.0 x 114.7 cm. Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia. Gift of Mary W. Higgins, Victoria, 1960. Photo: Michael R. Barrick. 11. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Mrs. Young in Hat and Veil, c. 1915, pencil drawing on paper, 30.2 x 22.7 cm. Art Galley of Greater Victoria; gift of Mr. and Mrs. W.C. Higgins. 12. Laura Muntz Lyall (1860–1930), The Lesson [Dis-Moi?], 1895, oil on canvas, 99.1 x 80 cm. From the University of Lethbridge Art Collection; purchased 1988 as a result of a gift from Mr. Gerald Pencer. 13. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Wilson Paterson; served from 1909 to 1914, c. 1917, pastel, 53.6 x 44.4 cm. Image of Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Wilson Paterson courtesy of the Royal BC Museum and Archives. 14. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France, c. 1920, oil on plywood, 46.1 x 25.9 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-104, C-10424. 15. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868­–1954), Villiers-au-Bois [sic], 1919, oil on cardboard, 26.40 x 34.50 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-94, C-132015. 16. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The New Home, 1920, oil on cardboard, 22.10 x 27.10 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-64, C-132009. x

I l lu s t ra t i o ns 17. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Mont Saint-Eloi, c. 1919–20, oil on plywood, 41.10 x 33.2 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988180-53, C-101318. 18. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Return Home, 1919, oil on canvas, 81 x 50.1 cm. Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Purchased with funds provided by the Estate of Caroline Radcliffe Nelles, Halifax, and with assistance from the Art and Pearl van der Linden Foundation, 2007, 128. 19. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Market Among the Ruins of Ypres, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.60 x 56.00 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-23, C-132012. 20. A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974), A Copse, Evening, 1918, oil on canvas, 86.8 x 111.8 cm. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum, accession number CWM 19710261-0186. 21. Maurice Cullen (1866–1934), The Sunken Road, Hangard,1918, oil on canvas, 83.3 x 119.9 cm. Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum, accession number CWM 19710261-0127. 22. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Gun Locations, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, 1919, oil on woven paper, 33.40 x 43.5 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-147, C-101321. 23. A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974), The Entrance to Halifax Harbour, 1919, oil on canvas, 64.8 x 80.6 cm. Long term loan to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia from the Tate Gallery, London. Purchased 1924. © Tate, London 2016. © Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa. 24. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Sadness of the Somme, c. 1920, oil on plywood, 46.10 x 59.50 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-19, C-104799. 25. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Sanctuary Wood, Flanders, 1920, oil on plywood, 45.70 x 59.10 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-21, C-104742. 26. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle, 1920, oil on cardboard, 19.0 x 24.0 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-46, C-104645.

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No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton 27. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Evening on the Belgian Front, n.d., oil on cardboard, 18.70 x 23.90 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-153, C-103587. 28. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres (detail), 1921, oil on plywood, 45.80 x 58.30 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-47, C-105254. 29. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders, 1921, oil on cardboard, 26.30 x 35.00 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-142, C-104244. 30. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), First Boat to arrive at Arras after the Armistice, 1920, oil over charcoal on paper, 27.00 x 35.10 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-4, C-101313. 31. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold), 1920, oil on cardboard, 19.00 x 23.50 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-154, C-103585. 32. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Menin Road, British Cemetery, c. 1920, oil on paper, 27.00 x 35.00 cm. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E), Library and Archives Canada, accession number 1988-180-110, C-104379.

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Preface I have wondered some time why no one had discovered all Aunt May’s paintings and thought that they may be buried forever in some dusty archives, never to be seen again!!! — margaret a. thorburn to angela e. davis, 5 december 19881

The Mary Riter Hamilton project has been a long time in the making, and it has reached conclusion due to the initiative and commitment of many people. It began in the 1980s when Angela Davis, a graduate student at the University of Manitoba, was asked to write a paper about Canadian women artists. Her work was later published by the Manitoba Historical Society as a biographical essay on Mary Riter Hamilton.2 Davis then expanded her research and collaborated with Sarah McKinnon, an art historian and curator of a small gallery at the University of Winnipeg. Subsequently, the two women decided to mount an exhibition of some of Hamilton’s paintings. In 1919 the artist had been awarded a small commission by the Amputation Club of British Columbia to travel to northern France and Belgium. Her task was to paint the battlefields, before reconstruction, where Canadian soldiers had served and lost their lives during the Great War (1914–1918). Between 1919 and 1922 Hamilton produced more than 300 paintings and sketches, most of which were conserved in Library and Archives Canada (lac).3 Davis and McKinnon opened their exhibition, No Man’s Land, in Winnipeg on 5 November 1989.4 Following its success, Angela Davis turned her attention to writing the artist’s biography.5 By 1992 she had been awarded a three-year Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Grant (sshrc) for her project.6 Then, tragically, she took ill, and later she was diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumour.7 She passed away in the autumn of 1994. No Man’s Land is dedicated to her memory. Foremost, we want to recognize Angela Davis for her early commitment to Mary Riter Hamilton. We wish that you were here to see your work come to fruition. We are also grateful for the interest and help that we have received from the artist’s own family members: Angela Bennett, Merle Brown, R.T. Riter and the estate of Frank R. Riter, William Riter, Jean Sanderson, Ronald

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

Spencer, David Smith, the Smith family, and the estate of Marjorie Bernice Smith, née Hacking, and Lorna Stevens. A number of Hamilton’s friends and some of their descendants also have contributed to the project. Thanks to Judy Bishop and David L. Carl, Meribeth Coyne and Deborah Riley, Dennis and Gerald Culver, and Mary Higgins. We also want to acknowledge the SSHRC for their support of Angela Davis in the original Mary Riter Hamilton biographical project. It is also appropriate to thank LAC, the Manitoba Arts Council, and Cliff Chadderton, Lorraine Cornelius, and Bill Neil of The War Amps for their contribution to the No Man’s Land exhibition in the same period; and special mention should be made to LAC as custodian of more than 200 of Hamilton’s war paintings. We also want to thank a number of institutions and individuals, in particular: the Ontario College of Art and Design University; St. John’s College, the University of Manitoba; and the University of Winnipeg. Research was carried out in a number of archives, art galleries, and historical societies, where the archivists and curators supported this enterprise. Sincerely, we thank: Robert Amos, Curator, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (aggv); Heather Dunn, Canadian Heritage Information Network; Bob Ferris and Gilbert Gignac of lac; Jennifer Gibson, Gallery 1C03, University of Winnipeg; Chris Kotecki, Archives of Manitoba; Donald McClure and Jim Whytock, Bruce County Historical Society; Beverly Paty, Judy Root, and Chantaal Ryane, British Columbia Archives, Royal BC Museum; Alex Ross, City Archivist, Thunder Bay; and Cheryl Siegel, Vancouver Art Gallery. We also thank those who helped us with images of Mary Riter Hamilton’s paintings: Shannon Bateman, Public Art Coordinator, City of Thunder Bay; Sandra Dyck, Carleton University Gallery; Peggy Sue Ewanyshyn, University of Alberta Libraries; Nicole Fletcher and Karen Kisiow, Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Juliet Graham and Andrea Kremenik, University of Lethbridge Art Collection; Stephen Topfer, aggv; Lia Melemenis, Collection of Glenbow Museum; Shannon Parker, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia; Jillian Povarchook and Paola Merkins, Museum of Vancouver Collection; Susan Ross, Canadian War Museum; Chelsea Shriver and Jacky Lai, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia (ubc) Library; Teresa Sudeyko, Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, ubc; Chris Sutherns, Tate London; and Kelly-Ann Turkington, British Columbia Archives, Royal BC Museum. At St. John’s College, we are grateful for the support and encouragement of David Carr, Glenn Bergen, and Jill McConkey, and other members of xiv

Pre fa ce

the University of Manitoba Press. Further, we would like to acknowledge Norman Cameron, College Fellow, for his advice and Diana DeFoort for her technical assistance. As this project evolved over the years, there were those who shared their own research of Mary Riter Hamilton. For their kindness and cooperation we are very thankful to David Nicholson in Thunder Bay and to Michael Ostroff in Ottawa. We also want to express our gratitude to Denise Fuchs, Margaret Grégory, and Heather Smith Siska, who researched archives in Vancouver, Paris, and Victoria. And thanks to Marilyn Baker, Patricia Bovey, Karen Clavelle, and Mary Kinnear for their willingness to chat about the artist and women’s history. For their patience in reading and commenting on the draft manuscript, thank you to Karen Clavelle, Mary Kinnear, and Robert Young. No Man’s Land has consumed much of our thinking over the past few years. For their tolerance of distractions from the world of early twentieth-century women and art, we owe a debt to Peter Dawes and to Robert Young.

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No Man’s Land

Prologue I am not selling the pictures though I do need the money—but—shall save them for the purpose I told you of. I cannot break away from my ideal. —mary riter hamilton (paris) to margaret hart (victoria), 20 june 19221

Western Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton has been the subject of recent studies on women and the art of the Great War,2 and she has been included in anthologies and exhibition catalogues since at least the 1970s. She is described as studying in Europe with well-known artists and painting on the battlefields of France and Belgium following the Armistice. One reads that her work is conserved in art galleries from coast to coast and her battle collection, the largest depository of one artist’s war art,3 is the property of Library and Archives Canada. Several times since her death in 1954, she has been featured in exhibitions yet, to date, there has not been a complete study of her life and art.4 No Man’s Land is the first full-length biography of Mary Riter Hamilton. It is a women’s social history of this western Canadian artist at home and abroad. It is also the story of a woman whose art was her life’s passion—a woman who lost a stillborn son and was widowed in her twenties. It is a tale of tragedy and adventure that takes the reader from homestead beginnings to genteel drawings rooms in Winnipeg, Victoria, and Vancouver, to art schools in Berlin and Paris, to war-torn areas of northern Europe, and to illness and poverty in old age. Hamilton was very much a woman of her time. Although from rural beginnings in central Ontario and southern Manitoba, in her early thirties she moved first to Berlin and then to Paris, where she resided for just under a decade. As a Canadian expatriate, she was exposed to dramatic changes in society and attitudes towards women in this period. Women of the early twentieth century were demanding their rightful place in society—they marched in London for the vote; European and American art schools opened their doors to them; and the new railways across Europe and North America facilitated their travel. Art was the profession of this woman of independent spirit who tried to use her talent to sustain herself mentally and physically. Hamilton, who emerged on the Canadian art scene in her mid-twenties at the end of the nineteenth century and last exhibited in her eighties, promoted herself, with the help of

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

others, throughout a long career. An impresario, she directed what she called her profession—sketching, china, genre, portrait, and landscape painting. For much of her adult life she was remunerated, although modestly, for teaching art; her paintings were sold and are currently in the market. Her work was exhibited in the Parisian Salons; and she was awarded the prestigious L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government for her service to France. More than once, though, she was not only short of cash but also of food and lodging. What combination of will and circumstance drove a young woman from a comfortable life painting china tea services in western Canada to one of hardship and loneliness in the war-ravaged countryside of northern Europe? No Man’s Land will set out to answer this question and in doing so will interpret the full life of Mary Riter Hamilton. Hamilton’s art, correspondence, and photographs are central to this investigation as they reveal much about both her character and the twists and turns of her career. Importantly, they demonstrate that she shared common life experiences with other Canadian women artists of the period. Uniquely, though, her return to France in 1919, commissioned by the Amputation Club of British Columbia, and the almost 300 resulting pictures of vacated battlefields just as the soldiers had left them, sets her apart.5 As with much of women’s history, the sources that detail Hamilton’s life are scattered and it is only by painstakingly assembling the pieces, bit by bit, that the mystery of the subject is solved. First, Hamilton’s paintings constitute important evidence in their provenance, subject, technique, style, media, and colour. They can be found in archives, art galleries, museums, private collections, auction houses, and published writings.6 The paintings, along with exhibition catalogues, newspaper critiques, and interviews, help to place Hamilton within the canon of Canadian art. Second, Hamilton’s correspondence presents a woman’s view of her art and secures her within a network of women patrons and friends who were essential to her livelihood. Significantly, personal letters have come to light that are held in a private collection and have not been seen before. They expose the importance of female relationships to the financial and moral support of a single woman pursuing an art career, and they detail the exceptional hardships Hamilton experienced as she painted out in the former battlefields where so many Canadian soldiers had lost their lives.7

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Pro lo g ue

Her communication with family and friends illuminates further the value of women supporting women to the well-being of Hamilton and other female artists. In particular, one discovers the import of the founding of women’s organizations in this period, such as the Women’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC),8 the Canadian Handicrafts Guild, the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), and the Women’s Canadian Club (WCC), to name a few. The organizations offered a framework for exhibitions and they were a source of patronage and publicity. Correspondence with federal and provincial government officials reveals the astonishing efforts made by Hamilton’s friends to help her in old age. Their appeals went right to the office of William Lyon Mackenzie King, the prime minister of Canada. Hamilton’s letters to Arthur Doughty, Dominion archivist, and to Eric Brown, director of the National Gallery, help to explain why she gifted her war pictures to the archives. Hamilton’s correspondence and records from the Provincial Mental Health Hospital at Essondale, British Columbia, illustrate the link between poverty and illness that immobilized this elderly woman in her final years. Photographs from other private collections give us an idea of her physical stature and beauty as a young woman, her European travels, and her wartime activity (Figure 1 and Figure 2). Outside the primary sources, four secondary works, in particular, have informed the methodology of this interpretation. Shari Benstock, in The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings, stresses the importance of discovering women’s ideas and emotions through their correspondence. She argues, “Letter writing helped to strengthen . . . female friendships, and [the letters] also promoted awareness of distinct—specifically female—experiences.”9 Personal correspondence gives voice to women who often have few other records. Kristina Huneault’s “Professionalism as a Critical Concept and Historical Process for Women and Art in Canada” raises important questions about Hamilton, who throughout her career identified herself as an artist.10 Huneault argues that it was difficult to define an artist’s professionalism in this period; to do so, she turns to Mary Kinnear’s work, In Subordination: Professional Women, 1870–1970. Kinnear writes that there was a concurrence between the rise of the concept of professionalism and women entering medicine, nursing, law, and teaching. Accordingly, she established a number of criteria by which to judge a woman’s status as a professional.11 We believe that Mary 5

Figure 1. Mary Riter Hamilton as a young woman, c. 1890s.

Pro lo g ue

Riter Hamilton’s self-identification as an artist answers Huneault’s concerns and satisfies Kinnear’s salient points: Hamilton was middle-class and of British background;12 she knew that travel to European art schools and study with their recognized instructors were essential to her formal training as an artist; she received remuneration from the sale of her art and from her teaching; her work was acknowledged in art gallery and personal collections, exhibitions, and publications; she was a member of art associations and societies, such as the WAAC, the Victoria Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS), and the Paris Louvre Art Museum; she used her talent as a volunteer for the IODE and the Red Cross; and throughout her career, she self-regulated her work. Finally, Catherine Speck, Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars, explores international war artists like Hamilton, “practicing professionals,” who had been formally trained in art schools, shared subject matter, and who offered a woman’s perspective on war. She situates Hamilton alongside Australian Evelyn Chapman (1888–1961) and Briton Olive Mudie-Cooke (1890–1925), who, like her, had volunteered with the Red Cross during the war and who also painted in the Somme river valley after 1919. Speck has written that: “Persistence and determination are character traits that mark these women and many, having travelled extensively and worked in cosmopolitan centres outside their countries of birth and original training, had an assertive independence that helped in securing commissions.”13 Through Speck’s work we see Hamilton not only in a Canadian context but also in an international context of women war artists. Hamilton’s journey from china painting to the battlefields began in the 1880s when she trained as an apprentice to a milliner and, in the same period, taught herself to paint china. Within a few years, like other women artists of her generation, she progressed to painting in watercolour and then to oil. She also worked in pen and ink, charcoal, chalk, graphite, and pastels. Her paintings were created on board, cardboard, and canvas. She initiated her formal art education in Toronto, where she briefly studied with well-known artists E. Wyly Grier, George Agnew Reid, and Mary Hiester Reid. She then continued her education for almost a decade in the art schools of Berlin and Paris, where she was trained in the European Academic tradition, sometimes called the “Paris School.” At no point did she adopt the “abstracted forms”14 of the Post-Impressionists, Cubists, or Fauvists. Throughout her career she painted in a representational style, but increasingly borrowed elements from the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists such as subjects of everyday life and women in domestic 7

Figure 2. Mary Riter Hamilton as a young woman, c. 1890s.

Pro lo g ue

settings; bright, rich colours; dramatic light and shadow; and long, loose brush strokes that conveyed rather than defined meaning.15 She painted in her studio or en plein air and her portfolio included women, Indigenous peoples, floral studies, landscapes, and portraits. Unpredictably, for a more-than-middle-aged woman, in 1919 Mary Riter Hamilton secured a commission from the Amputation Club of British Columbia to paint the wasted fields of northern Europe. Quiet domestic scenes and pastoral gardens were replaced by stark, barren trees and water-filled shell holes. Yet, hope for the future was expressed in poppies that dotted those fields and in the soldiers returning home. What followed was an unusual and extraordinary act of commemoration and generosity. Once Hamilton was back in Winnipeg in the 1920s, she gifted her collection of over 200 war paintings and sketches to the Canadian people by placing it in the Public Archives. A decade later, she was living in Vancouver with few resources and was often afflicted by illness. Nonetheless, when she was well she would continue to teach, and there were a few exhibitions of her work. Throughout, her friends rallied around her in an effort to help, but often with little effect. Mary Riter Hamilton passed away on 5 April 1954 at the Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia.16

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Chapter One

Early Years—Artistic Beginnings, 1868–1901 Mary Riter Hamilton as a child was very clever about trimming dolls’ hats. She was always taking the prize for such novelties at the Emerson, Manitoba, fairs. Mrs. Hamilton’s first picture was a copy of a picture of Current River Falls which she saw in a furniture store in Port Arthur. The men in the store gave her common paint and she made a copy for her brother. She had often fished in this river so she knew it. — mrs. fanny k. huntley, interviewed by major j.s. matthews, 29 february 19521

The Annual Women’s Art Association Art Exhibition: . . . The principal exhibitor being, Mrs. Hamilton, the instructor. It is the finest [china painting ] display ever seen in the Northwest. — manitoba free press, 5 december 18962

Industrial Exhibition, July 1897: The largest and most attractive [china painting ] by Mrs. Hamilton and her pupils shows wonderful progress in art by many of our best known city ladies. — winnipeg tribune, 22 july 18973

December Exhibition of china painting, landscapes, still life and sepia drawings in Mrs. Hamilton’s studio, 196 Kennedy Street: To find in a city, young as Winnipeg, such evidence of true art is indeed as fine as it is astonishing. This is proved by the class of exhibits shown in Mrs. Hamilton’s studies. — manitoba free press, 15 december 19004

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

Mary Matilda Riter, a child of the late nineteenth century, was born on 7 September 1868 in Bruce County, Ontario.5 She began life on a homestead near Teeswater village, in Culross Township, not far from Lake Huron, as one of five children in the family of John Saul Riter (1833–­­1890) and Charity Zimmerman (1837–1915). John Saul Riter was of British ancestry, and descendants of the Zimmerman family believe that Charity was of third-generation United Empire Loyalist stock, more specifically Pennsylvania Dutch.6 Her family likely came to Canada from the United States during the American Revolution (1775–1783) and put down roots, as did many Loyalists.7 By 1871, there were almost 50,000 people living on the Bruce County peninsula.8 Those who came, including the Riters, arrived from Upper Canada (Ontario). Others came from Lower Canada (Quebec), the Maritimes (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island), the British Isles, and the United States.9 These early settlers travelled by horse or ox-drawn wagon to their land concessions, which were often situated in dense forest. Many found that they had to clear their properties before one-room shanties could be built as temporary shelter from Ontario’s bitter winters, with their sub-zero temperatures, ice and snow. By spring, though, they were able to construct more secure frame and stone dwellings, and they were able to plant wheat and vegetable crops.

Map 1. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Canada.

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Bruce County was known for its rich agricultural production. Farm produce (wheat, oats, barley, peas, flour, and oatmeal) was shipped out from Goderich, on the shores of Lake Huron, into the Great Lakes water system. From there commodities travelled east down the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean and across to markets in England.10 By the time of the Riters’ marriage in 1859, Teeswater village had a newspaper, a post office, and was serviced by the Toronto Grey and Bruce (tg&b), and later the Canadian Pacific Railway (cpr).11 In that year, John Saul Riter and Charity Zimmerman were married in Culross Township on 9 July.12 Mary, born in 1868, was the youngest of the Riters’ five children. Her older brothers John Paul and Joseph came in 1861 and 1862, respectively, and they were followed by sisters Clara, who arrived in 1864, and Etty, born two years later.13 In the 1860s, John Saul Riter ran a sawmill on 10th Concession (now Highway 4). But when fire destroyed the mill, he turned to farming and by 188014 had his own plot of land.15 Although documentation about the artist’s childhood is sparse, we do know that she went to school.16 And we know that her interest in art began as soon as she could hold a pencil.17 Religion, like education, was also part of the fabric of early homesteading and the Riters identified themselves as Protestants in the census records between 1861 and 1881.18 Mary Riter was remembered by “old timers of Teeswater . . . as a young girl, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Riter, living in a little frame house on a farm.”19 As the district grew and became more established, it faced severe weather conditions and poor crops. Drought was followed by brush fires and, eventually, the collapse of the business community. Homesteaders like the Riters began to look west.20 In the early 1880s, John Saul Riter and his family left Bruce County to settle at Clearwater, Manitoba, where Charity Zimmerman’s relatives had homesteaded a few years earlier.21 According to historian W.L. Morton, the “Ontario Migration” into the prairies corresponded with Manitoba’s entry into Confederation in 1870 and the City of Winnipeg’s incorporation four years later. The new province was advertised in Ontario newspapers as having fertile land for sale where wheat grew free of disease.22 In May 1875, the Manitoba Weekly Free Press described the movement of settlers, like the Riters, into the region beyond Winnipeg: “The men left the woman folk and household goods in Winnipeg and drove [by buggy or wagon] through the country nearby or far out on the trails to make their location. When they had found a site to their liking they returned for 13

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

families and outfits, and with a horse team or oxen and wagon box covered with canvas set out for the homestead.”23 Morton has written that the Clearwater district was situated in the beautiful Pembina Mountain Valley, in south-central Manitoba. The Riters spoke English, as did many from Ontario, and by speech and manner were easily identified as Canadians and not as immigrants from foreign lands.24 Although at the outset homestead life was hard for families, culturally the Riters would have fit in easily with others of British background. For these farmers homesteading followed a pattern. A plot of land was selected and purchased. Life then proceeded according to season. As in Culross, dwellings that began as shanties were soon replaced by sturdier ones constructed of logs using the notch and saddle technique, with oak foundations and, sometimes, thatched roofs. By the 1880s, a number of lumber yards had opened, selling cut lumber and other materials, as well as patterns for efficient house construction. As such, the Riters may have built a wood-frame home, as they had in Bruce County. Spring meant clearing the land for planting kitchen gardens and crops. Autumn brought the produce in for storage and sale. And winter was for cutting and hauling wood, buying stock and seed, and joining neighbours at socials and dances. Life in the settlements revolved around national holidays such as Queen Victoria’s Birthday on 24 May and Dominion Day on 1 July. Summer activities included horse races and picnics with foot races, jumping, throwing, tugs-ofwar, and baseball. Duck and prairie chicken hunting ushered in the autumn, and during the winter horse racing on river ice, curling, and snowshoeing brought homesteaders together in the cold Manitoba climate. Escape from the weather could be found indoors. As Mary Riter had shown an interest in art from an early age, when she was in her teens her family sent her to Emerson, a Manitoba town near the American border, to train as a milliner with a Mrs. Traynor. Later when Traynor moved to Port Arthur, Ontario, with her adopted baby, she invited Mary to accompany her to mind the baby and to continue her millinery studies. The soon-to-be artist not only designed hats, she also turned her attention to crewel work and to the making of mottoes.25 Port Arthur was situated on the northwest shore of Lake Superior and with its twin, Fort William, shared a past built on the fur trade, mining, railway, and shipping. French fur traders and their Native partners had known the region 14

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since the seventeenth century as an entrepôt for furs coming from the west into the Great Lakes water system and then on to the markets of Montreal. In the early nineteenth century the area achieved prominence. In 1803 the North West Company built a fur trading post at the mouth of the Kaministiquia River, on Lake Superior, that became the town of Fort William and the hub of the North American fur trade.26 Port Arthur, the “Hill City,” developed later with the discovery of silver in the 1850s. By 1885, both towns had prospered with the completion of the cpr and the ensuing transport of immigrants and goods into western Canada. A decade later, there were about 3,000 inhabitants in each location who worked on the railway, as well as in the fur trade, silver mines, and shipyards.27 The retail and service trades developed concurrently. Mary Riter arrived in Port Arthur sometime between 1887 and 1888. It was here that she created her first landscape painting, a picture of Current River Falls, a well-known local site. She also learned to decorate china from The Art Amateur, a magazine of the day, as it was difficult to find instruction in china painting.28 It was also in Port Arthur that Mary Riter met her future husband, Charles Watson Hamilton, a well-known dry goods merchant. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1863, Hamilton had lived in New York, Toronto, and London, Ontario, before coming to Port Arthur in 1887. He began working in merchandise, and before long he had his own business—The Paris Dry Goods House of Cumberland Street. In February 1889 the Daily Sentinel newspaper announced the store’s opening by advertising “Thompson’s Glove Fitting Corsets” and “Perrin’s French Kid Gloves.”29 Ten days later, it told its readers that proprietors of the new shop were C.W. Hamilton and M. Riter. Mary Riter, about to become Mrs. C.W. Hamilton, was identified as a partner in The Paris Dry Goods House before her marriage. Customers were urged to call in to see colourful dresses and Mrs. Traynor’s “fashionable hats and bonnets.”30 Seemingly, the hat-maker’s protégée had played a role in “the finest-display [sic] of millinery ever shown in Port Arthur.” Mary was becoming skilled in the craft and she was learning to run a business. She was also learning the importance of advertising, which would serve her later in the promotion of her art classes, exhibitions, and sales of artwork. Mary Matilda Riter and Charles Watson Hamilton were married on 17 July 1889 in the Presbyterian Church at Clinton, Huron County.31 Several days after their wedding, the Weekly Sentinel wrote that Charles Hamilton and his bride had returned to Port Arthur from their honeymoon on the Campana, a “magnificent” steamer that sailed regularly on Lake Huron, stopping at Sault Ste. Marie, 15

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

Kincardine, Goderich, and Sarnia.32 The newspaper also added its “hearty congratulations” to the newlyweds who, on their return, established themselves in a home at the corner of Court and Pearl Streets.33 In the weeks that followed, Mary Hamilton joined her husband in the management of their dry goods business. That same July, the Weekly Sentinel quoted a Toronto visitor who identified Port Arthur as “the gateway to the Northwest.”34 The port was already handling “great ships” carrying several “million” bushels of grain to eastern markets in addition to passenger steamers that disembarked on alternate days. Port Arthur/Fort William, the newspaper argued, “must inevitably become a great milling and manufacturing centre; even now its enterprising businessmen are preparing for this”35—businessmen like Charles Watson Hamilton. To illustrate Hamilton’s optimism and commitment to Port Arthur, a local newspaper reported that he had expanded his shop, his retail trade had been flourishing, and he had travelled to Winnipeg and Chicago to buy supplies.36 The business was doing well and the Hamiltons were accepted into the community. When Mary Hamilton received news that her father had died at Clearwater, in 1890, the Thunder Bay Sentinel wrote that “Mrs. Hamilton’s many friends heartily sympathise with her in the loss she has sustained.”37 More grief was to follow when, almost two years later, Mary and Charles Hamilton lost their son, who was stillborn, on 29 August 1892.38 Although Mary Hamilton rarely discussed the death of her child, perhaps revealing the emotional toll this had taken, it was known by some of her friends and family that she had lost a baby. Moreover, early in her career, reviewers remarked that infants were the subject of a number of her paintings, the most famous of which was Maternity, a work that she later willed to the City of Thunder Bay.39 The young couple’s promising start was already marked by personal tragedy when, poignantly, Charles Hamilton died suddenly and unexpectedly, on 14 December 1893.40 He was thirty years old. Although he had been suffering from flu, he had gone to his dry goods store for two days preceding his death, and it seems that as he became more ill, he returned home early on the second day. He died an hour later “notwithstanding all that his anxious wife and the doctor could do for him.” The Thunder Bay Sentinel acknowledged that Hamilton’s sudden death would be very hard on his many friends: “His geniality had endeared him to everyone with whom he came in contact, while his sterling integrity had impressed itself upon a still wider circle. He was in the prime of

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life and his death will be felt as a general loss to the community. . . . He was a good man, and has gone to his own place.”41 Hamilton had been an adherent of St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church and “a highly respected member” of the Shuniah Masonic Lodge.42 Of his funeral, the paper continued, “If any additional testimony of the worth and the esteem in which he was held by the people of Port Arthur [is needed] it was furnished by the cortege of mourners [who accompanied] the remains to the grave. The stores in Town were generally closed . . . , and several of them were draped in mourning.”43 In addition to the Presbyterian funeral, there had been a Masonic service at the Hamilton home, as well as at the gravesite.44 Two Masonic brothers had been with Charles Hamilton on the day that he died. The newspaper noted that “he expired in their arms.” They had said, “He had a glimpse of consciousness just before death, and fully recognized the fact that the end had come.”45 Charles Watson Hamilton was buried in Riverside Cemetery, Port Arthur, in Section 1, plot 215. The cremated remains of his wife, Mary Hamilton, would be placed there in 1954.46 Mary Hamilton was named executrix in her husband’s will. As such, she immediately became involved in the settlement of the estate—a formidable responsibility for a twenty-five-year-old woman. As she had in the Paris Dry Goods House, she assumed a role that gave her entry into business, financial, and legal worlds. Within a few weeks of her husband’s passing, The Weekly Herald and Algoma Miner reported that “Mrs. Hamilton has gone east. She will endeavour to settle up her deceased husband’s affairs.”47 It is likely that she travelled to Toronto to visit with W. Hamilton, her husband’s brother and family.48 On 18 January 1894, the true copy of the last will and testament of merchant Charles Watson Hamilton, late of Port Arthur, District of Thunder Bay, was proved and registered in the Surrogate Court of the District of Thunder Bay. Hamilton’s will had been signed and witnessed on 2 May 1890, less than a year after his marriage. It was drawn solely in favour of his wife so that all property and administration were granted to Mary Matilda Hamilton, for “her own use absolutely forever,” including all real estate and personal possessions.49 Hamilton had appointed his wife executrix and Port Arthur merchant John E. Johnston executor and trustee of the will and estate. Moreover, he stipulated that all assets be paid over to his wife as soon as possible following his death. Once the will was read and the property recorded, the Surrogate Court held a notice of probate saying “That the value of the personal estate and effects is 17

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under four thousand dollars and the said deceased died leaving no real estate and that full particulars and an appraisement of all said property are exhibited here with and verified upon oath.”50 Charles Hamilton’s household goods and furniture, stock in trade, and life insurance, totalled approximately $3,500, once assets and liabilities were balanced. They almost cancelled each other out at $12,701 and $12,850, respectively.51 In short, Mary Hamilton was the beneficiary of close to $3,500 in 1893—the equivalent of approximately $80,000 in 2015.52 In 1894 Mary Riter Hamilton, a child of homesteads in southern Ontario and Manitoba, relocated to Winnipeg, a nascent art community on the Canadian prairies. Widowed and having recently lost a child, she was single-minded in her goal to establish herself. Relying on her early training in hat making and the dry goods business, she set out to become an artist—a career fraught with physical and financial challenges. Yet these obstacles were met with Hamilton’s resourcefulness and support from a wide network of friends in Canada and abroad. Hamilton’s growth as a professional artist began in Winnipeg.53 From 1894 to 1901 she developed her sense of identity within an artistic and cultural milieu where Canadian middle-class women were beginning to play a role in the graphic arts and music. For instance, in 1887 artist and teacher Mary Ella Dignam (1857–1938) initiated the Women’s Art Club of Toronto.54 Five years later, the club was incorporated as the Women’s Art Association of Canada (waac) and, subsequently, it established a number of branches throughout the country, including Winnipeg in 1894 and Portage la Prairie in 1896.55 The waac was committed to the “advancement of mutual help and cooperation among women artists and art lovers.”56 In Winnipeg, members came together for sketching and life-drawing classes, and in 1894 and 1896 they held exhibitions of china painting, drawings, and watercolours where their own work was displayed, as well as that of women from affiliated associations in eastern Canada and the United States. Membership in the waac and its subsidiaries took two forms: professional and honorary. Professionals were artists and art students; honorary members were society women committed to the promotion of art. The associations met monthly and organized speakers and bi-annual exhibitions that were held in the spring and autumn.57 Art historian and curator Virginia Berry has pointed out that, despite the activity of the waac, it was unable to keep going in Winnipeg beyond 1896, but that same year the Portage la Prairie branch opened and continued until 1901. Somewhat later, in 1903, members of what 18

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had been the waac Winnipeg branch reorganized and became the Manitoba Society of Artists. Then, in 1909, the body became the Western Art Association, whose “aims were to direct public interest in western Canada in the study of art and to create and maintain a permanent collection of art objects.”58 By the 1890s, Winnipeg’s society women were engaged in promoting art, theatre, and music. They made arrangements for travelling theatre companies to bring drama, opera, and vaudeville from London, New York, Toronto, and Montreal to the Winnipeg Orpheum and Pantages theatres and they planned musical performances that featured international artists. The Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg (wmc) was founded the same year as the waac by six women determined “to keep up their interest in [classical] music.”59 Meetings were held weekly in the drawing rooms of members and offered a venue for local musicians. By the turn of the century, outside artists had become a regular feature, including Madame Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler, a world-famous pianist, who came to Winnipeg in 1906. She had performed in London, Paris, Boston, and New York.60 A few years later, Nellie Melba, an acclaimed Australian opera singer, sang in Winnipeg, and she, too, had graced the stages of the major opera houses of Europe and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Some of the wmc women who had organized these recitals, including Mrs. C.S. Riley ( Jean Isabel Culver, 1883–1965), Mrs. Lauchlan A. Hamilton (Constance Bodington, 1862–1945), Mrs. George Galt (Margaret Jane Smith, 1862–1915), and Mrs. W. Sanford Evans (Mary Irene Gurney, n.d.), were Mary Hamilton’s friends or students.61 The artist’s budding career was also facilitated by the annual Winnipeg Industrial Exhibition. Established in 1891, the Art Section usually had two parts. The first was a juried show of resident artists, such as Hamilton. The second featured pieces borrowed from collectors, the Ontario Society of Artists (osa), and Canadian and/or European art dealers. This format, with both shows presented in the same venue, allowed the public to see the works of local, national, and international artists. It was also an occasion to meet dealers and other Canadian artists who came with the osa exhibit and who often judged the home entries.62 When Mary Hamilton arrived in Winnipeg in the autumn of 1894, she may have been familiar with the city from her time spent in Manitoba during the 1880s in Clearwater and later in Emerson, but she was likely unprepared for what had become the most advanced commercial and architectural urban 19

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centre in western Canada.63 Winnipeg, with a population of more than 30,000, was a far cry from Port Arthur.64 At the juncture of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, the city in the 1890s was not just a settlement in the west, but rather “the region’s central metropolis.”65 Winnipeg came of age between 1886 and 1913, and its economic reach extended from the Great Lakes to the Rockies. The grain trade, manufacturing, and retailing dominated, and as a result the city’s financial institutions were known throughout Canada.66 By 1894, those who were successful in commerce and the professions, for the most part, lived in either the older upscale districts of the commercial core, or on Armstrong’s Point,67 or south of the Assiniboine River in Fort Rouge. Hamilton was drawn to these individuals who had means and status—and whose activities were regularly reported in Town Topics, a weekly society newspaper. One could read about their attendance at art exhibitions, musical and theatrical performances, and at euchre parties, formal balls, teas, and weddings. During the summer, they spent their holidays in cottages on the banks of Lake Winnipeg, at Grand and Victoria Beaches, or on islands in Lake of the Woods.68 Their travel to Europe and to other parts of Canada was also duly recorded. By the time of the artist’s arrival, the commercial core of the city, at Main Street and Portage Avenue, had been distinguished by substantial five-storey Tyndall stone69 bank buildings and warehouses designed by British, American, and eastern Canadian architects. Houses in the upscale neighbourhoods were typically two-and-a-half stories, red and beige brick or wood framed, with Tyndall stone enhancements. An American who came to the city the same year as Hamilton observed the “prevalence of buff brick in business buildings and private houses” that stretched from Point Douglas to the Assiniboine River and Armstrong’s Point. He described the residential neighbourhood east of Osborne Street between Portage Avenue and the Assiniboine, where the young artist would establish her studios, as “a district of large lawns, large Victorian houses of brick, with wide verandahs, sharp gables, or mansard roofs, with leisurely spaciousness and quaint homeliness.”70 New roads and new bridges spanning the Red and Assiniboine enabled transport around the city. Residents of Winnipeg travelled by foot, horsedrawn carriage, tram, or bicycle. The Manitoba Free Press wrote in March 1899, “No more remarkable development has been witnessed in our day than the growth in the use of the bicycle.”71 Correspondingly, and as important, was the expansion of the Winnipeg Street Railway System, which by 1900 was carrying 20

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about 3.5 million passengers.72 Fire trucks and delivery wagons pulled by horses were part of the city landscape, and as such livery stables and blacksmiths did a thriving business. When Hamilton set foot in the western metropolis, women were becoming more assertive and demanding changes in society. On the political front, women were petitioning for female suffrage in Manitoba, women such as Margret Benedictsson, who used her publication Freyja, an Icelandic newspaper, to argue for the vote. Other women, such as Lillian Beynon Thomas, her sister Frances Marion Beynon, and Nellie McClung, also used their writing skills to demand more equality for women.73 The young widow aspired to be an artist when there were few opportunities for women to do so, but her ambition matched the resolve of Benedictsson, the Beynons, and McClung.74 Her first goal was to become known and to support herself by means of her art. Accordingly, within months of settling herself in Winnipeg, she exhibited some of her china painting.75 China painting as a decorative art form had spread to the Canadian prairies thanks to the impact of William Morris and the British Arts and Crafts Movement (c. 1860s–1920s). As early as the 1870s, British women with leisure time were being educated at the Lambeth School of Art and Design and The Royal School of Art Needlework.76 A decade later, the American Arts and Crafts movement gained momentum with the founding of the Society of Decorative Art, where designs, including those of Tiffany, had been developed for “embroidery, needlework, printed silks, tapestries, and wallpapers.” American art historian Whitney Chadwick contends that the decorative arts “provided many middle-class women with a socially respectable and humanitarian outlet for their artistic productions,” such as the display of china painting by members of the Cincinnati Pottery Club at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876.77 She argues that this club was at the vanguard of a surprising number of American women who went on to professional careers in the field of art pottery. As such, china painting classes were especially attractive for women of means, and Minton and Doulton, the great china manufacturers, contributed to this interest by producing ready-to-be-painted porcelain dinnerware. The art pottery movement deserves further investigation, Chadwick suggests, as women who worked to professionalize the decorative arts were “intimately” connected to those who worked for domestic and social reform. For example, “By the time the World’s Columbian Exposition had opened in Chicago in 1893, American women had evolved a new sense of identity and purpose. Goals and strategies 21

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varied widely among feminists, and there were still many women not involved in the struggle for equal rights and the vote, but representatives of all groups came together to organize a women’s building intended to prove that women’s achievements were equal to those of men.”78 Women had demonstrated their artistic endeavour and their determination when they organized a pavilion dedicated to their own work. Mary Hamilton also exhibited some of her china painting in the Chicago Exposition.79 Her entry reflected the growing interest of middle-class women in the arts and crafts explored in Ellen Easton McLeod’s In Good Hands: The Women of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild. McLeod profiles the careers of three women, contemporaries of Hamilton, whose organizational and humanitarian work was central to the rise of arts and crafts and the establishment of the waac: Mary Ella Dignam, Mary Alice Skelton Peck (1855–1943), and Mary Martha (May) Phillips (1856–1937).80 Dignam, founder of the waac, was from a privileged background, an artist, and an advocate for women and women artists. She was an active member of the National Council of Women from its inception in 1893, and in 1898 she initiated the Women’s International Art Club, which established centres in Toronto and in European cities, such as London and Paris. Peck and Phillips also played a role in the National Council of Women. Alice Peck, too, was from an elite background. She did volunteer hospital work in England and therapeutic craft making in the military wards of regional Montreal hospitals. In 1894 Peck and Phillips opened the waac branch in Montreal and two years later Peck became president. Their work with the waac led to their creation of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild in 1905, an organization that continued for thirty years. May Phillips was an artist who had studied with Robert Harris at the Art Association of Montreal school (1893) and at the Art Students League in New York (c. 1884–89). Like Peck, Phillips did patriotic work for the Red Cross during the Great War, but she was from a more modest background. Dignam and Peck were club women focused on helping women advance in the arts. Their work did much to set the stage for Mary Riter Hamilton.81 It was in this climate of changing Canadian cultural opinion that Winnipeg’s artistic community became more institutionalized and women became more involved. The daily and weekly newspapers in the capital, such as the Manitoba Free Press, the Telegram, the Tribune, and Town Topics, frequently reported on studio classes, exhibitions, and sales. Articles appeared from 22

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American magazines on artists and their art. Art instruction became part of the school curriculum in Manitoba in 1892, and prairie youth were taught china painting, print making, wood carving, landscape and portrait painting.82 Mary Hamilton was twenty-six years of age and widowed less than a year when she arrived in Winnipeg. Her goal was to practise her art and to reconnect with family who lived in the region.83 Virginia Berry wrote that the artist “supported herself in one of the few ways then open to women with brief art experience: teaching china painting and marketing her own work.” Berry pointed out that, “later she was inclined to pass over or omit these beginnings, but they speak of her enterprising nature and ability during her formative years.”84 Status as an artist in this period depended on having the means, the necessary time, and the freedom to travel for study and exhibitions. Canadian art historian Susan Butlin, writing about Hamilton’s contemporary Florence Carlyle (1864–1923), has argued that to be successful in an art career at the turn of the century required income from other sources, such as sales, commissions, and/or teaching. Artists had to be entrepreneurs. They had to “conduct their art as a business . . . and they had to make a serious commitment, perhaps training abroad, leading a self-determined life, and eventually earning a living—none of which was readily compatible with marriage.”85 Gill Perry, British art historian, writing in Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde, would concur: “Given the constraints which motherhood imposed on the pursuit of a career in art and the dominance of traditional attitudes to women as mothers [in Canada and beyond], it is not surprising that many of the women artists who managed to secure some professional status as independent painters . . . did not have to struggle to bring up children.”86 The childless artist had the time to pursue her career. Travel and study in North America and Europe were considered critical to training, as many Canadians believed that the art academies in the United States and Europe were superior to those at home in both their instruction and opportunities for exhibitions, such as in the Parisian Salons. It was understood that to be successful, artists needed to exhibit their work, but the opportunities for women to show their paintings at home were limited because exhibition juries and venues were dominated by men, as in the art societies of the osa and the Royal Canadian Academy (rca). Women were rarely chosen to sit on the juries and, for the most part, they were restricted to exhibiting in agricultural fairs and in the shows sponsored by the waac and its branches. In fact, between 1880 and 1933, Charlotte Schreiber (1834–1922) was the only female 23

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academician of the rca.87 By the 1890s, however, it had become acceptable for women to travel alone or in pairs, so more Canadian women were prepared to study art abroad or in the United States.88 By 1901, Mary Hamilton had the financial means and, as a widow without children, the time to leave the prairies in pursuit of her career. Since coming to Winnipeg she had entered an art community where other women artists had studied outside of Canada, exhibited, taught art, and contributed to art organizations. Their experiences help to contextualize Hamilton’s own choices. They also bring to light some of the leading instructors and art academies in North America and Western Europe that trained young women from the prairie region. For instance, Lucille C. Casey McArthur (MacArthur) (c. 1844–1902) arrived in Winnipeg, likely in the early 1880s, as “a professional artist with good credentials.” She had studied painting with William Raphael in Montreal, and china painting at Lycett’s Art Studio in New York. Once in Winnipeg, she taught art, painted, and exhibited, and she and her husband helped to found the Winnipeg Art Society, where she became a member of the Women’s Advisory Committee.89 After visiting art centres in New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal, McArthur, too, “decided to join the increasing number of Canadian artists studying in Europe.”90 At forty-two years of age, she departed Winnipeg in 1886 to travel and extend her art studies in Amsterdam, Munich, Rome, and Paris. While in Paris, like Mary Hamilton, she took classes at the Julian Academy, and, also like Hamilton, two of her paintings were accepted for the Paris Salon. Sometime later, between 1888 and 1891, “she returned home with a flourish.”91 As Hamilton would do later, McArthur organized an extensive show of her European collection.92 The exhibition, held in the Federal Bank Building on Lombard Street, included over 100 landscape, still life, nude, and genre paintings:93 “It was Winnipeg’s first solo show. The pictures that had hung in the Paris Salon attracted particular interest; another novelty was the nude section, in a curtained area. Despite a small admittance fee, attendance in the first three days exceeded 500 persons.”94 In 1891 Lucille McArthur returned to Europe and spent seven years in England, France, Germany, North Africa, and Asia Minor. It was rare for her to revisit the prairies, but “despite long absences, she had influenced the art community . . . by the standard which she attained.”95 Recollections of McArthur’s exhibition and her travels no doubt circulated among the small group of resident artists, which by 1894 included Mary Hamilton. 24

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Later, Hamilton, undoubtedly, would have also known the story of Marion Nelson Hooker (1866–1946). Hooker, like McArthur, was an American. She had emigrated to St. Catharines, Ontario, as a child, and later came to Winnipeg in 1907: “Educated locally, she pieced together an art education over the years, studying in Toronto, Buffalo, and New York City.”96 While in Buffalo she worked with Lucius Hitchcock, known for his portraits, himself trained at the Art Students League in New York and at the Colarossi Academy in Paris. Before 1900, like other women artists, Marion Nelson Hooker supported herself in St. Catharines by teaching school and china painting.97 She later set up her own studio and advertised her classes to adults. By 1895, Hooker was teaching china painting, selling her work, and identifying herself as a serious artist. Then in 1902, having received a small inheritance, she joined the Buffalo Art Students League’s sketching tour to Belgium, Holland, and France. In July she sailed to Liverpool, after which she toured England and Wales. A year later, following her return, some of her European paintings were accepted for exhibition by the rca and the osa—a recognized accomplishment. When Marion Nelson arrived in Manitoba in 1907 to marry widower Frank Hooker, she was in her forties and was “one of the most thoroughly trained resident artists to approach the Manitoba landscape.”98 Her marriage to her best friend’s widowed husband was conditional: she insisted that she would consent to the nuptials and to the care of Hooker’s six children only if she were allowed to continue her painting. Hooker agreed and built her a studio extension to the Selkirk family home, a twenty-four-mile electric-tram ride away from Winnipeg. Here, she pursued her art and once again her paintings were shown in the rca exhibitions of 1910 and 1911, and in the Winnipeg exhibition of 1912. Hooker’s landscapes, genre scenes, still lifes, and portraits were painted in a realistic style and were reminiscent of the Impressionists in their pastel colours and textured drawing.99 Finally, Caroline Helena Armington (1875–1939), although not in Winnipeg in the 1890s, may have met Mary Hamilton in Paris in approximately 1905, where both were members of the Canadian expatriate community. Or perhaps they met in Winnipeg in 1911 when Hamilton, and it would seem the Armingtons, had returned to the city from France. One sees parallels in the art careers of the two women. Armington, like Hamilton, for a time resided and taught art in Winnipeg and studied art in Toronto and later in Paris. In Toronto she was a student of J.W.L. Forster,100 and from 1892 she was able 25

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

to support herself. Seven years later, she went to Paris and married artist Frank Armington. In 1901, the young couple returned to Canada and, after a brief stay in Sault Ste. Marie, came to Winnipeg where Caroline Armington gave private painting lessons and taught at Havergal College. In 1905, the Armingtons returned to Paris where Caroline studied at the Grande Chaumière and the Julian Academies with Henri Royer, E. Schommer, and Paul-Jean Gervais.101 Indeed, she may have met Hamilton in one of Gervais’s classes, as she, too, studied with the artist in the same period. Armington began etching in 1908, and within two years, the National Gallery of Canada had purchased three of her pieces. She was also commissioned by the cpr to create a Canadian landscape series. Somewhat later, in the years of the Great War, Armington was selected by Lord Beaverbrook to make prints for the Canadian War Memorials Collection (cwmc). After the war, she toured the United States before returning to Europe.102 Hamilton’s career, like those of her contemporaries, was also charted in the Winnipeg newspapers by advertisements of her studio classes in china painting, in watercolours, and in pastel drawings. We know that Hamilton consistently displayed her work in the WAAC and Industrial Exhibitions from 1895 to 1900, where she was often awarded prizes.103 Furthermore, the newspapers tell us that she exhibited beyond Winnipeg, in Brandon, Manitoba, and in Regina, Saskatchewan, and that she gave classes to women from Grand Forks, North Dakota. We also know that she journeyed to Chicago and Toronto for her own study.104 In early February 1895, the young widowed artist was showing her china painting and sketches at the waac show in Winnipeg. According to the Manitoba Free Press, “a constant stream of people visited the art exhibition at the Manitoba Hotel yesterday afternoon and evening and the sight-seers were both impressed and delighted with the sketches and china. The ‘beautiful’ china painting of Mrs. C.W. Hamilton was greatly admired and her exhibit invited the attention of the visitor.”105 Her collection included Doulton and Royal Worcester pieces. Of particular interest was a violet vase and coffee set. Notices indicated that china orders could be left at the desk, evidence she was trying to sell her work. Fortunately for Hamilton, her arrival in the city corresponded with the construction of the first kiln for the firing of chinaware—an asset for her work and that of her students. Within a few years, the newspapers were

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describing china painting “as the branch of art practised most enthusiastically in Winnipeg.”106 Seven months after the February 1895 exhibition, Hamilton won first prize in the Fine Arts division of the North West Exhibition in Regina for her painting on china.107 In December of 1895, the catalogue of the waac winter exhibition in Winnipeg carried the following advertisement for Hamilton, an exhibitor: “Mrs. Hamilton, Studio: 224 Carlton Street. Instruction given in all branches of china painting. For terms apply at the studio.”108 Art instruction and exhibitions—Hamilton was plying her trade. Three shows were held in Winnipeg in 1896, and each time Mary Hamilton’s work received favourable mention. In February, the Manitoba Free Press wrote that the first ceramic display to be held in the Canadian northwest had been sponsored by the waac, “which has already demonstrated to the public in Winnipeg it is capable of giving first class exhibitions of works of art.” Wellknown china painters from other parts of Canada came to show their work in three rooms of a Winnipeg hotel where tables and cabinets were “tastefully decorated with drapings,” so as to enhance the display of hundreds of items of decorated china. The paper noted that, “Mrs. Hamilton shows a great many pieces which includes [sic] all kinds of china painting.” It also reported that the ladies of the waac offered “dainty tea in the afternoon and a musical programme in the evening.”109 Then, in mid-summer at Winnipeg’s Industrial Exhibition, Hamilton’s work received acclaim for its “delicate, soft shading” and design. Her pieces included an “exquisite” gold-rimmed rose bowl with a dark band of open work and a deep blue Wedgwood plate, jar and urns, all with gold scrolls and white jewels.110 In September, a classified advertisement announced that Hamilton would now instruct students in watercolour, which marked a transition from china painting; that is, from craft production to fine art. It also noted that the artist had moved from her residence and studio at 224 Carlton Street to new lodgings and workspace at 196 Kennedy Street, at the corner of Kennedy Street and St. Mary Avenue. China painting would take place on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays with firings on Wednesdays.111 Three months later, on 5 December 1896, Mary Hamilton would be the “principal exhibitor” at the Annual waac Exhibition.112 For the next three years, we can follow Hamilton through the Winnipeg Tribune, Manitoba Free Press, Morning Telegram, and Town Topics.113 How much she orchestrated the critiquing, reporting, and advertising of her work 27

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

is unknown, but we do know that such good press coverage worked to her advantage and she became a fixture in the Winnipeg art community. In July 1897, the Winnipeg Tribune reviewed the Industrial Exhibition where her entry included “many beautiful things” such as plates, teacups and saucers, lamps, and tankards “exquisitely painted with handsome designs.”114 A month later, the newspaper covered the Brandon Fair, where “some well executed hand-painted china” was displayed, including some by pupils of the artist who were as young

Figure 3. Art School in Toronto, 1890s. Mary Riter Hamilton, second from right, in lower right-hand corner. E. Wyly Grier in the background behind the students. 28

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as twelve years of age. In September, the Tribune reported that Hamilton had just returned from Chicago where she had been studying.115 The Manitoba Free Press also reviewed the July Industrial Exhibition, and in October readers learned that the artist would resume classes in china painting and watercolour at her studio on Kennedy Street. All aspects of art would be taught and regular firing of china would take place. Readers also learned that Hamilton was giving lessons in china and watercolour painting to ladies from Grand Forks.116 A year later, on 13 July 1898, the newspaper’s fine art section led with the headline: “Crowds at the Fair.” The article described how, out of a class of 104, Hamilton had won first prize for her pair of watercolours—studies of roses, “the execution of which is most vigorous.”117 The weekend society paper, Town Topics, remarked that the flower studies revealed a “very nice perception of colour.”118 And the Morning Telegram reported that, not only had Hamilton won first prize, but her flower pictures were very “broad and good” both in drawing and in colour.119 In early December, Town Topics announced that the artist had invited the public to her studio on Kennedy Street for an exhibition of her china painting and watercolours and those of her students: “Mrs. Hamilton has held art classes for some years and the advancement made by her pupils whose work will be on view on this occasion is a credit to the lady’s talent and artistic taste.”120 The “spacious” rooms of the studio provided the setting for what was described as a “decided advance” in china painting for the “lovers of ceramic art in this city.” On display were the creations of Hamilton and Mesdames N. Bawlf (Katherine Madden, n.d.), W.A. McIntyre (Florence Sarah Milton, b. 1874), and R.J. Whitla (Eleanor Kathleen Wright, n.d.), wives of Winnipeg’s foremost businessmen.121 The Manitoba Free Press commented that, “never in the past history of Winnipeg has there been collected such a display of hand painted chinaware” with its “delicacy of colour” artistically displayed throughout crowded drawing rooms.122 The article also praised Hamilton’s watercolours of roses and carnations for their careful execution. The paper noted that the artist greeted her guests, including society matron Mrs. W.H. Culver (Agnes Baxter Winks, 1857–1904).123 Town Topics hoped that the Hamilton exhibition would become an annual event, “for everyone delights in dainty china, whether they understand the art or not. The milk set and the jar decorated with bunches of double roses were masterpieces,” which had received a favourable comment at the Chicago Exposition in 1893.124 The Winnipeg Tribune wrote that the 29

Figure 4. Jean Isabel Culver and Mary Riter Hamilton on a board ship bound for Europe, 1901.

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arrangement of china and paintings was most artistic and was enhanced by soft lighting created by candles and shaded lamps.125 A few days later, the following advertisement appeared in Town Topics: “MRS. HAMILTON, Teacher of China Painting and Water Colour, 196 Kennedy Street at the corner of St. Mary’s [sic]. Decorated china for sale. Orders taken. Firing done.”126 Several months after her December exhibition, the Tribune reported that Hamilton had just returned from an eastern city (likely Toronto) and would resume her painting lessons “at once.” We know that she attended classes in landscape and sepia drawings with well-known Toronto artists E. Wyly Grier, and George Agnew Reid and Mary Hiester Reid (Figure 3).127 Two months later, for the first time, the newspaper described a Hamilton exhibition where “chief among the attractions were landscape views of Toronto.” From this period on, the artist’s painting in watercolour became an important part of her portfolio.128 In June and December 1900, Town Topics let its readers know that Mary Hamilton had been visiting the Toronto area again, where she had been the guest of Constance Hamilton and her husband in Collingwood.129 In July the Winnipeg Telegram reported that once more she had won first prize in the Industrial Exhibition’s Fine Arts section for her still life painting, and second prize for her landscape. The article also noted that she would be the judge of the Schools Exhibition at the Fair.130 Less than a month later, Town Topics wrote that she had “had a commendable display,” seemingly at the Industrial Exhibition.131 On 25 September, the Manitoba Free Press again ran an advertisement for the fall opening of Hamilton’s studio on Kennedy Street.132 Three weeks later, the Winnipeg Tribune advertised: “Teacher of china painting and watercolour. Decorated china will be for sale at 196 Kennedy Street.”133 In November, the Winnipeg Telegram declared that Hamilton and her pupils would hold a watercolour and ceramic exhibition the next day, which proved to be “a very creditable display” that showed “the ability of Mrs. Hamilton as a teacher.”134 Just as it seemed that Hamilton was well rooted in Winnipeg, in the early summer of 1901 Town Topics announced that she intended to leave western Canada for an extended trip abroad. The weekly paper wrote that, while in Europe, she planned to visit cities famous for their art schools, where she hoped to continue her studies for a year or longer. The weekly enticed its readers by saying that, before her departure, the artist would hold a private sale of her watercolours and decorated china between 26 and 27 June.135

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On 5 August 1901, the Winnipeg Telegram reported that the artist had left for Europe the day before, in the company of her friends Adina Falconer and Jean Isabel Culver. The three young women were to spend at least two years in the art centres of Europe, where Falconer was to serve as chaperone for her first cousin, Jean Isabel Culver, while the young girl studied violin in Berlin and Hamilton enrolled in art classes. Hamilton, Falconer, and Culver would remain lifelong friends, an outcome of their shared European experience (Figure 4).136

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1. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Maternity, c. 1905.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT 2. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Emerald Lake Bridge, n.d. 3. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Easter Morning, La Petite Penitente, Brittany, c. 1900. 4. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, B.C., 1915.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT 5. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Les Pauvres, c. 1909. 6. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Untitled – Cathedral Interior, c. 1908. 7. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Gold Fish: Reflections, c. 1907.

8. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Portrait of Monsieur R, c. 1905.

9. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Portrait of Madame X, c. 1905.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: 10. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Portrait of Dr. Henry Esson Young, n.d. 11. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Mrs. Young in Hat and Veil, c. 1915. 12. Laura Muntz Lyall (1860–1930), The Lesson [Dis-Moi?], 1895. 13. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Wilson Paterson; served from 1909 to 1914, c. 1917.

14. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France, c. 1920.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: 15. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868­–1954), Villiers-au-Bois [sic], 1919. 16. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The New Home, 1920. 17. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Mont Saint-Eloi, c. 1919–20.

18. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Return Home, 1919.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: 19. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Market Among the Ruins of Ypres, 1920. 20. A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974), A Copse, Evening, 1918. 21. Maurice Cullen (1866–1934), The Sunken Road, Hangard, 1918.

22. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Gun Locations, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, 1919. 23. A.Y. Jackson (1882–1974), The Entrance to Halifax Harbour, 1919.

24. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), The Sadness of the Somme, c. 1920. 25. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Sanctuary Wood, Flanders, 1920.

26. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle, 1920. 27. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Evening on the Belgian Front, n.d.

28. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres (detail), 1921.

29. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders, 1921. 30. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), First Boat to arrive at Arras after the Armistice, 1920.

31. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold), 1920. 32. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Menin Road, British Cemetery, c. 1920.

Chapter Two

Study in Europe, 1901–1911 Of course, I haven’t done anything yet, but I hope I shall some day. — mary riter hamilton to the manitoba free press, spring 19061

Hamilton began her formal European education in the winter of 1901–2 in classes with Franz Skarbina, a full professor at the Berlin Academy of Fine Arts and a well-known portrait painter and colourist.2 Within two years, though, Hamilton had relocated to Paris, where she enrolled in its private academies, the Julian, Colarossi, Grande Chaumière, and Vitti, which attracted aspiring artists from all over the world.3 She, like many others, entered art programs that focused on craftsmanship and “finish.” Portraiture, landscape, still life painting, and sculpture were all taught, in addition to painting from live models. Further to developing her technical skills, Hamilton learned that the approbation of academic juries was imperative as it offered entry into the Salons, the annual Parisian exhibitions. When one’s paintings were accepted and shown, prizes could be won and reviews written by art critics in European publications, all of which enhanced an artist’s professional status in Canada. Art historian Maria Tippett argues in By A Lady that, “the reputations of Mary Eastlake, Mary Riter Hamilton, Dorothy Stevens and Helen McNicoll soared when illustrations of their work appeared in London’s prestigious Studio magazine.”4 This was a period of exceptional creativity in art. The German and Parisian schools hired instructors trained under the Impressionists, and foreign students were encouraged to enrol. An expatriate community of American, British, and Canadian artists, including Hamilton, congregated around the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin and Montparnasse in Paris. After working with Skarbina during the winter of 1901–2, Hamilton and her friends travelled to Venice where she painted and visited art museums

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

throughout the summer. In the autumn, she returned to Berlin and resumed her work with Skarbina. While in Berlin, it would seem that she shared lodgings with her young Winnipeg friends, Jean Isabel Culver and Adina Falconer. In the spring of 1903, when Culver and Falconer prepared to leave the German capital to return to the Canadian prairies, Hamilton went to Holland on a sketching tour and to further her knowledge of the Dutch masters.5 That winter, she established herself in a Parisian studio and began her study in the French academies. In the summer of 1904, she returned to Italy where once again she painted and spent time in Italian galleries.6 In the autumn she came

Map 2. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Travels in Europe. 34

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back to Paris, where she remained for two years. By April 1906, she had decided to return to Winnipeg and there she reopened a studio and resumed teaching. When back in Canada, her work from Europe was exhibited to positive reviews in Winnipeg and in Toronto. Nonetheless, in the early spring of 1907, she was in transit again, going by train from Winnipeg to New York City from where she sailed to Antwerp, Belgium. From there she travelled by train back to Paris. During this period, the railways facilitated her tours of Austria, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Spain. Yet by the autumn of 1911, the peripatetic artist had departed the French capital to resume her life in western Canada. Mary Hamilton’s first European séjour took place during a period of considerable change, one that would shape society well into the twentieth and twentyfirst centuries. Historian Philipp Blom, in The Vertigo Years: Europe, 1900–1914, writes that during this period, “cities exploded in size and societies were transformed.”7 London had become the most powerful financial centre in the world, Berlin led in science and engineering, and Paris in art and culture. As Hamilton set out to learn her craft, she lived in some of these cities that were undergoing revolutions in industrialization, transportation, and communication. Farm workers were moving from the land to work in factories and in the retail trades. Automobiles, electric streetcars, and subways were replacing the horse and carriage. This was also the railroad age—trains linked European centres and in Berlin and Paris the U-Bahn and Métro opened. At the same time, the telegraph, telephone, and newspapers were spreading information throughout the populace. It was also a period of change for women. Women were being educated. They were earning their own money and they were demanding the vote. In England, the death of Queen Victoria, on 22 January 1901, marked the end of an era.8 The period was noted for the rise of consumerism, as department stores appeared, “huge selling machines . . . with their lift boys, chic terraces and multi-storey elegance,” such as Harrods (1849) in London, and the Galeries Lafayette (1893) and the Bon Marché (1894) in Paris. The department stores presented their customers with a shopping experience where everything and anything could be purchased. There were more choices for women in this massproduced society: decent, cheap dresses in fashionable styles and colours were available on the high streets. The binding nature of the corset was replaced with baggy trousers for bicycling, “a scandalous sight to many.” Life for women was changing—and their embrace of consumerism came to define modernity at the turn of the twentieth century.9 35

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

It was a period that nourished Impressionist painters such as Mary Cassatt (1844–1926), Edgar Degas (1834–1917), Édouard Manet (1832–1883), Claude Monet (1840–1926), Berthe Morisot (1841–1895), Camille Pissarro (1830–1903), and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). They “produced . . . new subject matter seen in the larger context of restructuring of public and private spheres.”10 In “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity,” visual theorist and cultural analyst Griselda Pollock argues that women artists may have been drawn to Impressionism because “the new painting legitimized the subject matter of domestic social life of which women had intimate knowledge.”11 Impressionism emphasized the painting of landscapes en plein air rather than from studio sketches; portraits and interiors were favoured over the historical allegories that had been popular before the turn of the century. Although there were more opportunities for women to work in art as professionals and to exhibit their paintings alongside those of men, “some accounts of the emancipation of the ‘modern’ woman . . . reveal a misogynistic fear that the increase in the numbers of women painters would destabilize the profession.”12 For instance, French bibliophile and writer Octave Uzanne lamented in 1910, We are at the dawn of a new era, which will give facilities to women for the development as far as possible of their intellectual faculties. At no other epoch have their talents for painting, sculpture, and above all, literature, been so considerable as at the present day. Women authors, painters and musicians have multiplied during the [past] twenty years in bourgeois circles, and even in the demi-monde. In painting especially they do not meet with the violent oppositions they endured in former times. One might even say that they are too much in favour . . . for they threaten to become a veritable plague, a fearful confusion, and a terrifying stream of mediocrity. A perfect army of women painters invades the studios and the Salons. The profession of a woman painter is now consecrated, enrolled, and amiably regarded.13 Nine years before Uzanne’s observations, Mary Hamilton arrived in Berlin and, for some time at least, she lived near the city centre Potsdamer Platz at 123 Potsdamer Strasse (Figure 5).14 In an interview much later, she said that when presented with the opportunity to go to Germany with friends, “she resolved 36

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to take the risk.” In the same interview, she talked of studying with Skarbina, under whose guidance she had learned to draw a head and to work in colour.15 Hamilton’s Berlin, although only briefly described in her own records, can be sketched from a number of secondary sources. One can surmise that her

Figure 5. Mary Riter Hamilton, Adina Falconer, and Jean Isabel Culver, Berlin, c. 1901–02.

art was influenced not only by Skarbina but also by the developing industrial city with its rising population and mechanized travel. Max Weber, the German sociologist, wrote that “the distinctive formal values of modern art and culture corresponded to the rise of the metropolis with its tramways, underground railways . . . display windows, concert halls and restaurants, cafés, smokestacks . . . and the wild dance of impressions of sound and colour.”16 Surely, the senses of those urbanites, like Hamilton, who lived in the rapidly industrializing cities of Europe, were bound to be heightened by this ever-changing environment. In the early twentieth century, the population of Berlin doubled from 2 million to almost 4 million, making it the third largest city in the world. It was transforming into an industrial capital like Edwardian London and Third Republic Paris. Newcomers arrived daily. People’s homes were no longer within walking distance of the workplace, so they had to travel by public transit. A.H. Kober, a visitor to Berlin in this period, described his journey by streetcar in 37

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

Mary Hamilton’s neighbourhood—a journey almost certainly familiar to the Canadian artist: “The street car, running in both directions, half-minute intervals, masses of people. On the right, spectators leaving the circus; on the left, strollers, students, girls, tired workers returning home . . . houses, restaurants, dives, beer halls, cafés, clubs, show windows . . . darkened entryways to offices, sweatshops, apartments, rooms, pawnshops, loan sharks, pensions (elegant rooms to let even by the hour), doctors, lawyers, tutors, the wine bar with the red lanterns and the female personnel . . . Friedrichstrasse.”17 When Hamilton lived on Potsdamer Strasse, she was not far from Friedrichstrasse with its “bright electric lights of offices and factories . . . lanterns hanging from horsedrawn carts and automobiles, arc lighting, light bulbs, and carbide lamps.”18 More tranquil but within the same quarter, to the northeast of Potsdamer Strasse was the grand boulevard, Unter den Linden, the site of embassies, palaces, and ministries. Hamilton likely walked under the shade of the linden trees to the Tiergarten, the city’s largest park and “a preserve of the prosperous middle classes.” Should she have arisen at dawn, she would have seen that the park belonged to riders: “gentlemen, cavalry officers, and ladies with their blond hair topped by a sporty hat . . . later early morning walkers, then businessmen getting fresh air on the way to work, schoolchildren and then nannies with their charges.”19 This was Hamilton’s neighbourhood and her first exposure to Europe and to Europeans. Her introduction to Berlin’s artists and literary figures more likely came through the cafés; in particular, the Café des Westens, only a few blocks from Potsdamer Strasse. The Café des Westens was not elegant. On the contrary, it was decorated with “cheap tapestries” and “fake rococo stucco” stained brown with nicotine. Yet, it was very popular. It was a meeting place for painters and somewhere warm with inexpensive cuisine in “ice-cold” Berlin winters. For the foreigner, the cafés provided telephones and international newspapers, and they offered essential information to artists, such as the whereabouts of art classes and exhibitions.20 Hamilton studied with Franz Skarbina, a traditional Italian portrait painter and “well-known painter of Berlin life” who had been influenced by the work of the Impressionists.21 Not surprisingly, Hamilton’s insecurities were evident when she wrote, “I was not at all sure that my talent was of the worthwhile order. However, I knew that Professor Skarbina had the reputation of only

38

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retaining those pupils who showed talent and after three months’ trial, he told me I had the gift and would arrive if I kept trying.”22 By 1901, Skarbina was a founding member of the Freie Künstlervereinigung, a Secessionist group formed in the late 1890s that included other established artists, such as Walter Leistikow, Max Liebermann, and Käthe Kollwitz. The Secessionists broke away from the conservative Association of Berlin Artists (Verein Berliner Künstler) in order to incorporate Impressionist ideas into their work, to mount their own exhibitions, and to sell their art on an international market.23 Although the environment for the fine arts was not repressive in Berlin, not much room was left for innovation. The Berlin Royal Academy and the Association of Berlin Artists controlled honours, state purchases of art, and major exhibitions. Furthermore, they resisted the influence of foreign artists, notably the Impressionists, and the expansion of the art market beyond Germany’s borders. Those who embraced the new ideas, like Skarbina,

Figure 6. Mary Riter Hamilton, Adina Falconer, and Jean Isabel Culver in Venice, c. 1902. 39

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organized their own exhibitions.24 They also encouraged communication between journalists, directors of the state museum, and art dealers such as Paul and Bruno Cassirer.25 The Secessionists forged links with foreign artists and, as a result, German art became more international and lost some of its provincial cast. In short, in just over a decade, the Berlin Secession significantly changed the practice of art in Germany. Skarbina’s interest in the Impressionists and their use of colour undoubtedly carried into his classes and influenced his students. Hamilton’s paintings from this period, and from her tour of Venice with her friends during the summer of 1902 (Figure 6), reveal a more vibrant use of colour than her earlier work in Winnipeg. Abazia di St. Gregorio has been described as a “fascinating” depiction of “a fine old courtyard, massive and brown, with golden autumn vines climbing up to the balcony and spreading sunshine through the air and reflecting it on column and wall and pavement.”26 Likewise, Panorama della Chiesa Salute was described by one reporter as “a fine luminous study in golden tones, with grayish water, and umber and purple colouring in the shadows.” Her Venetian scenes displayed “a riot of abandoned glory. Vermillion, orange and ultramarine oppose each other in startling insistence—yet they are composed harmoniously.”27 In a much later interview, when talking about painting in Italy, Hamilton recalled that on dull days she painted in oil and on fine days in watercolour.28 Hamilton arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1903. By this time it would seem that, like others in the art community, she believed that, “The French system assured . . . that after a few years of studying with an approved teacher, [students] could have their work shown in the yearly official Salons, and even win prizes there.”29 Her first impressions of Paris may have been similar to those of a young German who, two years earlier, had written, “The sight of the broad beautiful streets with their tall trees and lively traffic makes one feel elated. Many shopkeepers set out their wares on boxes, crates and wooden trestles far into the street to lure customers. Here we can see masses of clothes, there the contents of a soap shop on the pavement, and there foodstuffs; an art dealer offers objets anciens; here we find fresh asparagus which people love here, there are oysters and rare snails (huitres, escargots). The street is littered with innumerable scraps of paper containing advertisements for restaurants and department stores.”30 All of this would have been familiar to Hamilton as she walked in the 6th arrondissement, near the boulevard Montparnasse. Here she lived, first, at 16 rue de la Grande Chaumière and, later, at 72 rue 40

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Notre-Dame-des-Champs.31 Her decision to locate in the 6th, the centre of artistic activity, was not accidental. Like many expatriate artists before her, she had positioned herself where she could easily rent studio space, enrol in art classes held in the ateliers of famous painters, and walk to the École des Beaux-Arts, the Louvre, and other art museums. Within the quarter, brasseries and cafés, such as Le Dôme, had sprung up as meeting places. Le Dôme opened in 1898 with its marble-topped tables, zinc bar, leather banquettes, and mirrors, and quickly became a favourite place for Americans. By 1910, another favourite, La Rotunde, had decided to accept paintings as payment from impoverished artists “and looked the other way when they took rolls from the bread basket.” Later, during Hamilton’s second séjour in Paris during the early twenties, the Café du Parnasse was the first to exhibit paintings, an idea that soon spread. In this way, the brasseries supported artists as small exhibition venues and as comfortable spaces to sit for hours over a café-crème and to read foreign newspapers. Perhaps most importantly, they offered credit, as did the restaurants, cafés, bars, landlords, paint dealers, and shopkeepers throughout the district.32 Hamilton’s Paris “brimmed with theatres, galleries, cafés, music halls, and restaurants. . . . A young woman from California, Isadora Duncan, adopted the city and revolutionized the world of dance. Claude Debussy’s exotic rhythms and innovative chord changes helped usher in the music of Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, and Frederick Delius.” As Suzanne Rodriguez writes, “It was an age of cancan dancers and café concerts, of Sarah Bernhardt’s dramatic excesses on the stage. Music halls abounded, among them the Jardin de Paris, the Parisiana, the Décadent, and the Olympia. Everyone flocked to the Moulin Rouge to see Jane Avril dance her wild quadrille, or to the Cabaret Mirliton, where the handsome Aristide Bruant—with his brown velvet trouser legs tucked into high boots, his blazing red shirt and black sombrero—was all the rage, singing sinister tunes of prostitutes and thieves.”33 This was Paris of the Belle Époque—a Paris known to Hamilton, if not intimately. North American women artists were attracted to Paris as living was inexpensive, tuition fees were low, and models were easy to get. The ateliers offered classes in drawing and painting from live models, lessons in composition, and opportunities for copying the works of the Old Masters found in the Louvre and other art galleries. When the weather was fine, students were encouraged to paint out of doors, en plein air. Small groups would leave the metropolis for the 41

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Meuse River in Belgium or the Brittany and Normandy coasts. Longer sketching trips were organized to northern Italy, Venice, and Florence. At home in the ateliers, classes were tightly scheduled from eight until noon in the morning, from one until five in the afternoon, and from seven until ten in the evening.34 Mary Riter Hamilton studied at the Julian, Colarossi, La Grande Chaumière, and Vitti academies. In the 1880s, only the private academies (académies libres or académies payant) admitted women.35 The Julian Academy (1868– 1939) was one of those and it also brought in foreign students from Austria, Canada, England, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Poland, Scandinavia, Switzerland, and the United States.36 The academy was founded in 1868 by Rodolphe Julian, who opposed the rules and regulations of the École des Beaux-Arts, such as entry “by stiff examination” and its restriction only to male French citizens.37 At the Julian women and children as young as twelve were admitted, although charged tuition: “The name of a fellow-artist, a friend, or even a landlord sufficed as reference.”38 Students could enrol for a short term, such as only a few days, a month, or a year. Fees were paid in advance. Women’s fees were double those of men. Although admission to the school was more liberal than that of the École, the teaching principles were the same. Students who attended the Julian were prepared in drawing, painting, and sculpture for exhibit in the Salons. Indeed, many professors came to the Julian’s ateliers twice a week to “discuss and criticize the work of each student”; and on Saturdays the professor of each class would judge the best drawings. Those who received acclamation were rewarded by being given seats closest to the model for the next week. Remarkably for the time, although women were in a minority, their work was judged at the same level as that of men, and at the end of each week the winning drawings from a class were entered into a monthly concours. Prizes and medals were awarded. The Julian was known for fostering friendships in its open and “democratic atmosphere”—if they wished, students were allowed to paint like the Impressionists. The massier, in charge of finances and discipline of the “masses,” was elected, not appointed as in the other ateliers, and students also chose the weekly model by vote.39 These were selected from men and women at the Model Market that was held in the courtyard of 113 boulevard Montparnasse.40 One arrived at the Julian to learn technique, such as how to paint “truth from nature,” “to draw a figure,” “to model volume,” “to create the impression of space,” “to focus on proportion,” and to achieve “anatomical correctness.” The Julian soon became the largest private academy in Paris, with several branches 42

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throughout the city.41 Not only did it offer classes with life models, competitions, and the opportunity to exhibit in the Salons, but it also published an official journal, L’ Académie Julian, from 1901 to 1914, in which it reported the achievements of its professors and students. Mary Riter Hamilton was among those listed as a prize winner. She was identified as a pastellist, watercolourist, and painter, and as a student of allegorical, genre, and mural painter Paul-Jean Gervais (1859–1936).42 Hamilton also studied at the Colarossi, which by 1900 competed with the Julian “as one of the most popular academies for women and foreign students.” In 1910 Emily Carr, too, studied at the Colarossi—a series of second-floor rooms in a building at 10 rue de la Grande Chaumière. It was owned by Filippo Colarossi, himself a model at the École des Beaux-Arts, and attracted painters such as Whistler, Rodin, Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Matisse.43 Like the Julian, it offered courses for beginners and for advanced students throughout the day, and during Hamilton’s time a maître at the Colarossi, Christian Krohg, was fluent in French, German, English, and Norwegian—clearly an advantage for international students. A contemporary account offers an insight into some of the working conditions at the school: The crowd there was made up of all nationalities and all the rooms were generally packed. The clothed models—men, women and children—were usually Italian, and looked out of their element in the chilly fog of Paris. . . . In the room where we drew from the nude the air was stifling because of an overheated stove, and the model perspired heavily under the electric light. . . . It was an inferno, rank with the smells of perspiring bodies, scent and fresh paint, damp waterproofs and dirty feet, tobacco from cigarettes and pipes, but the industry with which we all worked had to be seen to be believed.44 Despite these conditions, the students were committed to their work, says the author of this piece. Another insight comes from reviewer Clive Holland, who wrote in Studio magazine in 1903 that, “The life of the schools is intensely interesting. . . . The stronger natures among the girl students will probably decide on attending one of the mixed classes, and there will work shoulder to shoulder with their brother art students, drawing from the costume or the living model in a common spirit of student-hood and camaraderie.”45 Other descriptions of 43

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the schools revealed that female students were of all ages and from every class in society: the daughters of artisans, professional men, tradespeople, businessmen, and retired military men. Hamilton also attended the Vitti Academy where she worked with portraitist Jacques-Émile Blanche. She later claimed that she was one of his favourite pupils.46 Blanche was a musician, critic, and novelist, but is best known for his portraits of the middle classes. He grew up in the home of a renowned Rouen physician who counted amongst his patients Theo van Gogh and Maupassant. As a child, the younger Blanche was exiled to London during the Franco-Prussian War (1870), an experience from which he emerged a lifelong anglophile and English speaker. He later maintained a studio in Knightsbridge, one frequented by London’s artistic and literary upper crust. As a young man, Blanche had trained in the studio of the Impressionist Édouard Manet (1832– 1883), where he developed a passion for still life and portrait painting.47 He also created landscapes on both sides of the Channel, at Dieppe and Brighton. Like him, each summer other Impressionists, including Monet, Renoir, Degas, Beardsley, Sickert, and Pissarro, worked in the Dieppe region.48 Blanche was recognized by Studio magazine in 1909: “Though considerably influenced by the works of English painters—and could one choose better masters?—Blanche (M. Jacques) is becoming every year more himself, and may be counted among our very foremost French portrait painters.”49 Undoubtedly, he was a comfortable fit for North American students like Hamilton. He brought to his classes his familiarity with the English language and culture, his training with Manet, and his association with other Impressionists. These were important assets for foreign students and a potent mix for a young woman from the Canadian prairies. In addition to working with Blanche, Hamilton studied with portraitists Luc-Olivier Merson (1846–1920), landscape painter Claudio Diana Castelucho (1870–1927), who was also the founder of the Grande Chaumière Academy, almost next door to the Colarossi, and Canadian landscape painter Percyval Tudor-Hart (1873–1954).50 Although Mary Hamilton wrote little about this period, she subsequently described it quite freely in interviews with journalists. Speaking to the Province in 1948, she said that,

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Her first and every succeeding winter in Paris was filled with incessant labor, nine hours a day of unremitting toil, and only the insistence of her friends prevented her from spending her evenings in a similar manner. . . . She remembered a red-headed girl whom she met on a French train, and who turned out to be an artist also and who swept her off to the Latin Quarter of Paris that housed the eager colony of artists. . . . And how the red-headed girl had taken her out to supper, and insisted that from now on she must do her own ordering in French, and the only French words she knew were the words for beef steak and rice pudding, and so she lived on beef steak and rice pudding for weeks.51 In another interview, she said that there were only a few Canadian students, “not more than a dozen at most times,” but that there were often as many as fifty or sixty students from Australia, as well as those from New Zealand, South Africa, South America, and the United States.52 While she was in Paris, Hamilton also met Kahlil Gibran (1883–1930), a Lebanese-American artist, philosopher, and author of The Prophet, and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), poet and writer. Canadian artists who were in Paris at the same time included painters William Brymner (1855–1925), Emily Carr (1871–1945), Maurice Cullen (1866–1934), Sophie Pemberton (1869– 1959), G.A. Reid (1860–1947), and Curtis Williamson (1867–1913).53 Further clues to Hamilton’s activity can be found in her Cartes d’entrée personnelle pour les jours d’étude, Musées nationaux, which included the Louvre, Luxembourg, Versailles, and Saint-Germain art museums. There is evidence of her exhibitions in the Salons in her Cartes d’Exposant (exhibitor’s cards) and in articles published by the French newspaper L’ Affaire for the 1905, 1906, and 1911 Salons of the Société des Artistes Français and the 1909 Salon des Indépendants of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. Hamilton’s exhibitor’s cards were all signed and reveal that at the time she was living on rue de la Grande Chaumière in 1905–06 and on rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs in 1909 and 1911.54 The traditional Salon of the Société des Artistes Français (founded in 1725), the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, was held annually in the Grand Palais. In contrast, the Société des Artistes Indépendants (established in 1884), rather like the Secession in Berlin, was a breakaway group that offered more exhibition space to less conventional painters, such as the 45

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Impressionists and Post-Impressionists. Typically, their exhibitions were held in different venues. 55 The Indépendants did not have a jury system and were open to any artist, and thus were attractive to women, as the catalogues attest.56 Annual exhibitions were held in the spring and often included retrospectives of well-known artists. By paying a small fee, an artist was allowed to show two or more paintings. By 1900, the Indépendants had been regularly reviewed for its promotion of progressive works, such as those by Matisse and Picasso. Paintings in the Salons were hung in rows five or six deep and known artists were given a prominent position, while those less known received one that was more obscure. Exceptionally, though, if one were ordered to “hang on the line,” as was Hamilton in 1905 and again in 1911, one’s paintings were given pride of place.57 Mary Hamilton recognized the importance of exhibiting her work in the Salons, especially when reviews were published in the international and Canadian press. She also acknowledged her mental and physical exhaustion after walking through the huge exhibition hall of the Grand Palais: “One goes through scores of rooms, covering miles and miles of floor space, and all that remains is a sensation of fatigue. Aesthetic emotion is rarely aroused.”58 Nevertheless, she knew that having her paintings accepted by the Salons and later reviewed were critical steps in advancing her career. For example, in 1905 L’Affaire reported that the Canadian artist was showing three pieces that were “hung on the line” at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français: a watercolour drawing, A Dutch Interior, Laren, and two oils, Abazia di St. Gregorio and the interior of the same abbey’s courtyard.59 Hamilton had painted at Laren, near Amsterdam, during her second spring in Europe, in 1903, when she had spent four months sketching in Holland. The oils were from her Italian travels, a year earlier, in 1902.60 With the advice of Paul-Jean Gervais, her Parisian instructor and mentor, she had chosen a dozen paintings to submit, all of which he had said could pass the selection committee. From these, the Salon opted to exhibit the watercolour and oils.61 A year later, L’ Affaire again singled out the Canadian’s work, this time her watercolour Impressions de Venise, also shown by the Société des Artistes Français. The newspaper revealed that she was now studying with Castelucho and Tudor-Hart.62 Impressions was one of several works painted in Italy during the spring of 1904; another was a canal scene, later purchased by Princess Patricia, daughter of the Canadian governor general, and a third was purchased by Sir

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Robert Rogers, Conservative member of Parliament for Winnipeg South and the husband of Aurelia Rogers, Hamilton’s friend.63 The artist’s Salon exhibitions generated interest beyond the French newspapers. “Canadian Art in Paris Salons” appeared in London’s Strand Magazine, written by British artist and art critic C. Hay Thompson. It was later reprinted in Canada in Saturday Night magazine and in the Manitoba Free Press. Hay Thompson wrote that at least a dozen Canadians had been recognized in the catalogues of two Paris Salons (likely in 1905 and 1906)—painters, sculptors, etchers, and architects: “Among the most successful of these . . . are: Mrs. May Riter Hamilton, an exceptionally clever colorist.” Hay Thompson had placed her at the top of his list. He continued, “Paris being the mecca of all art students, it is not surprising that some of those new nations of English stock now scattered about the world, whose development is watched by the thoughtful with interest, should contribute their quota to the Paris exhibitions of art; but to find so many names from a country yet small in numbers—twelve in the front rank surely indicates a battalion behind—was unexpected. Canada as yet does not bulk in the Old World’s view as a producer of art.”64 Despite the patronizing tone, a reminder of Canada’s colonial past, Hay Thompson’s article gave Hamilton more international recognition, and its reprinting in Canada brought notice of her achievements to the national and Winnipeg art communities. In 1909 the Salon des Indépendants exhibited Hamilton’s Les Pauvres and Les Panores and, two years later, “ hung on the line” her Maternity, Easter Morning, and Devant la Fenêtre.65 In 1915, Les Pauvres and Les Panores appeared again, this time in the Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco.66 Maternity, arguably Hamilton’s most famous oil painting, was featured in an article printed in a Toronto newspaper, cited by the Manitoba Free Press (Plate 1). The art critic wrote that the depiction of mother and nursing child was a “lovely painting . . . honest and simple in conception and expression.”67 Later, journalist Florence Deacon described the “light tones” that demonstrated the “impressionistic touch” of the artist: “The drawing and colouring are excellent, but the feature that wins instant sympathy is the reality of the picture. One loses sight of the artist’s model, forgets that there is such a thing as posing and sees only the wonderful half-sad mother-love and mother-yearning and the confiding, satisfied babe.”68 Maternity was executed in long, broad brush strokes, a technique adopted by the Impressionists and popular with women artists of the day, as seen in the 47

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illustrative plates of Gill Perry’s Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde.69 Hamilton’s theme, her technique, and her use of pastel colours also can be seen in the work of her contemporary, Florence Carlyle’s Mother and Child. Carlyle’s picture is painted in warm, comforting tones of pinks and soft reds in the auburn hair of the mother and the slightly more red of the baby. The mother’s gaze from her carefully crafted face speaks to her love and devotion. Loose brush strokes and the play of light and shadow complete the picture.70 Hamilton created Les Pauvres (Plate 5) in her studio on the rue de la Grande Chaumière, using the same model who had posed for Maternity.71 She later recalled that although the model had been coming to sit for Maternity, she arrived in the studio when it was dark and raining. As the artist prepared to work, the model went to stand by the stove to warm herself, and it was this posture that was captured for Les Pauvres. Hamilton said that “she felt the artistic quality of the pose and at once set to work on a new picture. The dull day was such a contrast to the bright ones during which she had worked on La Maternité.”72 Hence, she focused on creating one more in keeping with the weather, and the painting is as dark as Maternity is light. Shades of rich brown applied in long sweeping brush strokes dominate Les Pauvres, only to be broken by the brief illumination of the baby’s head and the mother’s adoring face. What looks like a thick, almost black wool cap masks her reddish hair. Only her profile is clearly drawn; her figure is formless, wrapped in its shadowy, fringed shawl. The Gold Fish: Reflections (Plate 7) was painted in the same period and would seem to feature the model used for Maternity and Les Pauvres. This time her red hair is not hidden but is richly depicted in deep auburn and gold tones. One is drawn into this quiet domestic scene by her focused attention on gold fish which are swirling around in the water of their lightly sketched bowl. Shades of blue, pale pinks, and yellow remind one of the lightness of Maternity.73 In contrast, Untitled–Cathedral Interior is dark and foreboding, yet offset by fine strokes of white paint that emphasize the architectural elements of this holy place74 (Plate 6). Maria Tippett has written about the symbolism in Hamilton’s Easter Morning, where the artist “celebrates a French peasant girl’s closeness to the land (her clogs and nosegay), and her commitment to religion (the rosary and prayer book), and tradition (her native dress)” (Plate 3).75 These paintings are all good examples of Hamilton’s work, which often combined elements of her academic training in the use of sombre colours and precise drawing, and elements of the Impressionists in the use of pastels and long, loose brush strokes. 48

Figure 7. Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), Dans la Neige de Décembre: Les Sacrifices. In Lectures Pour Tous (December 1905).

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Mary Hamilton’s painting was also honoured beyond the Salons. In the winter of 1905, Dans la Neige de Décembre: Les Sacrifices [hereafter Goose Girl] became the cover piece for the Christmas issue of a popular French magazine, Lectures Pour Tous (Figure 7). A competition had been held for a piece of art that would grace the cover of the publication. Hamilton later explained that she had entered the contest “more in the experimental spirit than with any idea of winning against the great number of competitors who would be ranged against her.” Much to her surprise, she won.76 The painting portrays a young girl driving home her geese in the light of a December sunset—the goose being the French symbol for Christmas festivities. Florence Deacon’s description captures the essence of the painting: “It is done in yellow and blue, the golden yellow of a setting sun and its reflected hue on cottage windows and the tender blues of a snowy twilight. The geese are in their usual condition of comic foolishness, and the girl has the haste and excitement of holiday expectancy. The artist has caught the atmosphere of the place and the season.”77 Publication of this piece of Hamilton’s art was facilitated by advances in printing that had taken place since the turn of the century. High-speed, steam-powered presses, half-tone plates, and four-colour technology all made for easy reproduction of pictures. An image, such as a sketch or painting, could now be reproduced in limitless quantities in newspapers or magazines.78 For Hamilton’s work to appear in a French journal, and on the cover no less, was a triumph. Moreover, due to new printing technology, the Goose Girl image would be celebrated for many years in Canadian newspapers and other publications. Hamilton also knew well that the art conserved and shown in art museums and private galleries was important to her education as an artist. She, like many others, was drawn to Claude Monet’s home and small gallery at Giverny, where she travelled on several occasions. Her Market Scene, Giverney [sic] (1907), for instance, was inspired by one of these visits.79 The painting is a mix of precise/ imprecise, academic/impressionistic drawing. Off to the right, almost centre, is a honey-coloured dog with defined features, and slightly below in the foreground, carefully drawn terrines that repeat his colour. To the left, with less specific features, a well-dressed lady in black negotiates with a market woman. Other market workers and shoppers are present, but their forms are also drawn with little precision. The scene is rich in aquamarine blues and pale greens that bring the leeks of the foreground to the viewer’s attention. Hamilton has created movement in the postures of the market women, the exchange of goods, 50

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and in the turn of the dog’s head as he watches his mistress in black. Her rich use of colour, especially of her blues and greens, reminds one of Monet’s paintings and the influence of Giverny. After five years in Europe, Hamilton appeared to be comfortably established—an habitué of art galleries, a student of well-known artists, and a painter with a studio of her own. Yet, in the spring of 1906, she returned to Canada. Outwardly, the artist’s decision was family-oriented, as her mother and brother were living in Miami, Manitoba. More likely, though, she hoped to make some money by teaching and selling her work.80 On 9 May the Winnipeg Telegram announced that Mary Riter Hamilton had arrived home after several years of European study. She had exhibited her work in the Salons and would soon have a show in Winnipeg. The artist wanted her friends and former students to know that she would be staying at the Empire Hotel, and later would open a studio.81 Within a few weeks, the Manitoba Free Press, Town Topics, the Winnipeg Telegram, and the Winnipeg Tribune all reported on Hamilton’s return to the city and an upcoming exhibition of her Parisian portfolio, to be held in June at the Young Men’s Christian Association (ymca) building at 274 Portage Avenue.82 No doubt the artist had prepared for her exhibition in advance with the help of her resident friends and she had made sure that her arrival would be accompanied by media fanfare about her European work. She also made it clear that she was interested in painting Canada. When interviewed by the Manitoba Free Press, she said, “Did I tell you about the series of Canadian scenes I am going to do and take back with me? Everyone in Paris is so interested in this country; I got the idea from a series I saw done by a young Norwegian woman.”83 She also talked about some of her achievements, which were later printed in the exhibition catalogue. As a member of the International Society of Beaux-Arts in Paris she had been invited to exhibit her work in Rouen, Nice, and Monte Carlo; some of her pictures had been shown in Calais; and Goose Girl had been awarded first prize in a French competition.84 Town Topics reviewed “Mrs. Hamilton’s Picture Exhibit,” which took place between 12 and 13 June 1906. Lady MacMillan, wife of the lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, patronized the exhibition of sketches, oil, and watercolour paintings.85 The reviewer wrote, “Congratulations were generously bestowed upon Mrs. Hamilton, her Winnipeg friends being proud of the high position she has achieved in the world of art. A number of pictures have been sold, and a number of commissions for portraits have been received from well-known 51

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Winnipeggers.”86 The Winnipeg Telegram pointed out that the artist “was quick to catch the characteristics of the sitters” and was successful in creating atmosphere, such as in Dutch Interior and Easter Morning. Her flower studies were also praised as illustrations of her versatility. The Telegram wrote that Madame X was a carefully drawn portrait with “delicate colouring and lightness in the black dress.”87 As the critic noted, one sees Hamilton’s classical training, particularly in the detailed facial features of the subject and the way that light is cast on her armchair. Madame X commands the viewer to become engaged in the painting by her aristocratic sideways glance (Plate 9). On the same day, the Manitoba Free Press wrote that the exhibition was “proof of artistic success,” and there was strength in the portraiture, such as in Monsieur R (Plate 8) and Madame X.88 Monsieur R is a good example of Hamilton’s fascination with light and shadow. She has placed her subject in a darkened room, but he is highlighted by a small lamp that sits on a wooden chest behind and slightly above him. Hence, part of his face is lit, as is his jacket. His facial features are precisely drawn, especially his moustache and lips. He looks out to the viewer, but he seems to be caught in reverie and, like Madame X, conveys a sense of entitlement. Casual brush strokes complete his outfit and the furniture on which he leans. These portraits of men and women were typical of many that Hamilton crafted over the years. Some of her contemporaries, such as Florence Carlyle and Helen McNicoll, more frequently chose women as their subjects, but Hamilton painted both men and women.89 Notably, the Manitoba Free Press art critic used Hamilton’s June exhibition to exhort his readers to think about building an art gallery—an important initiative for the city, and a test of the public’s commitment to the arts: “What a pleasure it was to go from the glare of Portage Avenue into the cool studio of the Mary Riter Hamilton exhibition. I sat for an hour and studied one picture after another and once again the craving, never long stilled, rose on me for an art gallery, however small, for Winnipeg. Some little spot where for a few moments at least, we might forget the market place and the soaring price of real estate and grow kinder and sweeter in the contemplation of beauty of form and color.”90 Then Town Topics’ critic, “Mahlstick,” picked up the theme by taking the city’s business class to task for their “crass materialism” and their inability to appreciate art and culture:

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Winnipeg is generally supposed by outsiders, especially from the cultured east—and the fact is sometimes regretfully admitted even by ourselves—to be so interested in its material development as to have little time or inclination to spare for those higher forms of pleasure made possible by a proper appreciation of the value of art. We have outgrown this stage of our development, but our reputation for Philistinism continues. It may take 50 years before we can overcome this. Music has been properly appreciated in this city, and painting is gaining a following, sale and loan exhibitions have contributed to increased appreciation. None has done so much as the Mary Riter Hamilton exhibition.91 He went on to say that the Hamilton collection was quite evenly balanced, including oils, watercolours, and sketches, and the quality of some of her pictures would make them valued by any exhibition. On the other hand, he noted, only about a third of the pictures were finished. Nonetheless, he pointed out that works like these were important for students because they revealed the artist’s process. To conclude, he offered special praise: “Taken for all in all, Mrs. Hamilton’s exhibition is one of the most worthy ever seen in this city. . . . It would be a splendid thing for the city if such encouragement should be given this talented lady painter as would induce her to remain here permanently. We are rich and prosperous enough now to do this. Why should lack of support and appreciation drive away an artist to other cities for recognition and reward?”92 The June exhibition was followed by another in Winnipeg later that summer, held in the Industrial Bureau Exposition Building. The catalogue, which sold for 10 cents, announced that Hamilton would show a number of her pictures along with some others from local artists and from an Ottawa art collector.93 In October, her portfolio was exhibited in Toronto—a milestone for a western Canadian artist. Her paintings appeared at the Art Galleries of Mssrs. Mackenzie and Company where Easter Morning was reproduced to advertise the show, further recognition of her skill.94 The collection was shown again in November at a solo exhibition in the Art Galleries of O.B. Graves Ltd. The catalogue encouraged viewers to consider the prairie painter: “Mrs. M.R. Hamilton’s name is a new one to the artistic community of Toronto, but the quality of her work will be found to be quite worthy of especial emphasis which is 53

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laid upon it by the holding of an exhibition of her paintings alone.”95 It also emphasized that, five years earlier, Hamilton had studied with well-known Toronto artist E. Wyly Grier, RCA, and that it had been Grier who had encouraged her to pursue “a long and serious course of study in Paris.” The catalogue also informed that Hamilton’s Parisian work had been reviewed by Chronique des Arts, Echo de Paris, Courrier du Soir, Opinion Nationale and Petite République.96 A month after the November show, Hamilton held an “At Home” in her studio, a popular afternoon gathering for invited friends and acquaintances. The function served as entertainment and a thank you to those who had helped with her exhibitions. It also advertised her studio by presenting her paintings. Certainly, she hoped for future commissions. On its society page, the Manitoba Free Press described the tea table, which was decorated with an embroidered cloth depicting American Beauty roses on which sat a bowl containing live roses of the same variety. As a backdrop, Hamilton’s paintings adorned the walls, and among the guests was Miss Notman, of the well-established Montreal family.97 A day later, Mary Riter Hamilton was featured again, when the newspaper appealed to Winnipeg art lovers by recounting her success in Toronto. Moreover, the art critic made a point of telling them that American Art News had reviewed her paintings at the Graves Gallery and had raved about the “breadth and vigour in work, rarely seen among women artists, her style being varied in the extreme, ranging from the Impressionist School, as exhibited in Impression of Venice to Interior of a Court a delightful bit of Venice painted with all the detail and clarity of a miniature.” The Pier at Dordrecht, Holland was a “haunting study in grays” with “sombre skies and lowering clouds and an atmosphere of wind and dampness that is very lifelike.”98 The Canadian artist had come home and by the end of the year, thanks to the exhibitions, their catalogues, and accompanying reviews, Hamilton was acknowledged again as a member of the art community. Moreover, she had set herself up in a “permanent” studio in Suite A of the Glines Block, at 274 Portage Avenue,99 where she showcased her training in Berlin and Paris by offering day and evening classes in oil, watercolour, and drawing. Students were taught to work in still life, flower, and landscape painting. En plein air sketching was encouraged, and live models were used in the studio. Town Topics gushed, “Winnipeg is to be congratulated that a teacher and painter of Mrs. Hamilton’s ability has decided to permanently locate here.”100 Then, somewhat later, a notice appeared in the Manitoba Free Press announcing that Hamilton 54

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had been appointed as an art instructor at Havergal School for Girls, as Caroline Armington had earlier.101 It would seem that her decision to return to Winnipeg had been a good one for her career as an artist, and a good one for her financially. Her painting had been reviewed favourably in Winnipeg and Toronto, she had reopened a studio where she was teaching, and she had her contract with Havergal. Yet, by April of 1907, Hamilton had decided to return to Paris. It is not clear whether she was unable to make a living in Winnipeg, whether she found the art scene too parochial, whether the prairie winter was too severe, or whether she simply longed for the streets of Montparnasse, the cafés, and the camaraderie of the art schools.102

Paris, 1907–1911 During her second séjour in Paris Hamilton travelled to Berlin, Florence, and Vienna where she sketched and painted.103 Of her return to Germany, we know only that she encountered Lawren Harris, of the Group of Seven; and of her return to Holland, that she spent four months painting interiors.104 According to journalist J.E.M. Bruce, it was during this period that she made the most “prolific” sketching tour of her career, near the Pyrenées in Spain. He wrote, “The artistic atmosphere of this part of Europe proved very pleasing to her and, although she is always a harsh judge of her own work, she ranks some of these Spanish things as among her best.”105 The Spanish Fishing Village and The Castle Stair, Fontarabia (hereafter The Castle Stair) received acclaim in Canadian exhibitions. To her considerable credit, The Castle Stair was purchased by Robert L. Borden, prime minister of Canada from 1911 to 1920.106 Florence Deacon wrote that the painting “awakens responsive feelings. It demonstrates the contrast between masses of shadow and concentrated light falling on the childish figure on the stairs.”107 Hamilton’s portfolio from this period included sketches, and oil and watercolour paintings from several countries—a reminder of the ease of European train travel. Her career was taking shape in the urban centres and countryside; and it was also influenced by her contacts in Paris. She was a friend of Kahlil Gibran, whom she met in the metropolis in 1908, sometime after he arrived from New York City. As Gibran also studied at the Julian and lived in Montparnasse, it seems that they may have connected in art classes or in the quarter’s cafés. 55

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As a measure of their friendship, she subsequently visited him in New York.108 Hamilton also made the acquaintance of Richard Wallace, a friend of Irish writer James Joyce, with whom she was in touch, at least, until the 1920s.109 It is also possible that she may have met Emily Carr in 1910. Carr, too, lived on the rue Campagne Première, and while in Paris, she joined the American Student Hostel Club, on the boulevard Saint-Michel, which organized lectures, visits to art exhibitions, and tours into the countryside.110 It also had a lending library, and it offered afternoon tea.111 Like the cafés of the Carrefour Vavin and the Friedrichstrasse of Berlin, the Hostel Club was a meeting place for art students and was likely known to Hamilton as well. During this time, in August 1911, Hamilton received more attention from a British art critic. Her work was praised in the second of a two-part series by E.A. Taylor in Studio magazine. In “The American Colony of Artists in Paris,” Taylor explains that he became interested in the Canadian’s paintings after he had seen her work exhibited in Scotland and later in the Salons.112 He reflected on her “quiet disposition,” and by implication, her reluctance to engage in selfpromotion. Yet he had taken notice because her paintings were in the public domain. He wrote, The work . . . by Mary R. Hamilton is personal and distinctive. The assertion that women cannot do the work of men has lost much of its too long recognized truth, as every day finds them fulfilling spheres with greater ability, making our little arrogances less evincive, and in art today we find when women painters realize their own God gifts that man’s greatness out teps [sic] them only in space and muscular equipment. I do not say that Mrs. Hamilton sides with me; her work is my only proof; and with her retiring disposition I doubt if I should have seen as much had I not first been attracted by a Venetian study bearing her name in Scotland and afterwards a group of watercolours and oils in the Salon of the Indépendants and another in the Salon des Beaux-Arts . . . .113 Her work in oil is strong and sincere, but to me her water-colours make a special appeal with their quiet charm; they show a thorough understanding and sure acquaintance with the power of this medium, in which I feel her greatness lies.114 56

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The Taylor piece proved to be invaluable publicity for Hamilton once she had returned to Canada.115 His analysis of her painting was reaffirmed in other publications, such as in the Ottawa Citizen, which wrote, “Few Canadian artists have received a higher compliment than that paid Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton when she was featured in ‘The American colony of Artists in Paris’ which appeared in the July [sic] number of the Studio, a recognized authority on Art.”116 For all intents and purposes, Hamilton’s time in Europe was well-spent, yet by 1911 she had decided to come home again. She sailed from France a professional artist—she would carry European ideas, styles, and techniques back with her to Canada.

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Chapter Three

An Artist’s Career, 1911–1919 In 1912, I had an exhibition of my work in Winnipeg for several weeks [that] attracted so much attention [that] with other interests helped to increase interest in developing a Civic Art Gallery and School, but in this school there were no travelling scholarships . . . from which students go to London, Paris or Rome. I contend that without these we can never hope in Canada to really recognize and assist our struggling artists. To be quite frank, and I trust not in any way offensively so, there is little encouragement in Canada, more especially in this part of it for the artist with the dreams of which I was and am guilty. Artists like other people must live, and as yet it is almost impossible to live in Canada by art alone. Not only is this a matter of money, but of appreciation and I am sorry to say that after life in Europe, where there is so much real appreciation for the work of good craftsmen in any line that it is difficult here even if money flowed freely, and as you know, it does nothing of the kind. This is not only a personal wail. What have we, I would ask in British Columbia or even in Canada in the way of a national feeling for art? — mary riter hamilton, vancouver, 19191

Mary Riter Hamilton arrived in Montreal energized by her European success. Her first task was to have her art accepted in eastern Canada. Accordingly, she organized exhibitions of her paintings in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal, and then she returned to Winnipeg. Hamilton had come home after almost a decade of living in Europe. She brought with her the ideas of her instructors in the Berlin and Paris academies,

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who themselves had been drawn to the work of the Impressionists. One sees in her painting Impressionist elements, but little evidence that she had adopted the new abstract forms of Matisse and Picasso. Her understanding of art was informed by her European experience and possibly a familiarity with Studio magazine. Most likely she knew little about developments in Canadian art during this period. While in France, though, she might well have known of Studio magazine’s report of two Canadian exhibitions held in 1909—that of the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA) in Toronto and the spring show of the Art Association in Montreal (AAM).2 Both were important indicators of developing changes in Canada’s art. Maurice Cullen, Clarence Gagnon, James Wilson Morrice, and Helen McNicoll decided to exhibit their work together.3 All, like Hamilton, had studied in Europe, and their paintings, too, reflected the style of the Impressionists.4 Morrice was a member of the Canadian Art Club (CAC), founded in Toronto in 1907, which had set out to challenge the traditions of the RCA and to bring new ideas to Canadian painting, as the Indépendants and the Berlin Secession had done earlier on the continent.5 Change came slowly in Canada, although traditional art was being questioned by artists who had been trained in Europe and who were beginning to follow the new trends. Few Canadian investors and art patrons had an opportunity to see the fresh styles other than in magazines, which often printed poorquality reproductions. Consequently, before 1915, several believed that the Impressionists deliberately avoided painting serious subjects, such as famous individuals or historical allegories. Instead, they chose women, interiors, and everyday life to be the focus of their art. There was also suspicion that painting spontaneously in response to one’s emotions resulted in little structure and technical expertise. Yet in Montreal, George A. Drummond, financier and industrialist, and William Van Horne, president of the CPR, collected works by the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists: Cassatt, Cézanne, Degas, Manet, Monet, and Pissarro, among others.6 As the population and cities grew, more Canadians, like Drummond and Van Horne, began to follow the changes that were taking place in European art.7 Before sailing from France, Mary Riter Hamilton had decided that it would be essential to exhibit her paintings in eastern Canada: essential, if she were to be accepted as a professional. Therefore, she contacted friends in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Winnipeg to help her organize and publicize exhibitions 59

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of her European collection of more than 100 paintings. The shows were well advertised and invitations were sent to the likes of Sir Edmund Walker, the head of the board of trustees at the National Gallery, and to Eric Brown, its full-time curator and later director.8 The first exhibition, in Toronto, was planned to correspond with Hamilton’s return. Beginning in November, newspapers in the exhibition cities announced Hamilton’s rentrée and her upcoming shows. On 6 November 1911, the Manitoba Free Press reported that “Mary Riter Hamilton, who has achieved success in world art centres,” had arrived in Montreal.9 Within a fortnight, the Toronto show opened at the new Townsend Galleries, and the next day the newspaper let its readers know that the exhibition included oil and watercolour paintings. To keep them abreast of the artist’s intentions, it said that Hamilton’s exhibit would travel next to Ottawa in December, Montreal in January, and possibly Winnipeg later in 1912.10 On 25 November, the Toronto Star Weekly publicized the Toronto exhibition throughout the nation and told of a society tea party given in honour of the artist in Winnipeg, likely predating the opening: “Canadian Woman Artist from Paris: Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gives Notable Exhibition of Paintings.” The article focused on “a delightful tea,” hosted by Mrs. William Fisher, where the artist’s friend and travelling companion Mrs. C.S. Riley ( Jean Isabel Culver) was among those who shared the honours. Guests included Lady Schultz, wife of John Christian Schultz, a former lieutenant-governor of Manitoba, Lady MacMillan, wife of the current lieutenant-governor, and several women of Winnipeg’s elite.11 As earlier, Hamilton used the “afternoon tea” as a social gathering, a promotional tool, and an opportunity to meet those most likely to become her patrons. Reviews of the Toronto exhibition were excerpted later in a catalogue for the 1912 Winnipeg show.12 Reading between the lines, one becomes aware that the critics were identifying work influenced by the Impressionists in their comments about colour, sensitivity to subject, and expression of feeling. The Toronto Daily Star singled out the Panthéon (interior) and Napoleon’s Tomb, located in the Hôtel des Invalides, where the “drawing [was] so satisfying, that you never give a thought to it, and the color and tonality make of them poems . . . the cold blues in Napoleon’s Tomb with the contrasting mellow golden glow in the lighted chapel. . . . Even beyond them are technical excellencies; they have a spiritual quality that conveys the artist’s feeling, whether it is the awesome majesty of 60

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the Panthéon . . . or the death-like gloom of the Tomb. They have caught, as it were, the very spirit, the creative essence of the great buildings.”13 The Mail and Empire wrote, “Mrs. Hamilton belongs to no particular school, and apparently has no artistic fad, but her canvases show how carefully she has studied the various developments in the art of painting.”14 Her use of colour, “where the contrasts are striking,” was praised (a common judgement), especially in Devant la Fenêtre (1911 Salon) and The Castle Pool.15 The Toronto World concurred: “What strikes one at once is the glow and harmony of colors, which characterize Mrs. Hamilton’s work, after feeling the intensity, or sympathetic insight which pervade them. This appears in atmosphere, in composition, in tone, and in a hundred subtle touches, which convey more to the spectator than the cleverest technical ability lacking human inspiration.”16 The Globe (Toronto) echoed the others: “Mrs. Hamilton is an indefatigable and careful worker, as well as the possessor of true artistic instinct, and her work is all the more valuable for this thoroughness. Were one to ask me in what way Mrs. Hamilton excels most, I would say as a colorist.”17 In a much later interview with journalist W. Garland Foster, Hamilton quoted Sir Edmund Walker as saying her work was “masterful in colouring, adroit in draughtsmanship, deft in handling of tones and values, and poetic in treatment of atmosphere and sentiment.”18 The Toronto exhibit received further praise at the end of December, in the magazine section of the Manitoba Free Press. Well-known local art critic Vandyke Brown used Hamilton’s work as an example that interest in art was growing throughout the Dominion. He urged his readers to sit up and take notice. Indeed, he even went so far as to suggest that Hamilton’s paintings had received more attention than those by artists of the RCA that were on display at the same time. He argued that the “lasting quality” of her art would be apparent in two or three months (referring to the upcoming Winnipeg exhibition), but for the moment “numerous reproductions” had been published in the Ontario weeklies, and they revealed an artist with talent and European experience. He complimented her for showing a “difference in texture and touch” and a “wider range of subject and deeper insight into character, [although] her depiction of character is not her strong feature.” At the same time he also criticized her “finished work” for having “a not too polished technique.”19 He thought that he saw the influence of the Dutch masters and the new English Art Club in her play with light and colour, and he compared her work to the Canadian

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(Impressionist) artist Laura Muntz Lyall (Plate 12).20 With a final flourish, he said he looked forward soon to seeing the Hamilton paintings in Winnipeg.21 The newspaper reviews of the Toronto exhibition set the stage for Ottawa, Montreal, and Winnipeg. All announced Hamilton’s return to Canada, a western Canadian artist—a woman—who had trained in some of the leading art centres overseas. All admired the quality of the painter’s work, a painter who had come home. Early in December, news appeared about the exhibition to be held above the Wilson Galleries at 123 Sparks Street, Ottawa. Critics not only described the art, they also presented a fashion commentary. The show opened under the patronage of Mrs. Robert L. Borden, wife of the newly elected prime minister, who wore a dark gown with seal hat and furs. A prominent guest from Winnipeg was Mrs. Robert Rogers (Aurelia), a friend of Mary Hamilton, in black and white satin voile, complemented by sable furs and a black hat. Hamilton was very “attractive” in her dress of black and white satin with cream lace. She wore a black and white hat decorated with pink roses. Included among the invited guests were Mrs. Adam Shortt, wife of economist and historian Adam Shortt,22 and Mrs. Eric Brown, wife of Eric Brown, director of the National Gallery. The Ottawa Citizen’s art critic recorded that well-known American illustrator Charles Dana Gibson, a guest at Rideau Hall (home of the governor general of Canada), had also been present, and he said, “She has the power; she is an artist; she has made good and does good work.”23 Next, the Monitor, a Boston newspaper, cited the American’s remarks: “Admirers of the work of Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton, the Canadian artist, are greatly pleased at the tribute paid her by Charles Dana Gibson. Mrs. Hamilton’s sketches are positively marvellous. Nor should this be the sole tribute to the credit of an artist, whose work is bound to become world famed. This is said with all sincerity, there being every reason for believing that Mrs. Hamilton will progress beyond the general average.”24 Such international recognition served as a catalyst for further reviews. “An Interesting Art Exhibition: Work of Well Known Canada Artist Now on View in this City,” wrote the Ottawa Journal. “That Mrs. Hamilton is a Canadian with ten years of European training behind her and a brilliant future before her, should give her fellow-countrymen an added interest in her work. European critics of the first rank have acknowledged her talent.”25 The Journal pointed out that the paintings displayed varied themes and techniques to reveal the “imprint of the artist,” the watercolours were “delicate and exquisite 62

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in feeling,” and Maternity was the “gem” of the collection. Another review saw “regnant color” in “delicious little bits,” such as in A Street in Spain; On the Seine; Sunlight: Paris; and Corner of the Luxembourg Garden; The Cow Barn in Spain; and A Spanish Cider Cellar.26 The work was “original and sincere. A lyric song runs through [it], a song of light and laughter, and the sun—the sun that shines on Paris gardens, and filters through the aisles of great cathedrals,” as in Untitled—Cathedral Interior (Plate 6).27 Hamilton was recognized by Canadian art critics in the Toronto and Ottawa papers, and noticed by Charles Dana Gibson. Her painting was praised for its technical execution, its use of colour, and its sensitivity to subject. Moreover, she had proven her versatility by working in several media, such as pen and ink, pastels, watercolour, and oil. More was to come in the beginning of the New Year. Early in February, Hamilton issued invitations, this time to her Montreal exhibition. It was to be held at the waac Galleries, from 5 to 17 February, under the patronage of HRH the Duchess of Connaught, wife of the Governor General, and Sir Robert and Lady Borden.28 The show was organized by Hamilton, working with the WAAC, and as in Toronto and Ottawa, the journalists had much to say. The Montreal Standard reported that Hamilton’s pictures showed a “quality of sincerity, purity of tone, and originality” when seen with paintings by other Canadians. “Her art is . . . clean, wholesome, and eminently satisfying, while in grace, distinction, and exquisite delicacy of feeling, it yields to none.” The Montreal Daily Witness noted Hamilton’s ability to capture some of the details of ordinary life and customs and the Montreal Daily Star praised her for her “conviction.” Calling her “une artiste Canadienne,” Le Canada urged Montrealers to go to the exhibition, which the paper deemed well worth seeing for its variety and atmosphere.29 Reviews of the eastern exhibitions appeared in western Canadian newspapers, including in the Edmonton Journal, which identified Hamilton as an artist who had studied abroad, but not in England. When asked why she had not crossed the Channel, she replied, “That is a treat in store for me at some later date. At present I feel that I must devote all my time to study, and the continent is the place for that. When I go to England, I want to make it entirely a pleasure tour. I am very anxious to visit the great picture galleries there, and to become familiar with the work of English artists, for one does not see a great many of their pictures in the galleries of Paris, Berlin or Florence.”30 Clearly, she had prioritized her European training, yet her response projected her plans for the future. 63

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By the early spring of 1912, Hamilton’s paintings had been reviewed by art critics in more than one region of Canada. Winnipeg was next. Winnipeg in 1912 was much different from when Hamilton had lived there in 1901 and 1906–07. Not only had the city grown substantially but it was infused with self-confidence. This optimism was reflected in public buildings of several storeys that emitted a sense of grandeur and stability, such as the Post Office Building (1912), the Winnipeg Industrial Building (1912), and the Fort Garry Hotel (completed 1913).31 Winnipeg had become the third-largest city in the Dominion after Montreal and Toronto. Since Hamilton’s departure in 1901, the population, young and ethnically mixed, had tripled from 42,340 to 136,035.32 Although numerous citizens were second and third generation, many were new immigrants from the British Isles and the United States, but there were also newcomers from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires.33 Winnipeg’s rapid growth can be explained by expansion of the grain trade as more land came under cultivation, much of it tilled by immigrant labour. As settlers moved further west, British and American investment in banks, lending institutions, and real estate provided ready capital. Industry, manufacturing, construction, flour mills, breweries, and slaughterhouses serviced the region.34 The railways were also central to Winnipeg’s expansion. By the early twentieth century, the city had become the transportation and wholesale hub for all of western Canada.35 Commerce emanated from the junction of Portage Avenue and Main Street, with its banks, offices, shops, Eaton’s department store, hotels, apartments, and boarding houses. Historian Jim Blanchard has written that “the business district was inhabited during the day by crowds of lawyers, real estate agents, bank clerks, grain traders, messengers, typists, secretaries and shop girls.”36 At the end of the day, they departed the commercial district by the Winnipeg Electric Street Railway, with its cars of maroon and yellow, as they “rumbled along city streets.” This was the Winnipeg that Mary Hamilton entered in the early spring of 1912. But her Winnipeg was more than commercial activity and magnificent buildings, it was also one of high society led by Mrs. Colin Campbell, wife of the attorney general of Manitoba, who “reinforced a system of ‘door keepers’ which controlled who was in and who was not, who was invited and who was excluded.”37 Mary Riter Hamilton, daughter of a United Empire Loyalist, was included and welcomed into this group. Her art was patronized and promoted

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Figure 8. Mary Riter Hamilton in picture-book hat.

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

by Mrs. Campbell, herself a United Empire Loyalist and local regent of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE).38 Town Topics regularly reported that the women of Winnipeg’s elite were interested in the latest Parisian fashions, purchased on European tours or from American ready-to-wear designers in Eaton’s department and the Hudson’s Bay Company stores. Patterns of the latest styles were also available for the city’s dressmakers: “Gone were the frills and puffs of Victorian and early Edwardian dress. The simpler lines were in keeping with the new attitude of upper and middle-class women who wanted to be less an ornament and more a participant in society—a voting, working, active citizen.”39 As fashion dictated the narrow skirt, so did it dictate the picture-book hat as seen in photographs of Mary Hamilton (Figure 8) and in photographs of the 1912 visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught to Winnipeg.40 Social activity for Winnipeg’s privileged included not only royal visits but also the July horse show, horse racing, and rowing and sailing regattas. Trains carried those who could afford it to summer camps (residences) situated on Lake of the Woods, near Kenora, Ontario, and to Winnipeg and Victoria

Figure 9. Mary Riter Hamilton in her Winnipeg studio, her mother, and her niece Etta, c. 1912. 66

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Beaches located on the west and east sides of Lake Winnipeg.41 For those confined to the city, Sunday trips by electric streetcar to Assiniboine Park were popular as a “dress-up affair.” Outdoors during the winter, curling, ice skating, snowshoeing, and tobogganing were all the rage. Indoors, private dances and parties provided amusement for the well-to-do at the Royal Alexandra Hotel and in the upscale homes of Roslyn Road, Armstrong’s Point, and Wellington Crescent. Drama, musical theatre, opera, and vaudeville offered entertainment at the Walker Theatre, Opera House, Orpheum, and Empire Hotel. Charlie Chaplin and W.C. Fields performed in 1912. Winnipeg also had a number of cinemas showing newsreels and melodramas, such as Sarah Bernhardt’s film Camille.42 Mary Hamilton likely participated in these leisure activities as a friend and associate of society women. According to the newspapers, Hamilton spent at least part of the winter and early spring of 1912 in Winnipeg (Figure 9). At the end of March, it was reported that the “noted artist” was the guest of Jean Isabel (Culver) Riley.43 A few days later, readers of the Manitoba Free Press and the Winnipeg Saturday Post learned that Hamilton had travelled to Miami, Manitoba, to visit her mother. They also learned that she hoped to hold an exhibit of her paintings sometime in May, and as an incentive, they were told about her Ottawa show and the comments that had been made by Charles Dana Gibson.44 More advance notices appeared in Town Topics and the Winnipeg Telegram as early as mid-April—notices that included reproductions of The Gold Fish and The Artist’s Studio.45 The Winnipeg exhibition would open on 1 May 1912 in the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau at Main and Water streets.46 It would be patronized by HRH the Duchess of Connaught, and Lieutenant-Governor Douglas Cameron and Mrs. Cameron.47 Using copy from the Ottawa interview with Gibson and reviews printed in the Ontario and Quebec papers, Town Topics focused on the paintings that had hung in the Salons: Abazia di St. Gregorio (1905); An Impression of Venice (1906); Les Pauvres (1909); Devant la Fenêtre; Easter Morning; and Maternity (1911). It also drew from the 1911 Studio article by E.A. Taylor and pointed out that the artist wanted to travel to the Rockies over the summer, where she planned to paint Canadian scenes to take back to France.48 Hamilton hired Luscombe Carroll, a broker at Fine Art Dealers in the Canadian Building on Donald Street, to write a foreword for the catalogue, to act on her behalf, and to manage the display of ninety-two oil paintings, twelve watercolours and sketches, nine pastels, eight drawings, and two monotypes.49 67

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Carroll was enthusiastic in his praise: “The work of Canadian artists, who have won a public outside their own country, is characterized by a strength and a virility that invariably attract and impress. The work of Mary Riter Hamilton, a young, brilliantly-gifted artist, will commend itself to all who appreciate sincerity and individuality in art—ample evidence of a catholic taste, a sure technique and keen discrimination.”50 The Duchess of Connaught had purchased several Hamilton paintings, he said, which made him confident that art lovers in Winnipeg would appreciate the artist’s collection.51 Hamilton opened her show with an afternoon tea in the balcony drawing room of the Industrial Exhibition building. According to Town Topics, she wore a “smart black and white costume and a large white hat,” and she was presented with roses by William Culver Riley, the son of Jean Isabel (Culver) Riley.52 Once more her tea table was decorated with American Beauty roses, and it was presided over by Lady White and Mrs. Whitla. Guests and prospective patrons included Mrs. Chown, Capt. and Mrs. Homer-Dixon, Lady Schultz, Chief Justice and Mrs. Mathers, Mrs. Robert Rogers, and Mesdames Machray, Alloway, Sutherland, Drewry, and Culver—a generous sampling of Winnipeg’s upper crust.53 A few days after the opening, the weekly encouraged its readers to attend the Hamilton exhibition, which “promises to be a social event of importance.”54 Reviews appeared quickly, and some pointed out that, although art lovers had enjoyed the exhibit, it did not contain many of the works that had been shown in Ontario and Quebec. Nonetheless, there were enough to demonstrate the “versatility of the artist” and her “command of the brush in several mediums.” Critic Vandyke Brown was impressed by her work when he learned that she was from western Canada. Painting from the west was often “not worthy,” he wrote. “Not so here. The exhibition had much merit and should be seen.” He wrote about the “freshness of the brush work,” “flower-like beauty of color,” and “textures and play of light.”55 A few days later, he reiterated much of the critique he had made at the time of the Toronto show. For his Winnipeg readers, though, he suggested that the landscapes would be of interest to urban dwellers, as well as the “slight” sketches in pastels and watercolour.56 As in 1906, the Winnipeg press went beyond simply reviewing the paintings. This time, it “very forcefully” took advantage of Hamilton’s exhibition to make the case for building a Winnipeg art gallery.57 The artist, too, weighed in again on the debate and spoke passionately in favour of creating an institution that would develop its own collection and mount exhibitions: significantly, she 68

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suggested it could also offer courses in the fine and applied arts as well as design. She argued that there were art museums in other cities in North America, and noted that even the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, although primarily an exhibition venue, trained students and provided travelling scholarships. Winnipeg, she pointed out, was geographically situated in the centre of Canada and was an obvious site for such a building: the time had come for Winnipeg’s citizens to commit to the cultural life of the city.58 Before the end of the year, on 16 December 1912, the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts (“The Gallery”) was launched by Lieutenant-Governor Cameron in the Exposition Building of the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau. “The Gallery,” the first civic art gallery in Canada, was inaugurated with an exhibition of 275 works loaned from the RCA that included pictures by George Agnew Reid and Hamilton’s contemporary, Florence Carlyle. A small group of Winnipeg’s businessmen had accepted “the civilizing effects of art” and each had contributed

Figure 10. Mary Riter Hamilton drawing an Indigenous man outside her mother’s home in Manitoba, c. 1912. 69

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$200 to the project. Scottish artist Donald Macquarrie was appointed the first curator.59 W.J. Bulman, president of the Industrial Bureau, recognized the relationship between the fine and applied arts when he said, “Art and manufacture are so closely allied that an institution such as this has become an absolute necessity if we are to become efficient as an industrial centre.”60 When the gallery opened in December, Mary Riter Hamilton had already installed herself in Victoria, British Columbia. The Winnipeg Telegram reported that she had left Winnipeg shortly after the closure of her spring exhibition and headed west on a sketching tour for an indeterminate length of time.61 Travelling from the prairies to the Rockies was easy on the CPR, Canada’s transcontinental railway. An early stop on her journey was her mother’s home near Miami, Manitoba, where she was photographed drawing an Indigenous man (Figure 10). She then continued west and spent most of the summer painting in Banff National Park and at Emerald Lake, in Yoho National Park, a popular destination for artists—“one of the most exquisite spots in the Canadian Rockies.”62 Hamilton’s Emerald Lake Bridge (Plate 2) captures the brilliant bluegreen of the glacial water.63 The artist worked in the Rockies throughout the summer and perhaps into the early autumn. She returned to Winnipeg near the end of November and stayed with her friend Jean Isabel (Culver) Riley, before going on to Calgary and then to Victoria.64 Victoria, like Winnipeg, had been a fur-trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company. By 1859, it was a Crown colony of the British government, and in less than twenty years the small settlement had become a city. When British Columbia joined the Confederation of Canada in 1871, Victoria was chosen as the provincial capital. By the 1890s, it had a population of about 17,000, shipyards, mercantile and commercial districts, a streetcar system, electric light, and running water. Mary Riter Hamilton arrived in Victoria less than two years before the outbreak of the Great War (1914–18), an international event that would have significant consequences for her career. Hamilton’s Victoria, like Winnipeg, was a distinctly white and middle-class growing city with established government buildings, the Empress Hotel (1908), as well as golf, rowing, and yacht clubs. From 1904, a daily ferry connected the island to Vancouver and the rest of the country. As in Winnipeg, a professional and business class had emerged whose wives supported the arts through the Women’s Canadian Club, the University

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Figure 11. Mary Riter Hamilton in profile, n.d.

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Women’s Club, IODE, and Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS)—these were the women who befriended the artist.65 Hamilton set herself up in studios first at 724 and later at 514 Fort Street (Figure 11), where she painted and taught art.66 She joined the IACS and exhibited her paintings in the Society’s shows in 1913, 1914, and 1917. Her work was patronized by a group of middle-class women and, in some instances, their husbands: “As always Mary’s patronage in Victoria came from the best-respected women, a sisterhood which helped to spread her fame and distribute her works.”67 Many were her friends. They included, for instance, Margaret Hart, wife of the province’s chief coroner;68 Rosalind Young, wife of the minister of education and provincial secretary (and later private secretary to the lieutenant-governor of British Columbia);69 and Mrs. William Fowler, president of the IODE and wife of Major Fowler.70 The artist also included among her patrons and friends J.A. Paton, editor of the Gold Stripe, a magazine of the Amputation Club of British Columbia. The IACS (formerly the Island Arts and Crafts Club and later the Victoria Sketch Club) was founded in 1909. It became the locus for Victoria artists during this period.71 Mary Hamilton and her contemporaries Emily Carr, Josephine Crease (1864–1947),72 Margaret Kitto (1873–1925),73 and Theresa Wylde (c. 1870–1949) were all members of the Society and shared exhibition space.74 In 1913, Wylde proposed Hamilton’s membership in the Society when Crease was vice president and Kitto a member. In British Columbia Women Artists, art curator Nicholas Tuele writes, “One of the Society’s most distinguished members was Mary Hamilton (in a period that included Carr).”75 The artist exhibited with the Society at the Alexander Club, selling her watercolours, pastels, and oils for $75 to $300. She also taught art lessons in the Society’s School of Arts and Crafts.76 Hamilton’s first major exhibition in Victoria was sponsored by the Women’s Canadian Club and mounted at the Empress Hotel in March 1913, not many months after her arrival. In “A Salon at the Empress,” the Daily Colonist wrote of watercolours, oils, and drawings hung in a small dining room where the walls were draped in canvas. The show included landscape paintings of Alberta and British Columbia, and some little-seen Manitoba oils: The Farm Yard, Manitoba; Wheat Stacks, Sunset; and Manitoba Farm House.77 It was the portraits, though, that drew special attention. Of The Father Confessor, the reviewer wrote, “I should call this a pretentious subject dealing as it does with 72

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a classical theme which has been attempted by the greatest masters and not always with equal success. The asceticism of the face, the intellectual repose, the strength denoted by the clasped hands, the fixed purpose of a steadfast soul, and the sympathetic outlook accustomed to the foibles and sins of mankind are clearly denoted in this remarkable study which is a masterpiece few women could have produced.”78 He added that another portrait, The Poet, was in many ways the “finest” picture in the exhibition because of Hamilton’s use of colour and her portrayal of concentrated thought.79 In October, Hamilton entered several oil paintings, watercolours, and pastels in the IACS exhibition. The Daily Colonist wrote, “Among the work of artists newly come to Victoria, the Club is to be congratulated on having in the show a large entry from Mrs. Mary Hamilton, one of the most famous of native Canadian artists.”80 He wrote that “there is a very strongly drawn head in crayon, showing a face full of character, and with strong contrasts of light and shade . . . and she has two most brilliant oils of Japanese gardens ablaze with colours, with exceeding bold impasto handling.”81 On 6 December, “The Ladies Review,” supplement to The Week, told of a major exhibit (172 pictures) held by the artist in her studio at 724 Fort Street. The “Review” opened by saying that “this gifted artist has not been idle since deciding to remain in Victoria,” and credited the Women’s Canadian Club for having convinced Hamilton to settle on the island. Hamilton’s collection revealed her experience and resourcefulness in varied subjects, media, technique, and colour. The show included samples of her European work, portraits of local figures, scenes of Victoria, landscapes painted in the Rockies, and drawings of Indigenous people: “Most people will be struck by the sweet types of womanhood which this gifted artist loves to portray. Motherhood is a favourite theme, and here we have the gentle Madonna faces (Maternity and Les Pauvres) hallowed by maternal love so beautifully expressed by a master hand.” 82 There were also several portraits of local notables, such as Mrs. McPhee, “which is a great favourite of many,” and pastels of Mrs. Hermann Robertson and Mr. Fred Pemberton.83 The landscapes The Storm and Lake Louise received attention, as did drawings of “realistic studies of Indian life—The End of the Day, Stony Reserve; Indian Chief; and Buffalo Bobtail—full of the spirit of the red man, with his lithe body and stolid countenance,” and The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, B.C., a pastoral garden scene with its rich blues, pale greens, and pinks (Plate 4).84

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A year later, the Fifth Annual Exhibition of the IACS included watercolours, oils, and pastels by Hamilton, as well as those of Josephine Crease, Margaret Kitto, and Theresa Wylde. Their paintings were featured again in 1917.85 During these years, Hamilton’s work was shown occasionally outside of Victoria. In June 1914, she sent about forty paintings to the official opening of the Winnipeg Art Gallery.86 According to the catalogue, the exhibition surpassed any of its kind in western Canada. In this collection, Hamilton highlighted her sketching trip through Alberta and British Columbia with Camping at Banff; The Orchard, B.C.; and The Cedars, Goldstream, B.C.87 The Manitoba Free Press wrote that her work needed no introduction, her landscapes were “distinctively of the Impressionist School,” and paintings such as The Boat House and The Apple Tree were “highly imaginative and full of subtle charm.” Other contributors included Florence Carlyle, Mary Clay Ewart, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, and W.J. Phillips.88 A year later, Hamilton exhibited Les Pauvres in the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition held in the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. More than 11,000 pieces of art and sculpture, as well as murals, were shown in this world’s fair, which took place over a full year.89 During her Victoria years, Hamilton’s professional career advanced on two fronts. First, her skill as a portrait painter was recognized by the provincial government when it awarded her a contract to paint the lieutenant-governors of British Columbia. Second, following the Great War in 1919, she was granted a commission to paint the battlefields of northern Europe, thanks to her friendship with J.A. Paton and the Amputation Club. The artist had become known for her portraits well before being approached by a provincial official. For instance, a pencil drawing of her friend Rosalind Young, Mrs. Young in Hat and Veil (Plate 11), shows her delicate touch in the long and simple pencil strokes that reveal a beautiful woman whose large hat immediately draws one to her half-profiled face and pensive gaze. Hamilton’s most famous portrait was likely that of Vilhjalmur Stefansson (1879–1962), Arctic explorer and commander of the Canadian Arctic Expedition from 1913 to 1918. The painting has been described as “executed in a low key, its rich dark colouring being very attractive.”90 She also painted portraits of Stefansson’s colleague, Dr. Rudolph Anderson, and Anderson’s wife, MayBelle.91 Stefansson and the Andersons were among Hamilton’s group of friends who came to her “bohemian” studio for Parisian-like salon evenings. Journalist N. de Bertrand Lugrin described some of these gatherings as a sample of 74

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Victoria’s literary and musical society. “One met everyone there who had a talent worth-while,” he said. He identified the Baroness D’Aneton, a well-known writer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson, Captain Bartlett, writer for American magazines, and classically trained pianist and violinist Gertrude Huntly Green,92 who “used to run in and bring divine melody out of Mrs. Hamilton’s piano.”93 Gertrude Huntly had studied music in Paris and may have met Hamilton there. The group also included Mrs. Lugrin, “her voice with its young girl qualities,” and the three brothers Cherniavsky, local instrumentalists.94 In addition to the musical evenings, there were also French soirées with Mesdames SandersonMongin and Vivanot, who were invited to help the others learn to speak French, as de Bertrand Lungrin said that from her long stay abroad Hamilton was as French as she was English.95 Hamilton’s portraits led to the largest and potentially the most lucrative commission of her career. “As an artist of reputation,” she was given the opportunity to paint British Columbia’s lieutenant-governors. The records pertaining to her contract, however, were long shrouded in mystery and it was not until the 1950s that an answer was found as to how many portraits were actually painted.96 In the summer of 1915, Hamilton was approached by Dr. Henry Esson Young, the provincial secretary of British Columbia and husband of her friend Rosalind Young.97 He asked the artist to paint the portraits of fifteen former lieutenant-governors, and he promised that the completed pictures would hang in Government House. Although Hamilton usually charged $1,000 ($20,737 in 2015) to paint a portrait, she agreed to accept the contract, which stipulated that she would supply them for $212 each ($4,256 in 2015), because of the number requested and because she had “spare time,” she said.98 Had she finished the fifteen portraits at her going rate, she would have made $15,000, and even at the reduced rate a tidy sum of over $3,000.99 At first glance, the commission looked like an exceptional break, but correspondence exchanged between Hamilton and the provincial government’s representative, E.O.S. Scholefield, revealed the vulnerability of an artist trying to make a living from her art. That summer, Scholefield managed the project and supplied Hamilton with photographs of the dignitaries and other materials so that her work could begin. By November, he had written to her to say, “I am gald [sic] to hear that you are making progress with the portraits of the former Lieutenant-Governors.”100 But, even as he was about to renege on the agreement, he acknowledged that the work would take time and this would be to the government’s 75

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advantage, for “even at the greatly reduced rate of $212 [per portrait] as arranged,” he admitted that the funds to pay her “could not be defrayed out of one year’s appropriation.”101 He advised her that it would be best if she could spread the work out over several years. The provincial purse strings had tightened, likely due to exigencies caused by the war. Consequently, sometime in 1916, perhaps because the artist feared that her contract was to be cancelled (although not confirmed in the extant correspondence), Hamilton hired lawyers to act on her behalf. In an undated letter, they wrote directly to Henry Esson Young and said that three portraits had been completed, delivered, and paid for at the agreed price. But, unfortunately, now our client is informed that the Crown repudiates its contract and she is notified that delivery of the others will not be accepted. No complaint has been made as to the work done or any reason given for refusing to carry out the arrangements made. Our client is not only annoyed at being treated in such a cavalier manner, but suffers substantial damages from loss of work. She would certainly never have undertaken to supply only the three pictures completed at the sum of $212 each, as they occupied the greater part of her time for the past year. We wish to learn without delay what stand the Crown takes on the matter, before deciding on what course our client shall pursue.102 Alas, the records do not include the follow-up to Hamilton’s legal action. It looked as though her contract had been cancelled after she had completed only three of fifteen pictures, but there is a letter from John Forsyth, acting librarian of the Provincial Library, who wrote to the artist on 2 November 1918. He acknowledged that she was still working on the project and he included a list of the portraits. Yet on the verso side of his letter, there is an undated handwritten note saying that the commission had been cancelled and the completed portraits had been hung in Government House.103 A few months later, in March 1919, Hamilton received a letter from the private secretary to the lieutenant-governor saying that he would remit to the Treasury her request to be paid for an additional three more portraits.104 It seems that she was paid for at least six paintings. Nonetheless, the intrigue surrounding the number of pictures completed and whether Hamilton was ever conclusively paid for them deepens. In 1950, Willard E. Ireland, provincial librarian and archivist, heard from Hamilton’s 76

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friend, Mrs. Fanny K. Huntley (not Gertrude Huntly). Reading between the lines of Ireland’s letter, one concludes that Huntley had contacted him to inquire about the Hamilton portraits. At the time, Hamilton was very short of money and her friends were trying to find funds for her where they could. Huntley said that she thought the artist had finished at least twelve portraits. Ireland replied to her “immediately,” and he admitted that he had been taken aback to have found Hamilton paintings at Government House: “I am quite amazed to discover no less than eleven of her portraits are there,” he wrote.105 Included in his list were paintings of Richard Blanchard, C.F. Cornwall, Edgar Dewdney, Sir James Douglas, James Dunsmuir, Sir Henri Joly de Lotbinière, Sir Anthony Musgrave, Hugh Nelson, T.W. Paterson, A.N. Richards, and Frederick Seymour. Ireland also wrote that there was a portrait of Sir Frank [Francis] Barnard that was not signed but may have been by Hamilton, and another one might still be in the possession of the artist. He assured Huntley that he would try to do what he could to solve the mystery of the apparently missing portraits, but he did not discuss remuneration and his exchange stopped here.106 In 2012, a director of operations at Government House told us that eleven completed portraits may have hung there until 15 April 1957, when they may have been destroyed by fire.107 To date, it is still not definite how many portraits Hamilton completed, nor is it clear whether she was ever paid in full by the Crown. Although the Government House paintings no longer exist, there is other evidence that Hamilton was held in esteem as a portrait painter. In a collection conserved by the provincial archives of British Columbia, there is a pastel sketch of Lieutenant-Governor T.W. Paterson, in uniform, that may have been the first step in Hamilton’s portrait commission, to be followed by the oil painting (Plate 13).108 The fonds also includes a life-size, full-length portrait of Henry Esson Young, as head of the Department of Education, holding the document that established the University of British Columbia in 1908 (Plate 10), and portraits of Senator William John MacDonald, 1915; Padre John Pringle, 1916; and Mai Todd, later Mrs. Hebden Gillespie, 1915.109 Hamilton received more recognition when the Amputation Club of British Columbia commissioned her to paint in Canada’s battlefields almost immediately after the war. Robert Amos has written, “From the outbreak of the war, Mrs. Hamilton felt the urge to go overseas, but as the way seemed closed, she devoted herself to whatever relief work synchronized with her fine talents.”110 She donated some of her paintings to the Red Cross to help to raise funds and she did 77

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relief work for the Belgian consul. During this period, she also volunteered for little theatre productions, painting scenes and furniture, and designing curtains and costumes.111 As the war ended, though, she was determined to create a memorial to Canadian soldiers who had lost their lives, and she was not alone in this resolve. Historian Jay Winter, in Sites of Memory, has argued, “commemoration was a universal preoccupation after the 1914–18 war. The need to bring the dead home, to put the dead to rest, symbolically or physically, was pervasive. From consolation and support, it was a short step to commemoration. The bonds shared by those in mourning, by widows, ex-servicemen, the disabled, the young and old alike, were expressed openly in ceremonies of collective memory.”112 Hamilton, too, was driven to apply her talent to memorialize those who had died. Indeed, she began to plan her departure from Canada in early 1918, before war’s end. Accordingly, she contacted a friend with influence, who wrote to S.J. Crowe, a Vancouver MP, asking for his support of “the well-known artist” who wanted to travel to France to paint the battlefields. Her friend argued that the artist was “eminently qualified” and he wrote, “Mrs. Hamilton with entirely unselfish motives has desired and in her modest way endeavoured to assist in this work with her services, under any authority; and with no remuneration to herself.”113 Then he provided a synopsis of her work and a list of her exhibitions. The correspondence ended here, so it is not known if Crowe acted on her behalf. We do know that her project moved forward, and it was a daunting one for a “woman of a certain age.” Hamilton would turn fifty in 1918, yet she was not disheartened: “I will go to Europe in order to paint the scenes where so many of our gallant Canadians have fought and died, and because this can only be done successfully before the reconstruction of France and Belgium has really started.”114 She was determined and she would find the means to do so. On 11 November 1918, the Armistice ended the war in Europe, and throughout Canada people rallied to support returning soldiers and honour the dead. In Vancouver, the Gold Stripe, a publication of the Amputation Club of British Columbia, promised a special issue to document the valiant deeds of local men. Editor J.A. Paton, an amputee himself of the 29th Vancouver Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force, offered Hamilton a commission, on behalf of the Club, to paint for this unique edition and to be paid as a “correspondent” in return for pictures of the wasted battlefields.115 Gold Stripe journalist J.E.M. Bruce later wrote presciently, “With the knowledge of her abiding 78

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love of her native land, of her admiration for the splendid men who went under arms across the sea to preserve the ideals of the Empire, Canada may confidently look for her return at some future time with records which will be fitting additions to the archives founded to preserve the history of the Dominion’s part in the Great War.”116 By the early spring of 1919, Hamilton had moved from Victoria to Vancouver to expedite her departure by train and later ship for Europe. In this brief period, she exhibited some of her paintings at the Pender Street Showrooms, including her portrait of Stefansson.117 Before leaving Vancouver, inspired by her prospect to do war work, the artist captured the Empress of Asia entering the Vancouver harbour as the vessel made her last return trip carrying troops from overseas via the Panama Canal: “The picture shows Mrs. Hamilton’s work at its best, the yacht-like lines of the ship looming out of the soft haze of the morning, with the indefinite line of the mountains as a background.”118 Later, the painting was hung on a wall by itself in the crafts section of an IACS exhibit in Victoria.119 Hamilton garnered more support as she prepared to go to Europe, in large part because of her association with Paton. Her letters of identification reveal that prominent officials were willing to endorse her and the Gold Stripe initiative. She received affirmation from the Belgian consul, the lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, the minister of the Department of Militia and Defence, and a lieutenant colonel of the Canadian Forces. In Victoria, W.S. Terry, Belgian consul and Paton’s friend, wrote that he was supporting “an artist wellknown in Western Canada.”120 He went on to say that he had met Hamilton while she was doing Belgian Relief work over the previous four years, and he understood that the paintings generated from her European trip would be donated to charitable organizations: “I bespeak for her the kind consideration of those whom she may meet in her work.”121 Also in Victoria, on 15 March 1919, H.J.S. Muskett, private secretary to Sir S.F. Barnard, lieutenant-governor of British Columbia, wrote a letter of introduction for Hamilton, signed by Barnard, in which he asked that she be assisted, should she need it, while painting the battlefields of France and Belgium.122 A week later, with Barnard’s letter in hand, Hamilton arrived at the office of General Mewburn, minister of militia and defence, in Ottawa. She met with Captain H.H. Ellis, private secretary to the general, and possibly General Mewburn himself, and she explained that she wanted immediate passage to France. She planned to travel to Vimy Ridge and its surrounding areas to paint for the Gold Stripe. Although Captain Ellis 79

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acknowledged that Hamilton and the magazine had no official status with the department, he agreed to issue her a passport and to write on her behalf to the French consul general in Montreal. He also wished her success in her endeavour.123 Finally, Lieutenant Colonel C.W. Peek prepared a letter for Lieutenant Colonel G. Grassie Archibald, DSO, stationed at Les Havres: “Dear Grassie, This will introduce you to Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton, who wishes to go to the war zone in order to do some paintings for the returned soldiers’ paper named the Gold Stripe at Vancouver.”124 Less officially, he said he would appreciate anything that Archibald could do to assist her, including putting her in touch with Lieutenant General Sir Arthur Currie, first commander of the Canadian Forces in the Great War.125 On 17 March 1919, Paton wrote to Margaret Hart, Hamilton’s closest friend in Victoria, to confirm that the artist had left Vancouver for Ottawa by train. Her “big trunk and baggage” had been shipped directly to New York, so she would have little inconvenience. He also said that Hamilton had agreed to prepare an inventory of her paintings which had been stored with Hart. The list would be sent to Hart and he would retain a copy for safe-keeping.126 In “Canadian Artist Going to Europe,” the Daily Colonist reported that Hamilton had visited with Margaret Hart for ten days before leaving for Europe.127 On 25 March, Hamilton wrote to Hart from the Château Laurier Hotel in Ottawa to say that she was about to leave for Montreal, where she had to show her passport to the French consul general. The artist’s voice is heard most explicitly through the Hamilton-Hart correspondence. In the detailed exchanges between the two women one learns about their friendship, but also about Hamilton’s travel back to France, her sojourn there, and their personal and legal disputes on the artist’s return. In an early piece of this correspondence, Hamilton, breathlessly, excitedly, and rather disjointedly wrote, You have no idea of the “red tape” I have had to face here (Ottawa). I should have discharge, but I am doing Art for the Gold Stripe, I have [sic] got arrested yet – that last “Ground Rush” in Victoria almost finished me. . . . However all is well that ends well only I do hope you were not ill after it . . . I’m hard to kill as you know. I simply was 80

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too weary to think all the way on the train, though I’ve had to wake up a bit here. The wine simply kept me up, I assure you. Nothing could have been better. I cannot thank you for all your kindness. Words won’t come. Just a lump in my throat and when I think of Jim and dear Ellen [Hart’s children] doing my washing (I finished it here) well, I simply think it was too kind. Every day I hoped to have time to make out a list of pictures, but it must wait now until I get to New York. I shall have ten days there— they demand it—Immigration Department. This is just a hurried note before I leave. Thanking you with all my heart for your good kindness and friendship. Postscript: I had tea at Rideau Hall with the Duke of Devonshire, Governor General of Canada. He has given me a letter of introduction to Sir Edward Kemp, Minister of Militia and Defence and Minister of Overseas Military Forces. Indeed, I have letters from all the “High Brows.”128 This was the last word before Mary Riter Hamilton’s arrival in France. Hamilton’s career had progressed. The newspapers, in particular, detailed her return into the Canadian art scene with announcements and reviews of the Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal exhibitions. By the spring of 1912, the press had generated interest about her upcoming May show in Winnipeg. Within months, though, Hamilton was travelling west, sketching models and painting the landscape of the Rockies. Once in Victoria, her portrait commissions, exhibitions, membership in the IACS, teaching, and sales confirmed her status as an artist. In the business of art, patronage was important, and Hamilton’s had come from the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, their daughter the Princess Patricia, from Prime Minister Borden, and from the lieutenant-governors of Manitoba and British Columbia. Her friends, for the most part society women, had helped to organize and promote exhibitions in several Canadian centres. By the end of the Great War, Mary Riter Hamilton had cemented her reputation as an artist.

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Chapter Four

Painting with Purpose, 1919–1925 I made up my mind that where our men went under so much more dreadful conditions I could go and I am very proud to have been able even in a small way to commemorate the deeds of my countrymen, and especially if possible to lend a helping hand to the poor fellows like those of the Amputations Club [sic] who will be life-long sufferers from the war. It is fortunate that I arrived before it was too late to get a real impression. — frederick g. falla interview of mary riter hamilton, 10 September 19221

Mary Riter Hamilton returned to Europe in 1919, supported by the Amputation Club of British Columbia. She would create a visual record of the ravaged countryside before rebuilding could diminish the horror.2 In defence of her project, she later said: The first day I went over Vimy, snow and sleet were falling, and I was able to realize what the soldiers had suffered. If . . . there is something of the suffering and heroism of the war in my pictures it is because at that moment the spirit of those who fought and died seemed to linger in the air. Every splintered tree and scarred clod spoke of their sacrifice. Since then nature has been busy covering up the wounds, and in a few years the last sign of the war will have disappeared. To have been able to preserve some memory of what this consecrated corner of the world looked like after the storm is a great privilege, and all the reward that an artist could hope for.3 Hamilton’s extraordinary commitment took her out to the silent battlefields. The paintings, the product of her effort, were exhibited in the Paris Opera House and

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in the Salons. Recognition of her work came in the form of a French medal, Les Palmes Académiques, “a distinction never conferred upon a Canadian before.”4 Art historian Laura Brandon has written, “the history of art is organic. An artist exists only if written about and exhibited publicly.”5 This is especially true for Mary Riter Hamilton and her battlefield collection, a large part of which is conserved in Library and Archives Canada. It has been shown in presentations and exhibitions well into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.6 Her war art, painted in France and Flanders between 1919 and 1922, has arguably received more attention than all of her previous work, and in doing so has kept her memory alive, just as it has kept alive the memory of that period.7 Since at least 2005, scholars from different disciplines have turned their attention to Hamilton’s work.8 Why would Hamilton, with portrait commissions, exhibitions, art classes, and a number of close friends in Victoria, want to return to Europe? What was the impulse that propelled her into an adventure of a lifetime? Until 1919, her subject matter had been gentle landscapes, interiors, and portraits. There is no evidence in her painting of a need to capture the darker, raw side of life. What drove her forward? Hamilton’s interest in going to the battlefields began as early as January 1917, when she applied to the Canadian War Memorial Fund (CWMF), established by Max Aitken (later Lord Beaverbrook), a Canadian newspaper mogul living in Britain. By 1916 Aitken wanted to document Canada’s participation in the war through text, artefacts, and art.9 To this end, he worked closely with Arthur Doughty, Dominion Archivist, and Sir Edmund Walker and Eric Brown of the National Gallery.10 Subsequently, the first official war artist commission was awarded to A.Y. Jackson, a lieutenant in the 60th Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), and later a member of the Group of Seven. Arthur Lismer, F.H. Varley, and other recognized male artists were also appointed.11 The terms of the fund made it clear that only men would be allowed to go out to the battlefields. A few women were granted commissions, but they were confined to painting the female contribution to the war, such as in the Canadian munitions factories: Henrietta Mabel May, Dorothy Stevens, Frances Loring, and Florence Wyle all worked for the CWMF.12 Not to be daunted by the regulations, that January Hamilton first invoked the support of Colonel H. Appleton, “an old friend and admirer of [her] work.”13 Appleton went directly to Prime Minister Borden and argued that she 83

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“needed the employment that the creation of war records could give her.” His request was forwarded to Walker and then to Brown, both members of the Advisory Arts Council of the CWMF and in charge of the National Gallery’s picture program. By April, when the artist had not received a reply, she then appealed directly to the fund and asked to be allowed to paint out in the battle region. She wrote: “There are many subjects that suggest themselves at once for [war] pictures of historical interest, the details for which can only be collected on the spot at the present time. Some of these can be done in rear of the line such as the return after action of troops and prisoners, groups of prominent officers & men. Scenes on won battlefields, and among ruined towns such as Ypres, Arras, etc; and occasion may offer also [the opportunity] to record the actual scene of battles, bombardments, etc., so that I need never be idle.”14 Her request reveals her knowledge of the war, and it offers a clear proposal for how an artist might proceed if authorized to paint in the field. Nonetheless, on 31 May 1917, the Advisory Arts Council denied her request without explanation, but likely because women were not allowed to enter the battle zones.15 Hamilton did not apply again. It has been said that Walker and Brown preferred to hire artists from the “Anglophone art societies of central Canada, who were both well placed in the Canadian art scene, and were recognized for creating high quality art work.”16 Although Hamilton had achieved respect for her painting in Victoria, her location in western Canada in 1917 also may have worked against her application. Irene Gammel has argued in “The Memory of St. Julien: Configuring Gas Warfare in Mary Riter Hamilton’s Battlefield Art” that her case study of the artist reveals the gender and cultural bias of the Memorial Fund officials. Conversely, their decision not to accept Hamilton’s application also freed her from restrictions imposed by the program that assigned special topics to its chosen artists.17 Hamilton’s failed request to join the CWMF in 1917 might have been a motivating factor in her decision to return to France. Throughout the war she had done relief work for the Red Cross and the Belgian consulate. Consequently, she was aware of the devastation, destruction, and loss of life in which more than 4 million died, one-sixth of those who had served.18 As a friend of Paton, she also knew the impact of war on returning soldiers who faced physical and psychological trauma.19 In all, it seems that she convinced Paton and the Amputation Club of British Columbia to support her while in France with a commission to paint the after-effects of four ruinous years. She would go to France with a memory of specific battles in the history of the war, such as combat at 84

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Vimy Ridge and in the Somme River Valley, and with a dual purpose to commemorate and to record for posterity the effect of these events.20 Jay Winter has written that remembrance had become intrinsic to the landscape of northern France and Flanders: “War memorials dot the countryside, in cities, towns and villages, in market squares, churchyards, schools, and obscure corners of hillsides and fields. Throughout the region are larger sites of memory: the cemeteries of Verdun, the Marne, Passchendaele and the Somme.”21 In turn, Mary Hamilton would memorialize many of them in her canvases. Hamilton’s battlefields were those of the Western Front in southwestern Belgium and northeastern France. Throughout the region there were agricultural lands, sand dunes, and flat, reclaimed sea-level territories up to the Belgian coast. Much of the fighting took place in the valley of the Somme River that winds through rolling hills, marshlands, and swamps from Saint-Quentin in the east, through Amiens, to the English Channel.22 Between August 1915 and November 1918, Canadians fought in many battles, notably the Battle of Vimy Ridge, from 9 to 12 April 1917. At Vimy Ridge, for the first time soldiers served together in all-Canadian divisions, but under the command of the British general Sir Julian Byng. Byng was Commander of the Canadian forces from May 1916 to June 1917, when he was replaced by Sir Arthur William Currie, a Canadian-born general.23 While Hamilton’s goal was to commemorate the war through her art, others travelled to the region as pilgrims. Even before the Armistice was signed on 11 November 1918, as many as 60,000 “tourists” had arrived in France in the summer of that year alone. Visiting the war zones became an industry, complete with a 1919 Michelin guide to the Western Front, as professionals directed cheap expeditions from England. Historian Jonathan Vance notes that “Canadians were certainly not immune to the appeal of the battlefields, and the Overseas Military Forces of Canada (OMFC) were deluged with requests, such as that of Hamilton, for travel permits to visit the ‘devastated areas,’ as they were called.”24 For many, these journeys were spiritual in nature, as visitors travelled to pay their respects to a higher cause represented by the soldiers and the reasons for which they had fought. The war cemeteries, as expected, were often the ultimate destination. On 18 March 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton set sail from New York for France.25 She would return to Montreal in December 1925.26 During this period she created more than 300 paintings.27 She sketched in charcoal, chalk, 85

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Map 3. Mary Riter Hamilton’s visits to First World War Battlefields, 1919–22.

and pencil, and she painted in watercolour and oil on plywood, cardboard, and commercially stretched canvases. Portability of the materials was an important factor in her choice of media.28 As Robert Amos has pointed out, “the blasted landscape that she focused on would have mocked a painter with conventional ideas of composition and colour.”29 She set her easel before shell holes and “ruins beyond romance.” But surprisingly there were also splashes of colour—town banners and the ubiquitous poppies of those northern graveyards. Indeed, many of the paintings show blue skies, though often subdued. In Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France, c. 1920 (Plate 14), Hamilton’s treatment of the cross and the soldier’s remains “portrays horror in its full reality.” The painting is a 86

Figure 12. Mary Riter Hamilton painting in battle zone with her dogs, c. 1919–22.

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Figure 13. Mary Riter Hamilton with her dog, Bob, at her side, c. 1919–22.

graphic reminder of man’s inhumanity to man and reveals much about how she was affected by the war and the sights around her. Yet, the crucifix is not painted into a dark and muddy background, as one might expect. On the contrary, although the scene is stark, with trees stripped of all life, they are rooted in sandy soil highlighted by a ray of sunshine. A pale grey sky completes the image.30 The cemeteries were the finality of death—the poppies the beginning of life. Hamilton projected the future in pictures of women making homes from abandoned army huts (Plate 16), and workers clearing the areas of conflict. Past and future— destruction and renewal—were major themes of Hamilton’s war art.31 In the spring of 1919, before travelling out to the battlefields, Hamilton arrived in Paris and returned to Montparnasse, where she re-established a studio. During this period she was in touch again with illustrator Richard Wallace, whom she had met in Paris between 1903 and 1911. Later, he gave her a first edition of Ulysses, written by his good friend, James Joyce.32 From the late nineteenth century, Hamilton’s 6th arrondissement, one of the oldest in Paris, had been the centre of the artistic and literary community. Within was the rue de l’Odéon, with its bookshops and publishing houses 88

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northwest of the Luxembourg Gardens, where “most people still walked, some rode bicycles, and an early riser could hear the sound of wooden carts and horse hoofs.”33 It seems impossible that Mary Riter Hamilton knew nothing of the American bookseller, Sylvia Beach, publisher of Ulysses and also a friend of Joyce. Moreover, Beach’s shop, Shakespeare and Company, was a favourite meeting place for artists and writers following its opening in November 1919. It was a combination bookstore and English lending library, with black and white Serbian rugs on the hardwood floor, beige sackcloth-covered walls, and brightly painted baseboards. The famous and soon-to-be-famous of the avantgarde gathered there to read the latest English newspapers, journals, and books, collect mail, and change money. Habitués of the small shop, other than Joyce and perhaps Wallace and Hamilton, included T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Ernest Hemingway, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, and Paul Valéry.34 Hamilton’s correspondence with the Gold Stripe, her friends, and family offers descriptions of her life in Paris, Arras, Ypres, and out in the field, where she was witness to the remnants of war. Evident is her sense of humour, determination, loyalty, and gratitude. She was often short of funds, dangerously so, and she was hospitalized in Paris and Hertfordshire for indeterminate lengths of time. Although she sometimes appeared to be helpless and disorganized, at other times she managed her affairs with military precision. Her painting expeditions to the battlefields were carefully planned, as was her dispatch of pictures and correspondence back to Canada. Shari Benstock has argued that women’s voices must be heard through their own writing, and it is in this written record that Hamilton’s voice speaks most clearly.35 Less than a month after departing New York, the artist wrote to Margaret Hart to say that official recognition of her arrival in France had been confirmed in a letter of introduction from the Canadian embassy. This piece is only one of several that were written by “High Brows” in Canada and then in France to support her “mission.”36 On 15 April 1919, M. Roy in the Canadian embassy had written, “The Commissioner General for Canada certifies that Mrs. Hamilton is a British subject from Canada and that she lives in Vancouver, B.C. Mrs. Hamilton is engaged in making sketches and pictures in the battle area for publications which are being made under the auspices of one of the ‘Returned Soldiers Associations of Canada.’ Any facilities that will be given to [her] will be greatly appreciated [the text was repeated in French].”37 Less than 89

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a month after the Roy correspondence, Lieutenant Colonel F. Gibson, assistant deputy minister in London, wrote to Hamilton on behalf of his superior, Sir Edward Kemp, minister of the OMFC.38 He said that Kemp was about to depart for Canada, but had asked Gibson to acknowledge her letter and to include one of support for her venture from the Duke of Devonshire (governor general of Canada, 1916–1921).39 Gibson wrote that Kemp was interested in her work and promised that he, or his staff, would help her in any way possible.40 Mary Riter Hamilton arrived in France with the endorsement of the governor general of Canada and the minister of the OMFC. There are traces of Hamilton’s movement from the spring of 1919 to November in her letters to her manager at the Bank of Montreal and to her friends, Margaret Hart and Rosalind Young, in Victoria.41 We know that following her arrival in Paris, she travelled to Arras in the Pas-de-Calais, about 170 kilometres north of the capital. Here, she situated herself in the centre of the war zone, often living in a hut for several days or weeks at a time (Figures 12 and 13), and returned to Paris only intermittently. The French-Flanders northern campaign had been concentrated in this region, battlefield after battlefield—Verdun, Vimy, the Marne, Passchendaele, the Somme, Ypres­—and today, cemetery after cemetery. It is where “the poppies blow, between the crosses, row on row.”42 Mary Hamilton’s correspondence is rich in the details of these early days,43 describing food received from Canada, lodging in Arras, hut life on the battlefields, and her shortage of money. It speaks to her compassion, pragmatism, perceptiveness, self-promotion, and resourcefulness. It is a unique accounting of her activity because, as time went on, she wrote much less. Although her friends became frustrated with her lapses in letter writing, she did little to communicate more frequently. Within a month of her arrival in France, Hamilton sent her first letter to Margaret Hart from Arras, thanking her for the fruitcake that she had received when collecting her mail in Paris. She suspected that the Canadian working in the post office had sampled her cake. Nonetheless, she said that she had enjoyed “a very large piece” after the box had been opened. She continued with a description of her lodging in Arras: “My attic is full of shell holes and the people in the house said it wasn’t fit for a dog to live in. But after doing a little reconstruction of my own, I have made it the best I can and I can do my work. It looks out over a damaged church and a courtyard with a demolished building that had housed old people, and then troops during the war.”44 She noted that if one counted the 90

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number of stove pipes sticking out of windows, it was obvious that families had come to live there, and from the look-outs of her attic roof, she had come to know the children with whom she conversed by waving and throwing kisses across the courtyard. As a lodger, she said that she had learned to be grateful for small things. For example, it was important to eat what was put before one, a “trait” that is necessary in this part of the world, otherwise one might not have anything to eat: “Sometimes it is not an effort, then there are others when it is an efford [sic] for instance when a dish such as the following comes along: meat, onions, potatoes and prunes all boiled together. It not only tastes a bit funny but looks its part and after getting rid of it, one has a feeling of not being quite one’s self.”45 She explained that she was living with a refugee family of which the father was a plasterer, who worked steadily, and the mother and daughter kept the house and did the washing. The son, Leo, had lost his leg in the war. They all lived in the house, which had a kitchen, two bedrooms, and the attic, but it was “strangely planned,” with very small doors so that you had to put down what you were carrying in order to enter. Boxes and furniture had to be moved through the window of the kitchen, the one room where everything was clean and where Hamilton and the family ate. “The attic has been a god-send,” she wrote. The street, she observed, was almost “as tiny” as the door of the house: It is usually filled with poor boys and it is wise to hurry along otherwise you run the chance of getting dirty in clear or dirty water, as they throw their slops out of the windows, a miss is as good as a smile [sic]. One takes their chances. It is an interesting street just the same and I could admire it immensely if I lived elsewhere—but it takes a strong-minded person to live in it and keep up one’s admiration. The drain is so interesting, you throw the slops in one end and it runs out into the street. Just what happens after it arrives there, I’ve not been able to make out—sometimes it gets stopped, and then there is trouble and the odour is a trifle worse than usual—I forgot to mention that there are rabbits, about ten just under my window! The weather is spring-like.46 A month later, she wrote that the lady of the Château in Arras had been very kind, “as I was ill, trying to do too much knowing my time is short.” Hamilton pointed out that she had been able to travel in military cars while the 91

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soldiers attached to the Canadian and British War Graves regiments were still working in the area, but once they left she would have to get around on her own.47 The hut that she had been living in at Camblain l’Abbé had been used as a Mess Room for Lieutenant General Currie and his staff. More intimately: You will remember—my taking that old flannel of yours with me. I wondered at the time why I wanted it but I wonder no longer for it is one of my most precious possessions. I have it pined [sic] around me under my corsets (I have lost so much flesh since leaving British Columbia that a small flannel wraps around me easily). When I am sketching there will be no danger of my taking cold as I seem to have done this last while. The Club [Canadian Forces Club] closes this week and I am still undecided as to where I will live—there is simply no place in the Battle area among the French, poor things they have little or nothing themselves but I must do my work here now or it will be too late everything is being classified, so rapidly.48 In the same month, she wrote to Rosalind Young, and again described the hardships of living out in the field.49 Victoria and her friends there had been very much on her mind, she said: “I feel so ‘keenly’ that it is there I have my friends.” She continued by saying that she couldn’t possibly tell all that had happened to her since she had left Canada, so she would focus on the present: tomorrow I am moving near the front line Vimy Ridge district. There is much work to be done there. So far I have made many sketches and two finished pictures. At the end of July I shall send off my work to the Gold Stripe and will no doubt be in need of a rest for the work is so intense being the nature of it and besides I have had so great distances to go in order to get to it. I wish I could transport you here for one must see it all in order to realize just what this terrible war has done; . . . the sadest [sic] are the isolated crosses. They look so lonely and some of them . . . I cannot think [about] without tears! The ruins are wonderful and paintable, indeed. Canada seems terrible [sic] far away.50

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At the end of July, Hamilton posted a letter to Hart to say that she had sent two parcels by returning troop ships—a German helmet and water bottle in the first, and in the second a large German shell. “People are stealing everything,” she said. “No one respects another’s property.”51 She went on to describe how difficult it was to live out in the field—she had lost weight, her housing was uncertain, and she was lonely. Even so, by now, she had completed a number of paintings, and she had dispatched them to the Gold Stripe, including: Mont Saint-Eloi, 1919 (Plate 17); Villiers-au-Bois [sic], 1919 (Plate 15);52 and Gun Locations, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, 1919 (Plate 22).53 Marguerite Helmers notes how Hamilton named these places, using “rhetorical artifacts” as a way of invoking memory and documenting action.54 A photograph (Figure 14) of Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, seems to be the exact site of the painting Gun Locations, suggesting that Hamilton may have painted from photographs taken out on the field and not just from sketches.

Figure 14. Gun locations, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge, 1919. 93

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The harsh reality of stripped trees and crosses in the British cemetery as depicted in Mont Saint-Eloi is offset by the rich colours of Villiers-au-Bois [sic] and the blue sky in Gun Locations. All of the above paintings, though, exhibit imprecise drawing and a loose and heavy application of paint—a style more like that of the Impressionists and the Post-Impressionists than the careful composition of Easter Morning, created over a decade earlier. War art that shows similarities to Hamilton’s changing style and use of colour can be found in the works of two official war artists: Maurice Cullen’s Camblain l’Abbé, 1918, and The Sunken Road, Hangard, 1918 (Plate 21),55 and A.Y. Jackson’s A Copse, Evening, 1918 (Plate 20). Hamilton’s The Return Home, 1919 (Plate 18),56 an image of soldiers aboard a Canadian troop carrier (either the Olympic or Aquitania) en route home, has been paired with A.Y. Jackson’s Entrance to Halifax Harbour, 1919 (Plate 23), in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Nonetheless, Gammel points out that Hamilton’s interpretation of the war zones was unique compared to those commissioned by the CWMF in that it was “retrospective (after the war), immersive (painted on site) and modernist (offered a woman’s perspective and portrayed not only the destruction of war but also the humanity and renewal of war).”57 Hamilton continued her description of painting en plein air in the battlefields when writing to her Victoria bank manager, Mr. Taylor: I have been having quite an interesting but strenuous experience. After the closing of the Canadian Club at Camblain l’Abbé, I moved further up the line and have been living in the destroyed village of Ablain, Saint-Nazaire, which has been quite shut off from all Canadians as there is no means of transport in this part and I have been without a car. The village is just at the foot of Vimy Ridge and I live and eat in huts built by the Canadians; in fact, everything is interesting . . . in and around that part of the battle area. While it is splendid to be there, it is quite impossible to live for long in this area—owing to food and other facilities. Colonel Bovey who is in charge of Canadians in France advised me to move back where there were still a few Canadians left, so when I return in a few days, it will only be for a short time, until I get my things together. There are about

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eighty thousand Chinese with the British [helping to clear the areas of conflict].58 Her correspondence in this period is strikingly evocative and literate. Later her letters are less descriptive, brief, and with little content. Indeed, the expression in some is quite confused. These early epistles, though, reveal many of the challenges that the artist faced living alone out in the battered countryside—danger, cold and loneliness, shortage of food and money, and unreliable transport and shelter. By the end of July 1919, Hamilton had already begun to express her frustration with delays in the post. Writing to Hart, she said: “I really had concluded that I must ‘fight’ this thing out alone—for I had not had a line from anyone in Victoria since I left—until I got your letters. It takes a whole month for the post to reach you and another for it to come to me.”59 She acknowledged she had received money sent by Hart and admitted that for the time being she would not feel as stranded as before: “I have much to tell you but I suppose I got to feel that no-one cared so haven’t written to anyone since I moved from the Canadian Club at Camblain l’Abbé.”60 The Hamilton-Hart correspondence not only exposed the artist’s life in the French war zone, but also her financial arrangements with Hart, the Bank of Montreal in Victoria, and the Banque nationale in Paris. The artist had a small commission of an unknown amount from the Amputation Club, and one assumes some savings from her work in Victoria. One also learns later that she had hoped to sell properties that she held in Victoria and in Winnipeg, and shares in the Canadian Pacific Railway (she may have made these investments as beneficiary of her husband’s estate).61 Unfortunately, no hard figures are available to confirm her finances, but it seems that she knew before leaving Canada that paintings and other assets would have to be sold in order to support herself while in France. Before departing, Hamilton had asked Hart to help manage her money. In principle their system was to work as follows: Hamilton had stored her paintings in Hart’s home in Victoria. Once in Paris, if she needed money, Hart was to sell one or more paintings and to deposit the funds received into the artist’s Victoria bank account. Hart was then to create cards that identified the paintings and their sale price, and they were to be sent to Hamilton in France. The artist was to acknowledge the sales by signing the cards and returning them to Hart. Once Hart had the artist’s confirmation of the sale, she was to transfer 95

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the money requested by Hamilton by registered letter or telegram to the artist’s account at the Banque nationale in Paris. Although workable in principle, in practice the system quickly collapsed because of a lost registered letter and the décalage between Hamilton’s confirmation of sales and her daily needs. As early as June 1919, Hamilton warned her Victoria bank manager that she was short of cash, and she said that since leaving for France she had not heard whether any of her paintings or properties had been sold.62 By mid-July, over $1,000 had been converted to francs and remitted to her French account.63 At the end of the month Hamilton acknowledged receipt of the money, but said that she was not sure whether it had been sent by the bank manager or Hart—a common confusion due to inefficient communication, the distances, and postal delays. These misunderstandings run like a thread through her financial correspondence and illustrate her suffering caused by inadequate resources: “It is quite terrible to be without money in the devastated area, as one is absolutely without help. When I got down to ten American dollars, that no one wanted, I had to walk ten miles to get to a station in order to take the train . . . here [to Paris].”64 Between August and November, three more letters further illuminate the limitations of the artist’s financial system, when money sent by Hart went through the Parisian branch of the Royal Bank of Canada and not the Bank of Montreal, as arranged. The Royal Bank had no record of Hamilton, who did not have an account. A year later, she received the money that had been sent in the autumn of 1919.65 Yet, despite her precarious financial situation, life continued. In December she was invited to share Christmas dinner with demobilizing Canadian troops, as revealed in this menu: Headquarters ‘B’ Group, Cemetery Caretakers Branch, D. G. R. & E., No. 1 District Menu for Christmas Dinner, France, 1919 Tomato soup, Salmon fish cakes, Roast beef and Yorkshire pudding, Roast chicken, mashed potatoes, Brussels sprouts, Plum pudding with white sauce and rum sauce, Cheese, apples, nuts, tangerines and Cigarettes. Red wine and Beers.66 Further records are not available from this seemingly special occasion—a female artist at table with Canadian soldiers to celebrate Christmas. 96

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While Hamilton was painting in France, and later in Belgium, she promoted her work so that it appeared in Canada in the Gold Stripe, newspaper articles, and exhibitions.67 In October 1919, she wrote to Mrs. J.W. McTavish in Miami, Manitoba, thanking her for copies of a magazine article, likely from the May issue of the Gold Stripe, that had featured her painting: “I am delighted with the article, and wish to express my appreciation—and hope I shall prove worthy of the interest you have taken in my work—it is, I assure you, a great incentive to go on. I enclose a list of names. Will you kindly have copies of the magazine sent to these addresses. I am very proud to show my friends [in France] what a high class magazine we have in Canada.”68 Near the end of the year, the Gold Stripe published a companion piece, “An Artist Impressionist on the Battlefields of France,” which included coloured reproductions, excerpts from Hamilton’s letters to the magazine, and the observations of J.E.M. Bruce, who wrote that the artist was: making records in paint of that portion of the front line in France held by the Canadian Corps. Mrs. Hamilton has undertaken to transcribe, while the terrain is still unaltered by reconstruction activities, the actual ground over which Canadian soldiers struggled with the enemy. The pictures already received, painted by the artist in the neighbourhood of Vimy Ridge and Arras, give by their careful drawing and vigorous colour, such an impression of the actual wartime appearance of the historic places depicted, as could not be given in any other way than by the artist’s brush. No camera could tell the story told by these oil paintings, which are transcripts of both the colour and form of places like Vimy Ridge.69 Further, Bruce emphasized that Hamilton’s paintings were “not studio products made from sketches” but were painted by a witness to the destruction. He wrote that in spite of the conditions under which she worked, the pictures were “well painted by an artist with adequate technical equipment.” Nonetheless, he cautioned that her pictures would be evaluated more as documentary accounts rather than as works of art.70 Hamilton instinctively seemed to balance human misery with its archival record. She wanted to get the horrific details right: “I am glad to have seen [Vimy Ridge] under hard conditions, for I want to get the spirit of it. I feel 97

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that it is fortunate that I arrived before it is too late to get a real impression. The changes are taking place rapidly, even in the short time I have been here. In another few months there will be very little trace of war.”71 She was resolute: “It is mightly cold and uncomfortable, but I intend remaining until I finish the work I came here to do. It has been intensely interesting . . . but on the other hand I have had hardships such as no one could imagine while away from all help and living among the peasants, walking many miles, doing without food because I have been unable to eat the food they offered me, which was cooked in some vile fat.”72 The Gold Stripe, the Vancouver Daily World, and the Western Women’s Weekly all published photographs of the artist out on the French battlefields. Hamilton’s picture was taken near Arras for the Vancouver Daily World, with the famous sugar refinery of Souchez and Vimy Ridge clearly in the background. The accompanying text announced that an exhibition of her war paintings would soon be shown in Vancouver.73 A few days after the Daily World article, the Western Women’s Weekly picked up on Hamilton’s work for the Gold Stripe and included a photograph taken the previous June by the ruined church of Ablain, Saint-Nazaire, showing her in a car with a military driver. Readers were promised that reproductions of her paintings would appear in colour in the next edition. And they did.74 Within months of her return to France, Hamilton’s war paintings were exhibited in Vancouver and Victoria, thanks to Paton and the Amputation Club, the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), the BC legislature, and the Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS).75 The first show was mounted in Vancouver before the appearance of the Christmas edition of the Gold Stripe.76 The IODE sponsored the second, which opened in April 1920, and the Province in Vancouver reported that several of the paintings that had appeared in the magazine were now on display in the Navy League building: “Mrs. Hamilton on reaching France was faced with many difficulties in the carrying out of her mission, but she was not daunted, and the large number of sketches she has completed testify to her courage and energy.”77 A few days later, the Province described the opening of the show by Brigadier General Victor Odlum78 as “a dignified little ceremony,” with standard bearers of all chapters of the Vancouver IODE filing in and standing in line with their flags at attention during the playing and singing of the national anthem. Odlum introduced the proceedings by telling the story of Vimy Ridge. The public then had an opportunity to view 98

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the paintings while being entertained throughout the afternoon by piano selections and, as a final touch, a raffle for a Hamilton sketch.79 Ten days later, by special request of the provincial government, an exhibition was held in the library of the British Columbia legislature in Victoria. Paton had brought more than sixty of Hamilton’s paintings and sketches from Vancouver: “The pictures are unique in more ways than one,” he said. “They are not, as some might imagine, gloomy and depressing war pictures. They are records, rather of the battle area, as it looked after the armistice and before rehabilitation and reconstruction.”80 After a few weeks, the exhibition moved from the Legislative Library to the IACS.81 The lieutenant-governor opened the show and the Daily Colonist evoked the horrific in its review: “The tragedy of war and the toll exacted in ruined homes, devastated villages, shell-torn churches and dreary landscapes is graphically told in these pictures, and returned men who have seen them declare that they do not in any way exaggerate conditions in the war areas.”82 In the same period, correspondence in 1920 between Hamilton and Hart sheds more light on the details of the artist’s life, including her failing health and ongoing aggravation over money. Hamilton sent letters to Hart in February, May, and September. In mid-February, she wrote from Ypres, Belgium. She explained that she had not written since July 1919 because it had been difficult to find affordable accommodation and she had been doing some work for the Montreal Red Cross. She explained that she had stayed briefly at the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) at Cambrai, France, close to the Belgian border, which was being used as a Foyer des soldats: “I was in there for all the time and writing was simply impossible besides I had no place to write in.”83 Now she said she was staying at a hotel in Ypres, where the food was better, as she waited to get “a little hut” where she could have a fire. She wrote: But it is costing me far too much, simple things are expensive and I could hardly call it luxury at all where I have been in Arras . . . the Somme, and . . . the North. I had more meat to eat in one day than I would have had in a week at Arras and I feel much stronger so that my health is improved greatly. I do not get as tired as I did. And this place too wonderful and terrible—yes— but beautiful. I hope to do something worthwhile as in the

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surrounding country, it is simply one hudge [sic] cemetery. I must not begin to write about it.84 She also told of her “apple job” for the Montreal Red Cross—a “big undertaking” and “a great responsibility.” With the help of the military she had delivered “a car load” of Canadian apples to children in twenty-six villages in the most devastated areas. In gratitude, letters and photographs had been sent to her by the children, their teachers, and parents, which she treasured “as my most precious souvenirs of my War Work—they seem to make a fitting finale.” Mrs. Rawson of the Montreal Red Cross had also acknowledged her help: “I think the very small amount of material benefit we have been able to render is rather negligible but the possibilities arising from the sympathetic cord you have woven may have far reaching effects in the future.”85 On a more sombre note, Hamilton was anxious about her CPR shares. She had given them to her bank manager, but had not kept a paper copy of the transaction: “[N]ow I regret that I did not have it [the stock] made over to you [Hart], for in that way I should feel alright about it.” She asked her friend if she would oversee the investment. On another matter, she confirmed that she had finally received over 1000 francs loaned to her by Hart some months earlier.86 With gratitude she wrote, “I think it is simply too wonderfully kind of you . . . to want me to take this money. I accept it with a heart full of thanks—it means so much to me now for I do want to do the work that is to be done here, and I only hope that I will be able to make good and not disappoint you who have trusted me, it certainly will be a great help and make things so much easier for me. I cannot begin to tell you how much I appreciate the assistance.”87 To make good the loan, she promised to paint a portrait of Colonel Edward Hart, and wrote, “I insist that you sit for me as well—you know that I’ve always wanted to paint a portrait of you and now more than ever. My candle is almost burnt out so I will close. Your dearest friend, Mary Hamilton.”88 Three months later she wrote again, this time from Arras, in pencil, as ink was no longer available: “I cannot think of allowing you to accept my old pictures [in return for the loan] and never intended otherwise than that you should choose from the [battlefield] pictures already sent. I am at present doing special ones—but in any case you . . . must have your choice—for you have made it possible with your help for me to do the work. I do not know that I

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have accomplished anything worthwhile but whatever I have done your help has made it possible.”89 More personally, she continued: I hate you to be worried [about] my affairs. I think it was dear of you to forward the money and I am truly grateful [as] it will come in food now and enable me to go on a bit longer, though I fear I must give up for a time. My heart has given me pain . . . but it is not to be wondered at for I have been working under hard conditions now for over a year and I really cannot go on without a little rest and change in fact I have kept going much too long as it is. When I should go for this much needed rest—I do not know in any case I will try to stick it a bit longer.90 In addition to her deteriorating health, she was exasperated with the banks, especially the Royal Bank when it said that it would give her the money sent by Hart a year earlier, but at the 1919 rate of exchange, and not that of 1920: I do not feel . . . I could possibly write nor had any reason for thinking that [the Royal Bank] had accepted any money for me so their excuse is a very lame one that I did not write and ask for it! Gladly should I have done so for never in all my life have I been in such desperate need as I was. I also told the accountant this and I also told him that I thought their Bank could stand the loss of exchange. You see it would be four thousand francs now instead of two. Banks are hard nuts to crack. I told him that I would write you my side of the story.91 Regrettably, we do not have Hart’s reply. In September 1920, Hamilton wrote again: “It was so very fine at Ypres that I feel sure I shall be able to do some good work as it’s even more inspiring than . . . France.”92 She explained that she had been in the Somme Valley and at Cambrai, Pas-de-Calais. Finding transport and lodging continued to be difficult, though, as she said, “I carry as little as possible.” And money was running out again: “My little pile is getting dangerously low with the . . . cost of materials for my work and living. It will soon disappear I fear all too soon . . . I have just returned from one of these trips [sketching] and I didn’t even have a night [shirt]. I slept in my blouse and underskirt and for two days I couldn’t even get a wash.”93

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Figure 15. Ypres (Menin Gate), c. April–May 1919.

Some of Hamilton’s best-known pictures were painted in the Ypres Salient, a triangular piece of town land, occupied by the Germans from 1914.94 Early in the war, the town of Ypres was demolished under constant German attack, as can be seen in a contemporary photograph, Ypres (Menin Gate) (Figure 15).95 Hamilton captured the desolation in Market Among the Ruins of Ypres, 1920 (Plate 19), where she used broad brush strokes of grey and gunmetal blue. In the midst of town and cathedral relics, a small cluster of blackgarbed market vendors and shoppers go about their business under white awnings sheltering colourful vegetables. In the lower foreground, a cemetery. Life and death—the twin themes of her war collection. The Sadness of the Somme, c. 1920 (Plate 24), is executed in pale greys, browns, and beiges, yet she entices the viewer to follow a winding road leading to light at the top of the picture.96 Sanctuary Wood, Flanders, 1920 (Plate 25), depicts despair in its dried, dead remains of what were once living trees, but the ragged trunks in muted greys and browns also have thickly applied patches of white. They rise against a sky with hints of blue and green. From the dark interest in the foreground, Hamilton once more leads us towards the light. Catherine Speck 102

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has written that Hamilton and the international group of women war artists, including Evelyn Chapman and Olive Mudie-Cooke, who went out into the field offered a “raw and immediate portrayal” of commemorative space. Yet Hamilton and Chapman, in particular, also showed Belgians going about their daily tasks in a “modest attempt to start life amid the ruins.”97 Several months after these paintings were completed, in the spring of 1921 Hamilton wrote to Hart from her room in an old folks’ home in Brussels. She described living in a battlefield hut: The first days were rather damp and wet—so I had a return of my rhumtism [sic] a very bad time and am still feeling it. Then last week was warmer and not so wet and besides I got a mattress. I was going to do without one they cost a lot—but I found I was obliged to have one. Otherwise, I shouldn’t have got—on at all. Everything is so terribly [expensive] it seems impossible to pay the prices my painting materials cost so much, too much. I have a perfect horror of being without money as I was in 1919.98 She continued to explain that while in Belgium she had painted Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle, 1920 (Plate 26), “where so many of these gallant men are laid to rest—I so often wish that I could do more of these cemeteries before they change the crosses for head stones.”99 In Hamilton’s painting, white chalky crosses rise from a casually drawn muddy base and are set against a leaden sky. Yet, even here in this tableau of death and ruin, there is some life and hope in a few patches of fresh spring grass and yellow flowers. A second letter to Hart was written during this time, but without date or location. The text is confused and suggests that the artist was physically ill or, at the very least, critically anxious about her situation: I hate to trouble you. I owe you such a debt of gratitude to say nothing of the material art—that if I lived to be a thousand I never can repay. I do think it was too wonderful of your Club [University Women’s Club] to do what they have done and—I can never—sufficiently thank or express my appreciation. It was too wonderful that—so much trouble and thought has been given to my effort—I do hope that you have had a reply and that 103

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something will be done about the collection. I personally—do not mind the cramped position I am in but—I confess that it—would be a hardship to see them [the pictures] lost. I should be so glad to hear from you . . . I am touched beyond expression. I’m most frightfully homesick so much so that I cannot write without crying so please excuse a “disjointed letter” written through tears.100 Despite little other exchange between the two women in this period, there are scattered bits of communication with family members that depict Hamilton’s state of mind and financial need. Interviews and newspaper reports detail some of her French exhibitions. Bertie Currie, Hamilton’s niece in Calgary, wrote three letters. The first expressed relief that, at last, she had heard from the artist.101 In the second Currie writes, “My heart is very, very full of love for you as I ponder over your dear letter, and I’m watching and praying for you, dear. May God protect your dear life from the dangers you are facing right now.”102 Hamilton had written that she wanted Currie to have her paintings and “things,” should she not return to Canada, implying that illness or death might be imminent. She included a handkerchief and a card with a prayer: “God is all, in all: there is none but God”—a rare and personal glimpse into her faith. In the third, Currie congratulated her aunt on the apple project, but scolded her for not informing the Belgian consulate of her whereabouts.103 Hamilton’s brotherin-law in Toronto also wrote to the artist in reply to a postcard from Zoonebeke, Belgium, site of the Menin Gate cemetery, where Hamilton had been painting. He noted that, although he had not heard from her in years, he would do as she asked and try to find Maternity, which had been stored in Mr. Townsend’s parlour since her 1911 exhibition.104 Undoubtedly, Hamilton hoped to sell the painting, if it could be found.105 Interviews with the artist and newspaper reports provide further information about exhibits of her paintings in the Salons: Market Among the Ruins of Ypres was shown in 1922 at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris; and The Cloth Hall, Ypres and Le Plateau de Notre-Dame de Lorette en 1919 at Versailles in 1923 or 1924.106 Art historian Terresa McIntosh has written that Hamilton “as a female artist was no less capable or unwilling to deal with the strong and sometimes distasteful imagery of war than a male artist.”107 She argues that, within the CWMF’s regulations regarding women artists, it was 104

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impossible for them to ever prove their potential for painting soldiers in combat. Hamilton, though, had come closest, she says, as she worked in the battle regions immediately following the conflict. The most significant and memorable display of Hamilton’s paintings came in June 1922, when her war art was shown in the foyer of the Paris Opera House. The exhibition was to celebrate the Allied victory at the Second Battle of the Somme, 21 March to 4 April 1918—the battle that ended the Western Front.108 Les Champs de Batailles de la Somme was organized to raise funds for a memorial to be erected in Amiens, and it was opened by M. Léon Bérard, French minister of public instruction and fine arts. Mary Riter Hamilton, Canadian artist, was awarded the purple ribbon of Les Palmes Académiques, the Order of Public Instruction.109 This was the highest French distinction, short of the Legion of Honour.110 In his remarks, Bérard said that another link had been forged binding France to Canada, and President Klotz of the General Council of the Somme congratulated Hamilton for having had the courage to paint in a very dangerous region.111

Figure 16. Mary Riter Hamilton in a battlefield cemetery, 1919–22. 105

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The next day a Parisian English-language newspaper reported on the “Plan of the Allied Memorial Now Showing at the Opera”—a model of the memorial setup against a backdrop of Hamilton’s explicitly vivid paintings of the Somme Valley. And in Canada, the Ottawa Morning Journal picked up the news: “Canadian Artist is Highly Praised: Mrs. Hamilton Has Pictures in Somme Exhibition.”112 The Paris show garnered international recognition, such as in a New York newspaper article by journalist Frederick G. Falla, who interviewed Hamilton in her attic studio at 3 rue Joseph Bara, near the Luxembourg Gardens. Falla identified a “ghostly” character to the Hamilton pictures that gave them a spiritual quality, reminding him of the “tragic and glorious events they recall,” as in A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres, 1921 (Plate 28), Evening on the Belgian Front, n.d. (Plate 27), and Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders, 1921 (Plate 29). The shades of blue and the impressionistic drawing of both paintings are reminiscent of Monet’s work at Giverny. Falla observed that, “Among the women who have most enduringly written their name on the history of the war, there are few whose record is likely to last longer or stir more deeply the imagination of future generations than the one created by Mary Riter Hamilton. . . . How many wives, mothers and sisters will obtain from her paintings made before spring smiled again on the wilderness of the dead, their only vision of that corner of the world on which their loved ones looked for the last time!” He added, “‘I cannot talk. I can only paint,’ she had said demurely.”113 Yet, Hamilton was forthcoming about her gift of apples for the children of the Somme and she detailed her work near the cemeteries where Chinese labourers had buried the dead. She told of how she went out alone, how she ground her own colours, and how often she was short of food. She had painted as long as the light lasted and then would retire to her “flimsy [canvas] tent” with no source of heat. She claimed that she had “worked for hours in a shell hole with a body in it.” She told of how the territory around Arras had been populated by “hooligans” running over the land at night and how, every once in a while, shots rang out. As Falla writes, “A woman friend from Paris, who once spent a night with her in these lugubrious surroundings, hurried back to civilization in horror when she realized the nightmare perils of a woman alone in such a situation.”114 When questioned about the difficulties and hardship of her work, the artist responded that it had been important for her to go into the regions of war “to get a real impression . . . if I did not come at once, it would be too late, because the battlefields would be obliterated, and places watered with the best 106

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blood of Canada might be only names and memories. . . . I did not come on any official mission, I had to come” (Figure 16). Hamilton refused to comment on how she had been financed in Europe, leading Falla to comment, there is no reason why the public should not be told that Mrs. Hamilton is not a “wealthy amateur” but a professional who has freely given three years of her life to make what the French art critics consider the most impressive record that has been made of the aftermath of the war. Only artists and experts are competent to estimate the extent of Mrs. Hamilton’s sacrifice. I can say, however, that . . . there is something peculiar about the fact that it was made by a solitary woman artist at her own expense, without hope or expectation of reward. The French government has recognized the nobility of her beau geste— and the artistic merit of her work—by conferring on her the decoration of Officier de l’Académie.115 Within the same month, the New York Times (European edition) published “With the Artists,” a notice of Hamilton’s show held at the Simonson Galleries, 19 rue Caumartin, just off the boulevard des Capucines, in Paris. Pictures had been selected to evoke the atmosphere of Arras, Ypres, Dixmude, and Menin, as seen in First Boat to Arrive at Arras after the Armistice, 1920 (Plate 30), Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold), 1920 (Plate 31), and Menin Road, British Cemetery, c. 1920 (Plate 32).116 The blues of First Boat once again take the viewer back to Giverny. Hamilton’s application of colour in Minoterie and Menin Road provides a stunning contrast to the stark quality of her earlier paintings. Life and growth are obvious and there is even a sense of movement in the trees and river in First Boat, more than a hint of green grass on the hill in Minoterie, and a near riot of colour in the yellows and greens of Menin Road. Near the end of September, a Canadian paper reiterated the news of Hamilton’s award and wrote that Market Among the Ruins of Ypres had been shown in the April Salon, and that Lady Patricia Ramsay, daughter of the governor general, had purchased some of the artist’s paintings.117 Earlier in 1922, there were several articles about Hamilton’s exhibitions and work in the field. In a letter to Hart written on 20 June, Hamilton enclosed newspaper clippings about the April Salon as well as the Somme Memorial 107

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show, “which will let you know better than I can how my work has been received here.” She continued by saying that she hoped the Amputation Club would set a fair price on the battlefield pictures. More optimistic, as at last she had received approbation, she thanked her friend for her financial and moral support: “I never could have had the courage. . . . Had I not had an ideal.” She wanted Hart to have “the satisfaction of knowing that [I] seem to have made good.” “I am not selling pictures though I do need the money—but shall . . . save them for the purpose I told you of [to record for posterity the fields where Canadians died].” 118 Hamilton was at the high point of her career. However, the publicity around her pictures for the April Somme Memorial exhibition and the Simonson Galleries masked the harsh reality of her meagre resources. Within a few months, the artist was insolvent again and her correspondence for the next two years revealed the urgency of her situation. In February 1923, Hamilton sent a cable to Hart: “Sell pictures at half price and less if necessary.”119 To guide her friend, she included some prices: Maternity at F 2,500 ($416),120 Mother Superior at F 1,000, At the Window at F 1,500, and Wine Cellar at F 750. “I’m in need—desperate need, and they must go for what you can get for them.”121 That same month, she asked Hart to sell her Victoria real estate at half the price she had paid for it ($2,400), and if a sale were impossible, then to take out a mortgage. The transactions were never completed.122 Hamilton’s distress was palpable: “You see I owe for part of the framing of the pictures [1922 exhibitions] and the bill has been outstanding for a year; the people are pressing me for the money and unless I can know something definite soon I fear I will lose my pictures, [just] as they are becoming important.”123 She said that she had told her creditors she had written to Hart and, sympathetically, they had agreed to hold off until there was a reply. Stoically she wrote, “Please do not hesitate to tell me if nothing can be done as it is better for me to know the worst and face it. I have had rather bad attacks with my heart lately and worry perhaps more than [I] might. I also know that my friends would be glad to buy my pictures, if they could, but when they can’t, well the thing cannot be done. Please let me know as the situation is urgent. I don’t owe for anything else, as I simply do without.”124 Doing without, especially without food, was by now a well-established pattern that would characterize her old age. Within days of receiving the cable, Hart acknowledged the value of the paintings. Hamilton replied: “My financial situation is about as bad as it can be and is not—so much a cause for me to worry as it should have been had I 108

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received a letter from you saying that you thought the pictures not worthwhile.” Then in a further explanation of her penniless state, she also admitted to selling her CPR shares: “I’ve nothing and here I am!”125 In an effort to help, Hart put some of Hamilton’s earlier pictures into the Victoria Guild in the hope of sales. It is not clear, though, whether any were sold. A few days later, the artist sent a detailed description of the calamities that had befallen her since leaving Flanders for Paris the previous October. She confessed to not being able to cope with the hardship of living out in the field. She had become ill and was unable to work. Indeed, she had lost the sight of one eye during this period. Then, in a spirit of optimism: “But I am not going to die so there is no need for anyone to feel gloomy about it.”126 Help was forthcoming from Bertie Currie, who knew about Hamilton’s illness and shortage of money. Currie said she had been in touch with Judge and Mrs. Winter and had encouraged them to sell Goose Girl, one of many Hamilton paintings hanging in their Calgary home. Accordingly, the Winters promised to dispatch the money from the sale to Hamilton immediately.127 In Paris, assistance was also on hand. Hamilton wrote that although her artist friends wanted her to exhibit her paintings, she did not feel up to it: “At present I cannot see anyway clear.” On a more positive note, though, she reported that a year earlier one of her friends had rented a small attic studio for her, on rue Joseph Bara:128 “While it is [simple] it seems like a palace to me after my living in a canvas hut for so long and it seems wonderful to have a fire and hot water.”129 In response to Hart’s dispatch of fifty dollars to pay for the picture frames, Hamilton wrote, “I cannot thank you enough and begin to tell you what a heavy load [has been] lifted off my shoulder.”130 She also thanked Hart for trying to persuade Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Arctic explorer, to take up her cause. Stefansson, in turn, had contacted a friend in Montreal, who, when he heard about the artist’s predicament, had said that he would buy up all of the pictures she was in danger of losing. Hamilton replied, “You can imagine my surprise and also my appreciation of so serious an offer.”131 But she refused. Unwaveringly, she said she would place her pictures in the public domain. By the end of July 1923, Hart had sent enough money to ward off the peril of Hamilton losing her pictures. Yet, in September, Katharine Watson of Pasadena, California, arrived in Paris and found Hamilton seriously undernourished and mentally unstable. The California woman was the sister of Adele Watson, an art student friend of Hamilton.132 Katharine Watson met with Hamilton 109

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“nearly every day,” and her correspondence reveals that she, her friends, and family members all had been supporting the artist. Their female network stretched from Paris to New York, to Pasadena, and to Victoria. While in Paris, Watson learned of the Hamilton-Hart friendship, and she “took the liberty of jotting down the Hart address.” Once she returned to Pasadena, Watson wrote to Hart, on 29 November, to tell her of “the desperate situation in which [she] had found [Hamilton].” She began by saying that, a year earlier, her sister and mother had also visited Hamilton, and they, too, had found her wanting. In an effort to help her out financially, they had purchased some paintings. The next year, when Katharine Watson arrived in Paris, Hamilton was “literally starving”: She had a little money left [but] I think she was so frightened that she dared not spend enough to more than keep her alive. She was living on potatoes, onions, and tea. She took one or two meals with me nearly every day and it was pathetic to see how ravenous she was. Before I left I learned that at one time she had only a franc and a half in the world, when help came from some quarter. She told the friend who was with me that this experience terrified her so that even when she had a little money she was afraid to spend a sou more than she had to, to keep alive. She looked so poverty stricken, so haggard and distressed that I realized very soon that she must be assured of the means to live for a few months at least, and also that she must have some decent clothes in which she could appear before she could hope to find employment. She seemed so broken and worn out body and soul that I spoke much more confidently to her than I felt myself.133 Watson continued to say that her sister, a friend, and she had provided just enough money to buy food for Hamilton. They also tried to sell some paintings, such as “small oil sketches of Ypres.” Moreover, she wrote: “All she asks for is work, but she is so typically artistic in temperament and lack of practical ability that it is a difficult problem.”134 Hamilton had raised the possibility of finding employment in a girls’ school, but Watson had advised that she would be more successful if she returned to Canada. Watson said that she would try to sell some more pictures, but if she were unable to find buyers, then she would 110

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send Hamilton a monthly allowance to try to keep her going. She asked Hart to contact the artist’s friends in Canada so they, too, might help. She then asked questions that would arise again after Hamilton had returned to Canada: Is there any possibility of her receiving a pension from the government? Have you any societies or associations which have funds to be used for even temporary assistance in such a case? If no other means can be found are there not people who will at least join with us in helping her until some solution of the problem is found? It is very tragic, very humiliating to Mrs. Hamilton to be in her present situation but there she is, and surely some way can be found which will not be too bitterly hard for her to accept, by which she can live without losing her self-respect. My own sympathy for her is very deep.135 Watson sent another letter to Hart on 1 February 1924. She said that Hamilton had written to her from the YMCA, at the end of the year, to say that she had been ill and hospitalized again.136 Further, a mutual friend in Paris had told her that Hamilton “thought that people in the apartment house had poisoned her.” Hamilton’s fear of poisoning would become a chronic complaint over the next decades. Her delusions may have been prompted by mental illness or, more likely, dietary deficiencies. Watson was worried that Hamilton would be forced to leave her flat as she was in such discomfort, according to her friend, “and the odour was very unpleasant. One wouldn’t think that such a thing could happen,” she wrote, “but I have been assured that a low class concierge is capable of anything.” Nonetheless, I think that a “change of environment is absolutely essential to prevent her mind from giving way under the strain of these real or imagined evils.” She said that her sister and another friend in New York wanted to discuss the “problem” of caring for Hamilton; in Watson’s opinion, though, she thought it best that Hamilton stay in Paris with the help of friends there. She concluded by saying that she had sent a small money order to her apartment, but she worried that Hamilton might not be there to receive it and there might not be a forwarding address. The Pasadena woman’s plea roused Hamilton’s friends in Victoria. In early February 1924, even before the arrival of Watson’s second letter, the Daily 111

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Colonist printed “Canadian Art,” an article about the prospect of building a National Gallery in Ottawa and collecting works by Canadian artists. The journalist unabashedly promoted Hamilton: “If the Gallery is to serve its real purpose it is surely to encourage Canadian artists as well as to foster art among Canadians. . . . In this connection the hope may be expressed that the directors will take steps to secure some of the pictures by the well-known Canadian artist, Mary Riter Hamilton.”137 In an effort to elicit a sympathetic response from his readers, he wrote: France has not been unappreciative of Mrs. Hamilton’s work [implying that Canada was]. All Frenchmen knew what the devastated area looked like at the end of the war, and they paid this Canadian artist the compliment of decorating her with the purple ribbon of the Order of Public Instruction on her return from the wilderness and her wonderful pictorial record of that part of the front defended by her countrymen. Mrs. Hamilton is the only Canadian artist who has been so honoured by France, so it is surely not asking the Canadian National Gallery too much to ask its directors to consider the purchase of the whole or part of this incomparable collection, which quite apart from the personality of the artist, should be coveted for the place it occupies in the pictorial history of Canada’s part in the Great War.138 The University Women’s Club of Victoria also became involved. President Rosalind Young said that, on behalf of the club, she would write to Sir Edmund Walker, chairman of the National Gallery Committee, and she asked Dr. S.F. Tolmie, a Victoria member of parliament, to guarantee the letter would travel through the “proper channels.” It would carry the signatures of officers of the club, and it would be endorsed by “other influential societies and citizens who were zealous for the promotion of art”: “We understand on good authority, that [Hamilton’s] war pictures are cased and are at No. 1 Marble Arch, London, England, and in grave danger of being lost to the Canadian nation. Such a loss would be incalculable. We beg you . . . as chairman of the National Gallery Committee, to take immediate action so that these war pictures may be preserved for succeeding generations of Canadians.”139 A month later, Hamilton granted Margaret Hart power of attorney so that her paintings could be sold without waiting for confirmation of the sale from France should a buyer like

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the National Gallery express an interest. Significantly, monies received could be sent immediately to the artist in Paris.140 In Paris, more support for the artist came in early April when Lieutenant Colonel F.A. Robertson, chairman of the British Columbia Returned Soldier Commission, wrote to Margaret Hart. He said that, having heard about the artist’s dilemma, he had contacted Paton and the Amputation Club to find out whether there were Hamilton paintings that could be sold.141 Paton had replied saying that he had a number, including those executed before 1919, “as well as the bulk of the pictures painted by her during her first year abroad since the war. [But] the war pictures are mainly of an exhibition nature and in themselves would not sell readily.”142 He believed that the whole collection might have been purchased, as an historical record, when it was shown in the Victoria legislature, four years earlier, but there had not been a buyer. He expressed his concern and promised Robertson he would send a list of all of the paintings in his possession, “new and old.” He wrote, “I would like very much to see her realize something for her effort. The sketches sent from overseas were painted so soon after the war as to make them valuable in a way from that standpoint. In addition, the conditions under which she lived while doing this work should not be overlooked.”143 Although Robertson and Paton seemed committed to assist, it is not clear whether they were successful in making any sales. Help was also available from another quarter. On 9 April 1924 the artist’s brother-in-law, William (Willard) Hamilton, contacted her to say that he had heard from an acquaintance in New York that there might be as many as 1,000 of her paintings for sale. He pointed out that “some arrangement should be made for the display of these pictures in Canada.” He acknowledged the cost of shipping, but cautiously asked Hamilton whether she had any plan to sell or exhibit her work: “You had some experience in this connection when displaying your pictures some years ago [in the 1911 Toronto exhibition] and wondered if you had thought at all of endeavouring to repeat the experience.”144 But there is no evidence that she followed his suggestions. Nonetheless, by the summer of 1924, conditions had improved temporarily, due in part to the kindness of Hamilton’s friends and in part to her own initiative, yet she was still short of funds. On 12 July she explained to Hart why she had not written for the better part of a year. She thanked her friend for sending money with her letter of October 1923 and she admitted that she had not replied because she had been suffering from headaches: “I really do not know 113

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anything about anything during that time.” She wanted Hart to know that her health was much better. She had taken a room with a French family “where [she] had a comfortable bed and could sleep.” This “has done wonders,” she said, and she believed that she could now return to her studio, which was less expensive.145 Knowing that Hart was now acting as her power of attorney, she enquired about the University Women’s Club’s request to the National Gallery: “Has anything happened in response to that most splendid effort on behalf of my pictures?”146 Then in an uncharacteristically harsh tone, but also with tongue in cheek, she went on to say that she had heard about the death of Sir Edmund Walker:147 “They have appointed an excellent man in his place [Eric Brown] who I believe is seriously interested in Art and I feel sure who will take an interest in Canadian artists. I fear this was not true of the late Sir Edmund Walker . . . who kept my pictures from being bought by the National Gallery in 1912. I hardly doubt it would have been possible to induce him to do so in 1922 [sic]. Let us hope that where he is [now] he understands a bit more.”148 A clue to some of Hamilton’s physical and mental concerns in late 1923 is to be found in an undated letter, likely sent to Hart a few months later. Hamilton wrote that a London exhibition of her war paintings had been cancelled and she was unable to contain her dismay and disillusionment. At the time of the 1922 Paris Opera show in aid of the Somme Memorial Fund, the French and British committees had promised her another event, to be held a year later in London. In anticipation, she had printed catalogues and she had sent about 100 paintings to Surrey House, Marble Arch.149 In mid-summer 1923, however, unknown to her, the British postponed the exhibition until the autumn.150 Then, in October, she received word that it had now been aborted, despite every effort made by M. Coudurier de Chassaigne, chair of the French committee. Embarrassed, he thanked Hamilton and expressed regret, as she had contributed “un bel effort artistique et aussi généreux” to the allied cause.151 His response to her elicited bitter disappointment and another blow to her already fragile self-esteem. In February 1924, a member of the British committee wrote to Coudurier de Chassaigne and proposed reviving the exhibition.152 He said he wanted to make the event succeed for three reasons: to demonstrate British goodwill towards the French; to recognize that the battlefields of the Somme Valley were as important to the British as to the French; and to acknowledge Hamilton’s commitment, as “you know that Mrs. Hamilton is a Canadian who merits the 114

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admiration and encouragement of her compatriots who she has celebrated with a genuine talent.” He added that if the French did not want to carry on, then the artist should be told immediately “as we do not want to humiliate her further.” Within days, though, he abruptly reversed his position, admitting that he had failed to secure “adequate promises of support” and “circumstance had conspired against him.”153 Much later, in July, Hamilton reported to Hart that the London show “has not come off.” She explained that she believed the Labour government of Ramsay MacDonald had little interest in war memorials and, indeed, that the climate for commemoration had changed even before Labour came to power. Although the British committee had held her pictures in readiness for the exhibition, they seemed to be organizing in a “guarded manner,” she said. News was kept out of the press and she had been asked to say nothing about it.154 “I am so heartily sick and tired of all the delay I cannot express just how I feel about things,” she wrote. What would happen, though, with the 100 or more pictures that had been sent to London? Lamentably, “I am at a loss to know what I can do with them. I cannot keep them and I can do nothing to dispose of them, so if there should be anything done in response to the effort of the University [Women’s] Club—I do hope it will be done before it is too late—for I am helpless in the matter.” 155 On another front, she said she had taken matters into her own hands. She explained that she had been painting silk scarves “sufficient to keep me in food and pay for my rent,” but her project was coming to an end as it was only a “fad.” Nevertheless, she said that she had entered seven of her scarves into the British Section of the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, and one of her pieces had won the gold medal. French critics wrote that they were “perfect in their execution and in their enchanting use of colour.”156 Robert Amos has also written that, “Her originality of design and effective method of painting—the result of which can best be described as slightly resembling batik—gave her more than the requisite points.”157 Later, the award-winning scarf was purchased for Lady Macdonald, the wife of Hugh John Macdonald, son of the first prime minister of Canada and a resident of Winnipeg.158 In this postwar period of growing interest in the applied arts, Hamilton was not alone in turning her artistic talents to the design of an item of clothing. Yet, she had realized that she could not make enough money to keep her in France.

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In a flight of fancy that July, perhaps revealing her desperation, she penned: “I should like to go to work on a fruit farm . . . I think it better to do so than to try to make a living in Art.”159 Evidently she was thinking of a job in Canada if such a job should come up, as she asked Hart to keep a look out for her. She reminded her friend that she had been brought up on a farm and that she was not afraid of work. Should a job be found in Canada, she said that she could find the money for return fare, but would not book unless she knew that she had a position. In late August, she sent another letter to Hart to say that her sister-in-law in Toronto wanted to buy Goose Girl, but seemingly had forgotten that it had been sold by the Winters in Calgary to raise money for her a year earlier.160 She asked Hart to send her the list of paintings held in her possession in Victoria and to contact Paton, who also had a list. She explained that her copy was packed away and not accessible. Her insecurity and troubled state of mind is further revealed when she claimed that her landlady had been opening and reading her mail.161 Rosalind Young became involved again in two more initiatives. To give recognition to her friend, she appointed Hamilton an honorary member of the University Women’s Club of Victoria. She also wrote to the Masons at Shuniah Lodge, in Port Arthur, to request financial assistance as a measure of respect for Hamilton’s late husband. The Masons were sensitive to her plea, but said that the lodge was unable to support someone living in France.162 In early 1925, Bertie Currie also tried to help her aunt again by writing to a Mrs. Muldrew, who held an influential position in the Canadian Soldier Resettlement Board, in England. Muldrew replied positively and she agreed to meet with Hamilton. Unfortunately, the artist was in a Hertfordshire hospital, severely malnourished and unable to look after herself. She had neither the will nor the physical capacity to follow up on Currie’s plan.163 Help did come from Hart, in this period, when she sent a cheque for 3,200 francs. In thanking Hart for the money, Hamilton made it clear that she was unsure of whether the money had come from a sale of pictures or from Hart, whom she feared she could not reimburse.164 A few months later, Hart received a postcard from Hamilton that cryptically reported she was feeling much better and was no longer in hospital.165 In spite of what seemed to be better health, by the autumn of 1925, Hamilton had decided to return to Canada. On 26 October 1925, Pierre Dupuy, 116

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secretary to the commissioner general for Canada in France, wrote to the head officer of the Custom Office, Montreal: “I beg to certify that Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton is a Canadian painter who has spent six years in France. She is now returning definitively to Winnipeg and is taking along with her all her personal things and pictures.”166 A month later, Hamilton sent a telegram: “As it is necessary for me to take passage on Saturday next, the 28th instant, for Canada in order to attend to the reception of my collection of paintings and drawings, I hereby authorize the Secretary of the High Commissioner’s Office to receive . . . the five historical drawings which are still missing from the collection which I sent to London for exhibition.”167 This is the first and last reference to “historical drawings” that she believed were lost from the London collection. On 28 November 1925, Hamilton sailed from London to New York on the SS Minnekahda II, an Atlantic Transport Line Steamship. While on board, she penned this note to Margaret Hart: This is just a few lines to let you know that I am returning to Canada with my pictures. I personally only ask that they serve, as far as possible, the purpose for which I painted them, that is as a monument to benefit the Amputations [sic] Club and to those who never returned. My reason for not writing was simply that I was going through such hardships and finally found that I could make money with my decorative work so I have been working hard at it and got sufficient money to return. I needed quiet [sic] a lot for my pictures were in London, those I sent there for an exposition and it has been rather an expensive affair to get them again. I had to leave [France] without all of them.168 After six years in France, once more Mary Riter Hamilton was coming home.

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Chapter Five

Missed Opportunities, Shattered Dreams, 1925–1954 The work was done for love; for the love of those who had fought and fallen “in Flanders Fields”; for love—and, if it might be, to help perpetuate the memory of that sacrifice, and to comfort, if possible, some who were bereft. — mary riter hamilton to eric brown, director of the national gallery, 26 march 19261

She refused to admit the need for immediate help and spoke continually of her past glories and disappointments. — a social worker’s appraisal of mary riter hamilton, 12 april 19342

On 21 December 1925, Mary Riter Hamilton was interviewed by the Montreal Gazette.3 She presented well, despite her recent poor health and shortage of money before leaving Paris. She replied to the journalist’s questions thoughtfully and she eagerly promoted her upcoming exhibition in Montreal, which would feature 100 pieces of her war art. Like her earlier Montreal show, in 1912, this one had been organized by her friends, to whom she wanted to express her thanks. She said she was also grateful to the Amputation Club, which had supported her return to Europe, and she explained that she had promised the Club first choice of her pictures as a token of her appreciation. When asked about her plans for her collection of about 300 paintings and sketches from France and Flanders, she said that she was resolved to place them in a national institution as her memorial gift to Canada. In answer to questions about her experience, she talked about the destruction, but also about the restoration in war-torn areas. She reminded the interviewer and his readers that her pictures had hung in the Paris Salons and she had received two medals for her work. As an aside, she proposed a fundraiser for the Amputation Club—postcards to be made from

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her etchings and sold for the soldiers’ benefit.4 In a final word to her Montreal friends, she said she could be contacted at the Monteregian Club.5 In early January, Hamilton returned to the prairies and to Winnipeg. She was clearly energized from her brief time in Montreal, as revealed by her hectic social and promotional schedule.6 Before the end of the month, she had been the guest of honour at an afternoon tea in the home of Mrs. F.H. Alexander on River Avenue, she had attended a meeting of the Rendezvous Français at the Royal Alexandra Hotel (as a new arrival from France), and she had given a talk at a Canadian Women’s Press Club meeting in the Marlborough Hotel, where her battlefield art was on display. In her presentation, she featured A Tank Cemetery at Zillebeke; A Misty Morning, The Ramparts of Ypres; The Sadness of the Somme; and a drawing, Peace in No Man’s Land.7 To end the month, she was feted by Mrs. W.J. Bulman and other Winnipeg society matrons at another afternoon gathering.8 In February, the artist “graciously loaned” forty of her war pictures for a meeting of the University Women’s Club. They were lent out again in May for the club’s annual general meeting and an exhibition of her pictures that was held at the Fort Garry Hotel.9 Advance notice of this event appeared in the Manitoba Free Press and the Free Press Evening Bulletin, which included a photograph of the artist painting outside her hut in the former war zone. When Hamilton was asked about the future of her war collection, she said: “If the National Gallery are good enough . . . they will find a place. I have done what I could.”10 February brought national publicity when Madge McBeath interviewed Hamilton for the Toronto Star Weekly. “One of Our Last War Workers Comes Home” appeared as weekend fare for Canadians from coast to coast. McBeath presented a colourful, if somewhat exaggerated, description of the artist’s life, from her homestead beginnings to her painting “under grueling sun, torrential rain, in blizzard and storm. Heavens, how she worked! With an intensity that was almost fanatical, stopping only to dab at the runnels of water that poured down her canvas, to blow on her stiffened fingers, or to mop her flushed face according to the temper of the season.”11 McBeath also related a story that Hamilton had told about stopping at a bar in Villers-au-Bois that was frequented by French, British, and Canadian soldiers. When the artist asked the proprietress how her countrymen had behaved during the war, the woman had replied: “Oh, they were shocking. Imagine, Madame, they took all the doors off my cupboards.” As Hamilton was huddling over an “ineffectual fire, she said she pondered how 119

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the cupboards might have been used.” She also told McBeath about her apple project, Salon pictures, and awards. What better advertising? Art lovers across the country were reminded that Mary Riter Hamilton had come home. While the Toronto Star Weekly and the Manitoba Free Press were announcing Hamilton’s return, the artist was working on another initiative. She had reconnected with her Montreal friends, who were officials of the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, in the hope that the organization would sponsor a cross-country exhibition of her war pictures to raise funds for the Amputation Club. Accordingly, Mary S. Rolland and Mrs. J.M.C. Muir alerted their members to Hamilton’s “very notable achievement” in France and the Somme, and to her proposal to support the veterans. Rolland wrote to Muir saying, “Many friends of the artist in Montreal would be glad if [the] IODE should find a way to arrange for an Exhibition of this wonderful series of war records in the near future.”12 Shortly thereafter, Mrs. L.E.F. Barry sent a letter to Hamilton to tell her that there had been a “unanimous” decision to send “enthusiasm” for a travelling exhibition to the National Chapter. Then, she wrote again to say that “things are moving in your favour” and the IODE was ready to begin, but she was concerned, as Hamilton had not replied to her recent letters. Next, by night letter she asked the artist to send twelve catalogues of the paintings and insisted that they be in Montreal by 1 March. She also asked if the pictures would be for sale and if Hamilton would cover the costs of packing and shipping: “All of this should be made very clear and you should keep the correspondence on the subject and copies of any letters sent by you to the IODE,” she cautioned.13 Hamilton replied to the night letter and acknowledged receipt of the earlier correspondence. She explained that she had not written because “circumstances changed” and she had been unable “to handle the financial end of it.” She said that she could not organize the framing or the shipping of the pictures: “at present I have to borrow money in order to carry on.”14 Consequently, the travelling exhibition was abandoned. Nonetheless, Hamilton was not deterred from trying to place her paintings in a national institution. From March to August 1926, she invoked the help of other friends in high places and their contacts with powerful people in government. Letters passed to and from the artist and on her behalf among Aurelia Rogers, Eric Brown, Arthur Doughty, and Dr. J.H. King, minister of public works. The artist began by writing to her friend Aurelia Rogers, wife of Robert Rogers, Conservative member of parliament for Winnipeg South and a former 120

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minister of public works.15 She astutely asked Aurelia to read her letter and then to hand-deliver it to Eric Brown, Director of the National Gallery. She described her European experience, saying that the Amputation Club of British Columbia had given her a commission to paint in the battle zone, which she had done “for more than two years—from April 1919 until November 1921.” To illustrate some of the hardships she had endured, she recounted how she had painted her pictures on small canvases because they had to be carried over fields marked by un-reclaimed shell holes filled with stagnant mud, water, and filth. Even so, she had persisted because she wanted to portray the tattered landscape for Canadians as a memorial of their loss and suffering. Her desire for these paintings was “that the government take complete charge of them, give them a permanent home, protect the rights of reproduction, and use them in every possible way for the benefit of the war veterans, their dependants and the dependants of those who died.”16 Her conditions suggest a legal understanding of her asset; yet she was prepared to give her work to Canada for the soldiers’ benefit and not for her own financial gain—despite her circumstances. Having offered her pictures, she then said she would like to paint a series of historical Canadian landscapes for the National Gallery. She wanted to capture the country’s “untrammelled loveliness, and its industrial life, including the picturesque pioneer stages.” In return, she asked that the gallery pay her a monthly pension, such as that received by any soldier. If Brown were to agree, she said that she would ask Aurelia Rogers to send a requisite number of her pictures, with a value of about $100, to the gallery every month.17 Her letter was focused on her goals, and she was resolved to seize the moment at hand. In April, Brown replied to Hamilton, thanking her for a sample of oil paintings from which he had selected Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold); Crater, Hooghe; Market Among the Ruins of Ypres; and an etching, Military Kitchen.18 He explained that “the work of Canadian artists is considered by the Board for purchase for the National Gallery at an exhibition held each year in January.” For that reason, he asked her to send prices for the paintings and etching that he had chosen, and he said he would retain them until the New Year. On the same day, he reported to Dr. J.H. King, minister of public works, that the National Gallery’s board of trustees had read Hamilton’s letter to Rogers and they had seen some of her battlefield pictures. After some deliberation though, a decision had been made that her paintings would add little to what 121

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was already a large collection of national war memorials. He continued, “The Board is of the opinion . . . that there should be many places, particularly in the west, where such a collection . . . would form an exceedingly valuable record, both of the war and the art of painting and that it would be most desirable for them to be accepted and preserved there for the benefit of those who cannot hope to be familiar with the Ottawa collection.”19 He added that it would be a good idea to purchase a few Hamilton pictures for the National Gallery so that she would be represented there. Catherine Speck, in Beyond the Battlefield, writes that a number of the international women war artists, like Hamilton, had wanted to have their work included in state collections, but “when ignored,” they later donated their paintings.20 A few days later, Hamilton wrote to Aurelia Rogers, revealing that she knew the contents of Brown’s correspondence to King. She acknowledged the board’s decision not to accept her portfolio and said, “Undoubtedly the West needs pictures, and no one realizes it more than I do.”21 She also admitted that she had sent some paintings, unsolicited, to the National Gallery for their consideration, and she said she would be pleased if they would take some—but she would not break up the set for any other reason. Then, she asked Rogers to help her consign the paintings: “Your wholesouled [sic] support and interest in placing of this collection, your knowledge of the reason for which it was painted, and your devotion to the interests of Canada, make you the best of judges, and I am more than willing to trust to your wisdom.”22 Within two weeks, Rogers had contacted Dominion Archivist Arthur Doughty about Hamilton’s work. Her report back to Hamilton invoked an excited response: “It [the Archives] is, of course, of all places the one I should prefer; as Dr. Doughty is in command, and as the collection has historical interest. I hope that my telegram was sufficiently clear, and also that you read between the lines. I thought it better not to mention Dr. Doughty’s name, but I knew that you would thank him for me. He seemed so interested in the collection, and was so thoroughly ‘en rapport,’ that I should like him to know how appreciative I am.”23 Hamilton said that she, too, had approached Doughty about her paintings, but he had been in England at the time, so she was not sure whether he would take them. She thanked Rogers for her “heartening” letter that had so lifted her spirits. As a result, she had been able to organize an exhibition at the Fort Garry Hotel with support from the University Women’s Club. She enthused: “Otherwise I should almost have lacked the courage to go through with it. There 122

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is real physical labour in connection with such an exhibition. Everybody was very kind, and in so far as I can judge [it] was a success. People seemed to be genuinely interested and were very enthusiastic in their remarks.”24 She said that her friend the Reverend Canon Heeney had thought there was no better memorial than her pictures.25 Indeed, he had suggested that the Manitoba provincial government buy them and he told her that he would discuss the issue with Premier Bracken.26 She admitted that his kind gesture had provoked her immediate response, “but I explained to him that the collection was not for sale, and that it was as yet uncertain what its final destination would be; and I also made it very clear that [it] was in the hands of yourself and Mr. Rogers, entirely.”27 She closed her letter of 10 May with thanks for your “obtimistic [sic] vibrations.” Rogers then passed the letter on to Doughty, accompanied by this note: “Enclosed you will find a correspondence that I received this morning from Mrs. Hamilton. I thought it would interest you to see how perfectly happy you are making one poor lone woman.”28 On 11 May 1926, Doughty personally informed Hamilton of his decision. He explained that he had received a telephone call from Rogers and “I told her that I would be pleased to have these pictures in the Archives and to give them a prominent place amongst the things relating to the late war.”29 He also said that he understood that seven of the paintings were currently at the National Gallery and that he would transfer them to the Archives, should she desire.30 On another point, but one that had been clearly discussed, he continued, “Mrs. Rogers said that you wish to obtain some commission from the Government to paint certain scenes of Canada.”31 This, he said, was beyond his ken and that he could do nothing for her, despite her friend’s intercession. A month later, Doughty was in touch with the artist again to say that he had received her painting Cathedral Gate, Ypres from Canon Heeney in Winnipeg, and that the National Gallery had returned her paintings to him.32 Ironically, Hamilton’s decision to move her pictures from the gallery to the archives may have worked against her, as today she is not represented in the national art collection. In response to her request to have the pictures framed, he said: “Some day when I have a little more leisure time, I will attend to this matter. [They] have attracted a great deal of attention and [on] Sunday I had quite a number of visitors in the building to see them.”33 Hamilton was overjoyed that Doughty had accepted her portfolio and she expressed her gratitude four times, twice in May and once each in June and 123

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July: “There is no place where I would sooner put my collection than in the Archives.”34 Then, a few days later: “I cannot begin to tell you how happy I am to know that my pictures are to be in such good hands. It was so thoughtful of you and Mrs. Rogers to suggest my sending them off at once: it is a great responsibility off my shoulders, and I feel very grateful to you all.”35 On 10 June she thanked Doughty for immediately hanging the first shipment and said that she was preparing to dispatch the next: “They are unframed, which is perhaps not a disadvantage, as I could not afford to buy suitable frames.”36 She also explained that the gift would not include her work from 1919 that had been sent to Vancouver. She continued, a month later, on 20 July: “May I repeat again the pleasure it is to me to know that this collection of battlefield pictures is to be in your archives.”37 At no point in her correspondence did she ask for financial compensation. That would come later. On 27 July 1926, Mary Riter Hamilton officially gifted 227 paintings, drawings, and pastels of her war art to the Canadian Archives. A governmental memo reported that: “These pictures were presented . . . by Mrs. Hamilton as an entirely free gift without any obligation on the part of the Department except that of preserving them with care.”38 At the time, Hamilton had written: In making a formal deed of gift to the Public Archives of Canada of my collection of battle-field pictures, painted in France and Flanders in the days almost immediately following the Great War, may I give expression first to my feelings of gratitude and happiness? It is a great honour and privilege to know that the work done amid the inexpressible desolation of No Man’s Land has been considered worthy of a place among the Memorials of our Canadian men, the survivors and the fallen. I do not think I could re-live that time; and I know that anything of worth or anything of beauty which may be found in the pictures themselves reflects only dimly the visions which came then; the visions which came from the spirit of the men themselves. I need only reiterate that there are no conditions attached to the gift other than the granting of a permanent home to the pictures, the prevention of the reproduction and copying of the 124

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pictures, and the provision of the protective covering of glass in all the frames.39 Doughty replied a few days later, acknowledging her contribution and saying that he would display as many pictures as possible “in a temporary fashion with the posters and war souvenirs.” He promised to frame the whole collection and to place it on screens or portable walls. Now that the paintings were all together, he said, they were being seen every day by visitors, and as there had been such a favourable response, he would add a plaque to say that it was a gift from Mary Riter Hamilton. Finally, he reminded her that soon there would be a Canadian federal election and once the new government was in place, the minister in charge of archives would write to thank her, personally.40 On the same day, Doughty also sent a letter to Rogers to report that the Hamilton pictures, “donated to the Canadian people,” had arrived. “It is a very valuable gift to the country and we are all very deeply indebted to you for the kind interest you have taken in securing them.”41 Finally, writing to Hamilton on 17 August, he thanked her for sending two packages of catalogues.42 Yet, despite the Dominion Archivist’s enthusiasm and kind words, his promises rang hollow. No word came from the minister in charge of archives in the new government that was elected on 14 September 1926.43 Although the extant record is weak following this rush of correspondence, more clarification about Hamilton’s circumstances in 1926 and 1927 can be found in letters from Bertie Currie and Adina Falconer. By the autumn of 1926, Hamilton was teaching art students again, according to Currie.44 And more can be learned about Hamilton from an exchange between Falconer and Hart in the spring of 1927. The two women had met in Victoria at a tea party, where they had discussed Hamilton with mutual affection. “Hammy is very disgusted with me, as she thinks I did not explain [at the tea party] her situation in the slightest: and as, in fact, I feel she is somewhat justified, I am writing this to ease her mind,” wrote Falconer. “I believe I forgot to say that she came to Winnipeg in the delusion that a temporary home in a friend’s house [Mrs. Weir] was awaiting her, and that a class of pupils would be on the door-step.”45 Sadly, it became obvious that Weir was not able to accommodate her and no arrangements had been made for classes. Hence, Hamilton had moved in with Falconer and remained until the early summer, when she had found an apartment in Devon Court within walking distance of where she had lived in the 1890s.46 Because 125

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they had given her so much support, Hamilton had asked Falconer to tell Hart, Paton, and Rosalind Young that her battlefield collection had been gifted to the Public Archives.47 Falconer continued to say that although Hamilton had been successful in placing her pictures, she believed that the artist was depressed: “The foolish woman practically never leaves her suite ‘where I am now seizing time by the fore-lock, knowing his evil ways.’”48 Frustrated, she wished that Hart were in Winnipeg to help convince Hamilton of “many things.” “She pays no heed to me.” Falconer continued.49 Falconer had hoped that Hart might help, but it seems that she did not reply. By the autumn, the artist’s health had improved and she had the energy to put together her paintings for two exhibitions. The first was patronized by her friends, the Honourable Robert and Aurelia Rogers, in their fashionable Winnipeg home. Ninety-seven paintings, pastels, and etchings were shown, in addition to those of some of her students, all of whom were twelve years of age and younger. The pictures included Emerald Lake, owned by the Rogers, and a number of battlefield paintings, some of which were unfinished.50 Two weeks later, another exhibition of paintings by Manitoba artists was held at the new Hudson’s Bay Company store. Hamilton’s work was displayed with that of Marion Nelson Hooker and Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald, among others.51 Early in the New Year, Hamilton was interviewed in her small studio by a journalist from the Western Home Monthly who said that students came frequently to this place where the walls were adorned with sketches of celebrities, the result of ten years’ work in Europe.52 Much was made of Hamilton’s gift of war pictures to the Public Archives, and not by chance, the journalist caught sight of “a little purple ribbon, just a tuft of which peeped from her jacket”—no doubt worn especially for the interview—a reminder of Hamilton’s Les Palmes Académiques: “Her battle scenes are vital with horror and desolation of that dreary time. . . . Trench on Vimy Ridge alone tears the heartstrings asunder by a realism that is the gift of Mary Riter Hamilton.”53 When asked, the artist had said that her paintings were not for sale: “If, as I have been told, there is much of the suffering and the heroism of war in my pictures, it is because at that moment the spirits of those who fought and died seemed to linger in the air. Every splintered tree and scarred clod spoke of their broken bodies. Those scenes I looked upon I hoped would prove a true record of things Canada would wish to remember.”54

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A month later, Echoes, an art magazine, reprinted the Western Home Monthly article and included photographs of Hamilton’s paintings and sketches. It informed the art establishment that Mary Riter Hamilton had gifted her battlefield collection of just over 200 paintings to the Public Archives. The article also emphasized her training in Germany and France, reflected in her European academic style. Some of her patrons’ names were meticulously dropped, such as Lady Patricia Ramsay, the Duchess of Connaught, and Lieutenant-Governor Cameron and Mrs. Cameron of Manitoba. In the summer and early autumn of 1928, Hamilton continued to be in control of her life, or so it seemed. Her first letter to Margaret Hart, although never sent, informed her friend that she intended to visit Victoria to paint. She also wrote that she was still teaching, despite the fact that she had not been well for much of her time on the prairies: “my health has and is rather shaken, but small wonder. I shall be OK once I get away; I’ve hardly been out of my apartment these three years.”55 She added, “My heart is always in Victoria, it is the only place that feels like home to me and I long to be there, sometime. I feel like packing everything and taking a chance in being able to make good. You see I am doing decorative work as well and thought possibly I might be able to sell more at the Coast. Here it is impossible to do anything [Winnipeg] is so little. Seattle being so near might help.”56 Her nostalgia for Victoria was short-lived, however; the friend who was to accompany her was unable to go and the trip was cancelled. In early September, Hamilton wrote again to Hart to say that she had been upset by the death of her eldest brother, John Paul Riter.57 As she had also defaulted on mortgage payments for her Victoria property, she wanted Hart to thank her husband, Edward, for responding to her “panic” telegram. He had intervened and paid the arrears.58 Sometime in late 1928 she relocated to Vancouver, not to Victoria, as one would assume.59 By the twenties, Vancouver was the largest city in the province and home to a growing number of cultural organizations serving the art, theatre, and music communities. The BC Society of Fine Art, the Vancouver Sketch Club, and several small galleries had been established, and in 1926, F.H. Varley, a founding member of the Group of Seven, took up a teaching post at the Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art.60 Six years later the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) opened. Vancouver presented Hamilton with exhibition and teaching opportunities.

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Regrettably, though, she was hospitalized shortly after her arrival, and over the next twenty-five years she was beset by illness and intermittent good health until her death in 1954. From the mid-1930s she was a charge of the Family Welfare Bureau, as well as a patient of the Vancouver General Hospital and of private and psychiatric institutions.61 But when in good health, she continued to teach, her work was reviewed, and there were several small exhibitions. As in earlier parts of her life, we see her leaning on her friends for support. Their attempts to offset her precarious financial situation went to the highest levels of the federal government. In January 1929, Hamilton wrote to Margaret Hart to tell her that she had been ill since coming to Vancouver and in a private hospital for two months before being admitted to the Vancouver General.62 She explained that, once again, she was in need of money and proposed holding an exhibition that she hoped would generate sales of her paintings. She asked Hart to provide her with an inventory of the pictures that had sold and those that remained in her possession.63 What seemed to be a straightforward request led to conflict between the two women and to the destruction of a long friendship. Hart replied to say that she was sorry to hear about Hamilton’s illness, but she ignored her request for an inventory and argued that any idea of an exhibition would be “suicidal.”64 She said that some of the war pictures might be marketable, but she was not sure how many of the “older studio works” would sell. Hart explained that they had fetched little when she tried to raise money for Hamilton while she was in France. She also admitted that she had invoked her family and friends to help Hamilton by purchasing some of her pictures. The intent, though, had been to return the paintings to the artist and to recover their money once she had settled in Canada and was financially solvent.65 Near the end of February, Hamilton, still in the Vancouver General, replied to Hart to say that she had planned to give her supporters first pick of the battlefield paintings held by Paton. She then described her illness as being due to “a run-down condition, owing to lack of food. I’m on a diet and must continue until I’m well, and I feel that I am OK now.”66 Shortly after, Jean Bruce, Hamilton’s niece who had recently moved to Vancouver, wrote to Hart to say that her aunt had been discharged from the hospital. She explained that when she heard of Hamilton’s illness, diagnosed as pernicious anaemia, she had decided to come to Vancouver to help. Hamilton had made a “remarkable” recovery, she said, but the doctors had insisted that 128

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she maintain her hospital diet and continue with liver extract.67 She said that she would care for her aunt in her own rented apartment: “You understand that her finances are very low and she won’t be able to work for a few weeks, yet. However, we are hoping to have an exhibition of her pictures, instigated by Mr. Paton under the auspices of the Legion, sometime towards the end of March.”68 She continued: “Auntie May wondered if you would be good enough to make a list of her paintings and send it to her as she left her catalogue in Winnipeg and later on will be sending [to Victoria] for her pictures to be put on exhibition with the ones she has here. This will be considerable work for you to do Mrs. Hart but will be very much appreciated and am sure you understand.”69 She closed by conveying Hamilton’s gratitude and love to her friend. A month later, Bruce wrote again, even more diplomatically, “Dear Mrs. Hart, I am sure there won’t be any misunderstanding about the pictures if you and Auntie May can see each other and talk this over. You really have been wonderful to keep [them] safely for Aunt May all these years and it is appreciated.”70 Hamilton then sent a letter to Hart from White Rock, BC, where she had been staying with a friend. She said that she was sorry to have missed the Harts when they had visited Vancouver, but that she had gone to White Rock. She asked once more for an inventory of her paintings and a statement of sales.71 In a subsequent, much more urgent exchange, Hamilton said that the Vancouver Legion planned to use the exhibition as a fundraiser. Consequently, she wanted to meet with Hart as soon as possible to list the paintings that were still in Hart’s home. Hamilton explained that she had remained in White Rock until August: “I am glad to say that I feel well and fit for work so my intention is to open a studio for teaching and showing my [pictures].”72 A few days later, on 19 August, an impatient Hamilton sent a telegram: “No reply to letter fourteenth asking your convenience my coming Victoria twentieth to arrange about pictures, etc. Date of Legion exhibition necessitates arrival of pictures in Vancouver not later than September—would you prefer I should come next week instead of this week?”73 At last, Hart responded, so Hamilton prepared to leave White Rock on 27 August to meet her in Victoria.74 It is not obvious why Hart was so reluctant to provide Hamilton with the inventory of her paintings and sales; consequently, though, sometime in August or later there was a serious rupture in the Hamilton-Hart relationship. The collapse of this long-standing and deep female friendship was heart-rending in its accusations and acrimony. What emerged were anger, distrust, and betrayal. 129

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Legal statements prepared later reveal some of the causes for their disagreement. No doubt contributing factors were the break in communication between the two women after Hamilton had returned to Canada, her ill health and depression during this period, and the fact that she did not have a complete record of the paintings stored with her friend. Hart, for her part, believed that Hamilton, while in France, had not appreciated the effort she had made to raise funds by selling paintings and contributing from her own purse. To help she had sold Hamilton’s work for what she could get for it, although not always at the list price. Indeed, some pictures had gone to family and friends as collateral for a loan, a loan that was never honoured because Hamilton continued to be short of money. Most seriously, Hart said that Hamilton had accused her of the theft of a medal, an easel, and a steamer trunk left in her care. She countered by saying that the medal had been one of a number of small items: “No-one but myself ever saw these trinkets, nor did I see them, indeed, except pouring them into a new bag.” Further, in a legal statement, Hart contended that the easel, made of two-by-fours and very heavy, had been used to paint a portrait of her mother. It had fallen accidentally on the older woman while the artist was painting: “We have never spoken of this to anyone, but the matter was so near a fatality that if for no other reason Mrs. Hamilton would hardly care to ask me to take it.” Finally, Hart had written that Hamilton had come with men and a truck and had collected four steamer trunks. It was only later that a dispute arose as to whether there had been a fifth.75 Hamilton, for her part, took her friend to task for selling her paintings at prices that were too low, despite her need for money when in France. She was frustrated by Hart’s silence when she had asked for a list of her paintings and she was annoyed when Hart had ignored her request to release some pictures for the Legion exhibition. Nonetheless, when the two women met in Hart’s home at the end of August, it was agreed that Hamilton could choose some paintings for the event­—with the promise that they would be returned. Time passed and at the end of December when Hamilton had not sent back the pictures, the women came together again, this time in Hamilton’s apartment in Vancouver. An angry exchange took place—followed by Hart seeking legal counsel.76 Within months, Hamilton had signed a notarized document: “To settle the matter between Mrs. Hart and myself, regarding pictures, I require the following: 1. An unsigned portrait of Stefansson, with a grease spot on the canvas, in an old

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gold French frame; 2. Devant la Fenêtre, a Latin picture, original, no frame; 3. Easter Morning and a claim receipt from both parties (Hamilton and Hart).”77 Two years later, the Reverend W.G.W. Fortune, Hamilton’s Presbyterian minister, became involved when it was clear that Hart had not returned the Stefansson portrait nor Devant la Fenêtre. Fortune wrote to the Victoria loan company where, earlier, Hart had deposited the works in an effort to raise money for the artist: “Mrs. Hamilton has a good deal of sentiment with regard to her pictures, and naturally would like the original Devant la Fenêtre as it hung in the Salon of Paris, and the unsigned picture of Stefansson. Knowing Mrs. Hart as I do, and holding her in the highest esteem, I believe she will meet with Mrs. Hamilton’s request.”78 Disappointingly, we do not know if the pictures were ever returned to Hamilton or, indeed, if those loaned for the Legion exhibition ever found their way back to the Harts. We do know, though, that the Hamilton-Hart friendship had ended. Fortune, his wife Elizabeth, and Paton were all advocates for Hamilton in this period. Between 1929 and 1940, Fortune tried to obtain financial support for the aging artist by writing to Arthur Doughty, Dr. J.H. King (now minister of soldiers’ civil reestablishment and pensions, and national health),79 and even to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King. In 1929, Fortune, as a friend of J.H. King, reminded Doughty that when Hamilton had gifted her paintings to the Public Archives, he had promised to pay her expenses for crating and framing. At the time, he said, she had been in good health and was earning a living, so she had covered the charges herself, but she had expected reimbursement. More recently, though, her health had failed and she had been “dangerously ill” for months: “She is absolutely stranded, not being able to pay one of her hospital bills. I am not only an old friend, but I am her spiritual advisor, and know the circumstances perfectly.”80 He asked Doughty to honour his promise and to send Hamilton a cheque. He also said that Paton, too, was acting for her and that he had requested the federal government to offer her some financial assistance.81 Frustrated when Doughty did not reply, Fortune then turned to the prime minister. In a letter that he copied to J.H. King, he described Hamilton’s work on the battlefields supported by the Amputation Club, but pointed out that when the club had run into “financial difficulty” its support for the artist had ended. Even so, he said, “Mrs. Hamilton kept on at her work at her own expense, and at times had not the bare necessities of life.”82 Unhappily, he wrote, she now found herself impoverished, “broken in health,” and in and out of hospitals. 131

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Although he understood that her donation to the archives had been “unconditional,” he pleaded with Mackenzie King to consider giving her an honorarium or at least to put her on a pension list.83 Somewhat later, Fortune reported to J.H. King that Hamilton had received a reimbursement cheque from the institution for the framing and crating of her pictures. Doughty had responded promptly, likely spurred on by the prime minister or his minister.84 Perhaps heartened by his success, Fortune continued by revisiting the issue of a pension for Hamilton, “such as any soldier in the field,” echoing her phrases to Doughty in 1926. If the government were to agree, he proposed that the artist could send some pictures to the Public Archives every year in return for a pension of $100 per month.85 At the end of November, J.H. King wrote to Doughty: “While in the west, I learned that Mrs. Hamilton is ill and practically penniless.”86 He continued on to say that he was unaware of the financial value of the artist’s gift to the archives, but asked Doughty to reply with an argument in favour of granting her “some sort of remuneration.” As a minister, he said, he then would be able to contact the Treasury. Several months later, Fortune wrote to Doughty to report that it had been “practically decided to give [Mary Riter Hamilton] a lump sum, from $4000.00 up, just how much [ J.H. King] could not say.” Inopportunely, though, King’s proposal had come just before the 28 July 1930 election in which Mackenzie King’s government was defeated by the Progressive Conservatives under R.B. Bennett.87 Nothing had been done for Hamilton. In early January 1931, Fortune wrote once more to Doughty, on Hamilton’s behalf, but to no effect.88 From this point the record falls silent until the late summer of 1933, when Fortune contacted Henry Herbert Stevens, member of parliament for Vancouver and minister of trade and commerce in the Bennett government. Once more he argued for federal support for Hamilton. At the very least, he said, the state should recognize her Palmes Académiques award and her well-publicized exhibition at the Paris Opera.89 He persisted by raising two more issues: “Surely common gratitude should lead us as Canadians to see that one or more of her pictures adorn the walls of our National Gallery.” He then added that when Hamilton was in France, she had been offered $2,000 for Maternity and if the government would pay the artist $1,000 ($17,830 in 2015)90 for the painting, it would be sufficient to help her out. Stevens responded to Fortune’s plea almost immediately by asking Doughty to consider buying Maternity for the archives.91 Doughty replied 132

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emphatically that the institution would not purchase the painting, “but perhaps its place is in the National Gallery.” With regard to some monetary acknowledgement of Hamilton’s donation, he argued that the archives received gifts worth thousands of dollars; hence, it was impossible to reimburse each of their donors.92 In an effort to explain what seemed to be his rather hard-hearted position, he related his history with the Rogers and Hamilton and said that he had understood Hamilton was determined “to give [her paintings] to Canada” without financial compensation. On the other hand, the archives “had to pay very heavy charges for someone to accompany them from Winnipeg,” because she had placed “an extraordinary value” on them. Further, when he later heard that Hamilton was short of money, he tried to help by reimbursing her for the outstanding charges on crating her pictures.93 In short, he believed he had done enough for Mary Riter Hamilton. No resolution had been found in 1933. But the story picks up again two and a half years later in February 1936, when Hamilton was once more ailing and in need of food and money to pay her rent. At this point, E.T. Squire, yet another friend, became involved and in his letter to the archives he offers a glimpse of Hamilton’s personality in a time of need. He asked the institution to make a contribution in respect of Hamilton’s gift, but he added: “I might say that being the person she is she is somewhat proud and a certain amount of tact would be necessary, but I believe she is now in the position that would even listen to relief.”94 The reply to Squire came over a year later when the acting Dominion archivist wrote that he had undertaken a review of the correspondence of earlier appeals and consulted with the minister: “Much as those who are now in charge of the Public Archives sympathize with Mrs. Hamilton’s misfortunes, we do not see any way by which the Department could change [Doughty’s] decision.” 95 In a postscript the archivist added, “Whether an appeal to the Government—not to the Public Archives—for help, entirely on compassionate grounds would accomplish anything I do not know, but I believe that it would be only as a compassionate grant that any assistance could now be given to Mrs. Hamilton.”96 There was silence again for more than a year, until Grace James, another friend,97 wrote to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, in office once again following his victory over R.B. Bennett, prime minister between July 1930 and October 1935.98 James asked King to grant Hamilton an annuity to support her old age, and on 2 December 1939, the prime minister’s private secretary replied to

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say that her request had been forwarded to George Pearson, minister of labour in the British Columbia government.99 Not to be put off, two weeks later James wrote again to King to thank him for his consideration and to remind him that Hamilton had been patronized by the late Duchess of Connaught and her daughter, the Princess Patricia.100 There was an immediate response—was it just coincidence? Pearson replied to the prime minister’s office to say that he had set up an investigation into the Hamilton case.101 Could it be that, at last, government officials would act? In early January 1940, Pearson reported to James that he had made a “complete enquiry” that had included research into Hamilton’s medical record. Since 1934 the artist had been a ward of the Family Welfare Bureau and on 16 September 1939 she was admitted to the Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia, as one who was delusionary and who had suspicions of those around her.102 Pearson attached a copy of the report that he had received from Dr. E.J. Ryan, medical superintendent of Essondale Psychiatric Hospital. Dr. Ryan had written that, “Mrs. Hamilton can only be properly cared for in her present condition in such a facility. She is being taken care of as a charge of the Provincial Government.” He concluded that he was “satisfied” that those who knew her would be relieved to know that she was under professional care. In a cruel twist of fate, Mary Riter Hamilton had been confined in the psychiatric hospital named for her earlier benefactor and friend, Dr. Henry Esson Young.103 Pearson’s inquiry had produced results, but not the ones that James wanted to hear. On 10 January 1940, undaunted by what she thought was bureaucratic sidestepping, she boldly sent another letter to the prime minister: “Needless to say it leaves matters precisely where they were before I took the liberty of writing to you on [Hamilton’s] behalf.”104 She said that she agreed with Pearson and Dr. Ryan that the artist would be better looked after at Essondale “than trying to exist on the Old Age Pension, as that would be totally inadequate for her needs.” She pointed out that Hamilton was suffering from pernicious anaemia, “which she contracted after the hardships she endured.” Then, in a blunt statement regarding the government’s discourtesy: “If it is not possible to grant her an adequate income, so that she could end her days in freedom in a Rest Home, will you from kindness within you send her an official acknowledgement of the pictures she sent to Ottawa so many years ago, and by so doing remove some of the hurt and bitterness from her heart.”105 For a brief time it seemed that James’s 134

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request would be honoured, but by early 1940 the prime minister had more pressing concerns on his mind.106 Another war was raging. Throughout the 1930s illness and financial instability plagued Hamilton, but in the same period she had opened a Vancouver studio, taught art, and held exhibitions. It is unlikely, though, that she continued to paint. A major recognition of her work came the year she returned to British Columbia when the Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver, in collaboration with the City Museum, decided “to purchase as much work by Canadian artists as means would allow.” Hamilton sold the Association “some very fine examples” of her etchings and, even more significantly, Les Pauvres (Salon 1909), which would later be conserved in the Vancouver Art Gallery.107 These transactions were followed by substantial reviews by journalist W. Garland Foster, which again brought Hamilton and her art to the public’s attention.108 Those who were watching were reminded that Mary Riter Hamilton, although increasingly elderly, was still part of the Canadian art scene—and an outspoken member, at that. An important interview by the Calgary Herald was published in March 1934 and revealed the artist’s capacity to promote herself, while appearing not to do just that. At sixty-six years of age, she expressed her opinions on the Canadian art establishment in “Her Collection Enriches Ottawa Archives.” The journalist, who included a photograph of the artist in her studio, wrote, “This modest woman of high ideas, Mary Hamilton, makes no effort to have the attention which her work really deserves. As an instance of her hiding her light under a bushel, how many readers know that she made a free gift of 227 paintings done by herself at the front to the Canadian Archives, Ottawa?”109 The author went further, quoting some of Hamilton’s thoughts on Canadian art and West Coast art, in particular. For instance, in 1934, Hamilton observed the importance of Indigenous art and culture, a view more commonly attributed to Emily Carr: If the writers, artists and sculptors of Paris and other European cities were to spend a few months in this artists’ paradise, they would put B.C. on the map in no uncertain way, not primarily for your [Canadians’] benefit, but for the delectation of European audiences, and they would incidentally surprise you by using themes and motifs which out here are rather despised at present. I mean the art elements in the culture of 135

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the coast Indians, as well as Indian types and scenes. In scenery no country in the world offers so many opportunities for the artist who wished to get away from the conventions and commonplaces of art.110 Hamilton continued by describing an innovation that she had made to her method of painting. She told how she had adopted the use of three-ply laminated British Columbia fir in place of canvas—a more durable product. She was convinced that once artists became aware of her discovery, they would be eager to try it. Then, once again, she articulated her dream of painting a set of Canadian historical scenes: “I would like to have the means or the opportunity of painting a series of Canadian pictures giving a cross-section of Canada from the Pacific to the Atlantic and from the boundary to the Arctic, just as Paul Kane in the days of the fur trade made an art record, now of priceless value of the Canada of that day.”111 One is struck by her self-confidence and vision of the future, knowing, as we do, the fragility of her health and finances. In the same period, there were exhibitions of her work and that of her students which took place in her studio. In 1935 the Vancouver Province wrote about the old-fashioned but attractive nature of Hamilton’s production, “as interesting for the reason that it is frankly old-fashioned. The styles of painting, penciling and crayoning are mid-Victorian in essence and form a contrast (by no means unfavourable) with modernistic work which has been shown in the city.”112 Then, in 1939, the VAG exhibited thirty of her paintings: “Sombre oils in the tradition of Rembrandt, some vivid scenes of war destruction and several pastel portraits . . . marked by mellowness and deep feeling.”113 By this time, though, due to financial difficulties and illness, Hamilton had given up her studio and had placed her paintings with Grace James, who kept them during the early years of the Second World War.114 In 1944, they were moved to the City Museum in the Vancouver City Hall, and subsequently to the Vancouver Public Library.115 Increasingly poor health characterized these years for Hamilton. Following her interview with the Calgary Herald in 1934, when she had seemed strong and confident, she fell ill again with pernicious anaemia (a repeated diagnosis and remedied more than once by the addition of liver extract to her diet) and was under observation by the Vancouver Family Welfare Bureau (FWB), who in turn reported to Essondale Mental Hospital. The Social Services Department of the FWB described her as a “character” who was known to hold art 136

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classes in the mornings and sometimes had a student come in the afternoons.116 In 1935, Social Services said that although Hamilton’s winter classes had been “quite successful” and she was in better health, she was quite tearful when given twenty dollars by the FWB worker to cover her rent—she also told the worker not to return. Several months later, Hamilton met the same FWB woman on the street and announced with pride that some of her paintings had been shown at a Vancouver hotel.117 She also said that she had sprained her ankle and lost her art pupils, but she insisted that she did not want relief. The worker wrote, “She refused to admit the need for immediate help and spoke continually of her past glories and disappointments.”118 Then, in September 1937, another FWB report identified Hamilton as paranoid and possibly mentally ill. A month later, the artist was found in bed in an untidy apartment. She believed people were stealing her food, but still resisted help. By December, she said she was feeling much better. Several months later, in the spring of 1938, another assessment stated that her apartment was in “an appalling muddle” and that Hamilton had complained about the janitor and neighbours, yet refused to go to the local clinic. She admitted to being helped by some Masons and later that year she exhibited some of her paintings at the VAG.119 Her good health was short-lived, however, as by January 1939 she had been asked to leave her home at Crescent Apartments.120 Yet another FWB account detailed her behaviour: “she continually left the wash basin running and it [had] overflowed three times.”121 As she had been ordered by the FWB to relocate, she moved into an attic at 1125 W. Hastings Street where she paid $25 [$405 in 2015] a month.122 She had a small pension of $20 a month from the Masonic Order, paid out of respect for her deceased husband, Charles Hamilton, and she had two art students who paid $5 a month each. She expressed fear at the time that she would be “railroaded into Essondale Psychiatric Hospital”123—a fear soon realized. On 16 September 1939, Mary Riter Hamilton was moved to Essondale for reasons of malnourishment, poverty, and senile dementia. She remained in the institution for just under three years.124 Her admission report from the autumn of 1939 described her as “quiet and co-operative,” known to be “eccentric” for years, and believed to be suffering from pernicious anaemia. Before being admitted her behaviour had been observed to be suspicious and delusional. She thought that her food was being poisoned, she was poorly nourished, and she was senile in appearance, with sunken eyes (one blind, replaced with a glass eye) and hollow cheeks. Although “paranoidal and persecutory” in her ideas, her 137

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orientation to space was good, as was her memory. She claimed that she had been taken from her home by force and brought to the hospital. Moreover, she was shocked to see that her hair had turned white and asked if she could go out to have it touched up a bit. Sometimes she showed confusion, at other times she was “garrulous” and drew attention to herself.125 After arriving at Essondale, Hamilton was administered liver extract again and within a month she seemed improved, but by December, when she was moved to the female chronic building, she was described once more as “persecutory,” although “busy and happy when sketching.”126 Throughout 1940 she was said to be “bright and cheerful” when working on charcoal portraits or fancy work, asking for discharge, but anxious regarding her pictures and belongings. But “she does not realize that there is no place for her to go.”127 Yet, she showed an acute, if somewhat unrealistic, awareness of the outside world and the violence of the war when she requested a discharge so she could paint the camouflage on airplanes. Between 1940 and 1942 only a few medical reports documented her illness, and by April 1942 she was identified as out on leave. By July she had been given a probation that led to her complete discharge in January 1943, and her diagnosis of “senile dementia” was upgraded to “improved.”128 She did not return to Essondale until days before her death. Publicity surrounding the artist and her work dropped off during the forties, until United Church minister Dr. Douglas Telfer, another clergyman, and members of the local IODE sponsored an exhibition in Telfer’s home in 1948.”129 To renew interest and to generate sales, Hamilton had agreed to be interviewed by Jean Howarth of the Province. The artist, seated in the drawing room of the manse and surrounded by her pictures, explained that she had been settled in central Vancouver for many years, but had recently moved out to West Point Grey.130 Some of her paintings had “mouldered” in storage, but members of Telfer’s congregation had cleaned them for the show so that they were ready for sale, and none for less than fifty dollars. Maternity had been priced at $1,500.131 Howarth inquired about Hamilton’s earlier life in Europe. Nostalgically, the artist described travelling through Paris with a French cabbie and his lame horse, as “they proceeded mile after mile at a dead walk.” She said little about her time on the battlefields, but “sat with her old hands tremblingly in her lap, and looked back over the years.”132 She told of her friendship with Kahlil Gibran and how they had painted together in art classes in Paris: “He was a strange man . . . very oriental, very serene in his appearance, with a bedrock of philosophy on 138

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which he built his life. All his paintings, like his writings, were religious in tone; and he talked of Jesus as though he were a personal friend whom he had met in the shadows of the cedars of Lebanon, where he had been born.”133 Among those present that day was Lawren Harris, a member of the Group of Seven and a strong supporter of the VAG.134 He renewed his acquaintance with Hamilton, “resplendent in an evening gown and once again the famed artist,” when he asked her if she was the woman he had met while sketching in the German mountains in 1906. She answered, “yes.” Harris later organized a VAG retrospective of Hamilton’s work to honour their re-found friendship.135 Several months later, the story of the Telfer-IODE exhibition reached Teeswater, Ontario, Hamilton’s place of birth. The Teeswater News wrote that Dr. Telfer had found the artist “to be living alone in a single room, an old woman now, impoverished and almost blind . . . while her paintings, valued at $30,000,” were stored among lumber and other “junk” in an unused room of the Vancouver Public Library. 136 He had retrieved the works, cleaned and displayed them with support from the IODE, and in doing so had given the artist a new lease on life. The article reminded “oldtimers” of the Riter family and of Mary as a little girl by describing their home and her early interest in art. In 1951, the newspaper brought Hamilton into the public eye once more when it published a letter from Fanny Huntley, a Vancouver friend and advocate. Huntley described Hamilton, now eighty-three, as frail and living in a hostel for elderly ladies in Vancouver: “It is hoped that art lovers will rally round and give her the satisfaction once again of knowing that her exceptionally beautiful work is appreciated in a world so needing real art.”137 A year earlier, Huntley had gone further for her friend when she had tried to find Hamilton’s portraits of the lieutenants-governors that she believed to be hanging at Government House, in Victoria.138 Retrospective exhibitions of Hamilton’s art were held by the VAG in 1949 and 1952 (Figure 17). In 1949, journalists wrote of Hamilton as a neglected artist living in the city, whose work was still able “to inspire respect and admiration,” although it was different from “the modern trend.” Her paintings were “outstanding for their sensitivity, sincerity and good craftsmanship.”139 And, finally, the Women’s Auxiliary to the VAG and the Women’s Volunteer Service Bureau jointly sponsored the 1952 exhibition from 4 to 24 March. Preliminary notice appeared in the Vancouver News Herald, the Vancouver Sun, and the Victoria Daily Colonist. The papers explained that earlier works would be displayed, as the artist had been unable to paint for some time due to ill health.140 139

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Readers of the Colonist interested in art were encouraged to remember Mary Riter Hamilton: “Should any of her former friends, and there were many, be in Vancouver it is hoped that they will visit the Art Gallery to see these works of former years.”141 Major J.S. Matthews, Vancouver city archivist, was asked to introduce the event. In anticipation, he met with Fanny Huntley to gather biographical information about the artist.142 Then, on opening day, he began with a tribute to “a gracious and gallant lady,” Mary Riter Hamilton: “There are among our ex-soldiers those who have an admiration, almost amounting to reverence, for the gentle lady who had the courage, the fortitude and the perception to enter that hellfire corner called Ypres, or that muck heap called the Somme, in the wild and freezing winter of 1919, and make a pictorial record of what could be seen before the green growth of the following spring had concealed much of the devastation spread about in all its naked horror.” Drawing from his own experience, he affirmed, “What Mrs. Hamilton depicted is true to life. I saw her Cemetery at St. Eloi. I saw her Sadness of the Somme. I sat in that sewer called Voormezeele. I heard the ping as the shells struck the iron boilers of the ruined Sugar Refinery, and, in my curiosity, I explored the inside of her Abandoned Tank.”143 Matthews’s impassioned speech and Hamilton’s paintings awakened memories of that conflict so many years ago in the fields of France and Flanders. A day later, the artist gave one last interview to another woman journalist, Naomi Lang of the Vancouver Sun, for the article “Famous Artist Goes Right on ‘Painting in Her Mind.’”144 Lang noted that Hamilton was a “snowy-haired little woman” who talked about her triumphs with “great reluctance and great modesty.” “Nervously twisting the rings on frail white fingers,” she admitted that in Paris she had been awarded the Palmes Académiques (1922) and a gold medal at the Exposition Internationale (1925). “I’ve been lucky . . . in that I’ve never had any disappointments about my work.”145 Wistfully, she then described her arrival on the Pacific Coast in 1913 and the breathtaking beauty of Vancouver. Of old age, she said, she “got into the habit of not thinking about it”—“I hadn’t realized that I was getting so old.” Two years later, she was dead.146 On 2 April 1954, Mary Riter Hamilton was admitted again to the Provincial Psychiatric Hospital at Essondale. Confused and delusional, she complained of a heart murmur and was diagnosed as having senile dementia. Hamilton gave her age as eighty-four years when, in fact, she was eighty-five years and seven months. She was described as blue-eyed with grey hair, “well developed,” 140

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and “well nourished,” 62 inches in height and 150 pounds. Her nails were short and clean, and her skin was clear. The form recorded: “Profession: artist.”147 Hamilton had arrived at the hospital with few personal effects, yet they spoke to her career and to her sense of self even at this stage. Bank books identified less than $500 in her accounts. Her personal belongings were packed in a “black leather medium sized suitcase” and in a “black imitation alligator style satchel.” They included: two bronze medals, likely from Paris exhibitions; a gold locket with a strand of hair inside; a plain gold band ring; a gold ring with a white stone; and a cameo-style brooch. She had also brought a cane, upper and lower dentures, a pair of broken eyeglasses with silver-coloured rims, another pair with pink rims, and portraits encased in a brown leather folder. There was a membership card for the VAG and senior citizenship and hospital insurance cards. Her clothing included black suede shoes, a black felt hat with feather, and a three-piece outfit: a grey coat of suit cloth, a grey jacket, grey skirt, and white blouse. Dark grey cotton stockings, white gloves, and a grey purse with handles completed a formal outfit.148 Mary Riter Hamilton was found dead on the evening of 5 April 1954. Cause of death: cardiac infarction, hypertension, heart disease, and senile dementia. A blood clot had caused her heart to stop. Hamilton had collapsed by her bed and efforts to resuscitate her were unsuccessful. Her body was given over into the custody of her nephew, Frank R. Riter, and then it was prepared for cremation a week later.149 Modest obituaries appeared in the Vancouver Sun, the Vancouver Province, and Victoria’s Daily Colonist.150 Funeral services for Mary Riter Hamilton were held at Harron Brothers Chapel of Chimes in Vancouver and her ashes were buried in Port Arthur (Thunder Bay) at Riverside Cemetery in the plot of her husband and stillborn child.151 Years later, in 2007, Hamilton was memorialized in a plaque unveiled in Teeswater, Bruce County, and the following year in a tombstone that was raised in Thunder Bay. Poppy seeds from Flanders were planted nearby.152 Frank R. Riter of Kelowna, British Columbia, Hamilton’s nephew and executor, assumed responsibility for the disposition of her paintings and small estate.153 Riter had kept in touch with his aunt in the last decade of her life by writing her monthly. He had urged her to sell some of her paintings to increase her cash and he had asked her to make a will. Both pieces of his advice were “characteristically ignored,” he said. Paintings were not sold and her will was 141

Figure 17. Mary Riter Hamilton at an exhibition of her paintings, Vancouver, 5 March 1952.

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written out on the backs of envelopes.154 By the end of August 1954, Riter had settled the estate, with an appraisal of the paintings at $600 ($5,382 in 2015) that brought the value of the entire estate to $1,300 ($11,663 in 2015).155 Within a month, Riter had written a formal letter to each of the beneficiaries to say that Hamilton’s effects and her paintings had been moved to his home in Kelowna. From November to February 1955, he dispersed Hamilton’s personal items and art to friends and kin. For instance, her brooch/locket, which had held a piece of hair (believed to be that of her stillborn son and seen in her early photographs pinned to her dresses or hanging on a chain), was willed to Etta Riter in Winnipeg, her niece and daughter of her brother Joseph.156 Paintings and other miscellany went to Mary W. Higgins, the daughter of Rosalind and Henry Esson Young. Maternity, valued at $1,500 ($13,457 in 2015), was presented to the Thunder Bay municipal library, Port Arthur.157 Other pictures sent to friends and relatives included: Peace Arch, Blaine Washington; Girl in the Window; The Monk; and Breakfast Time.158 Understandably, Hamilton’s war art conserved in the Public Archives was of interest to the family, but when Riter contacted W.M. Kaye Lamb, Dominion Archivist, on their behalf, the response was uncompromising. Lamb wrote that the archives held 227 paintings, drawings, and sketches, “and we have a complete record of the gift of these pictures to the Archives.” He included a copy of the “Letter of Gift” signed by the artist.159 In short, Hamilton had donated her paintings to the Canadian people—there would be no further discussion. Since the artist’s death, Hamilton’s paintings have been included in anthologies, sold at auction, and exhibited.160 The following identifies a number of exhibitions from the 1950s to the twenty-first century. In 1959 the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) opened Past Recalled in Collection by Portraitist with paintings from the Dr. E.C. and Margaret Hart family collection.161 A decade later, the Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG) held four exhibitions that included selected pieces of Hamilton’s work.162 From the mid-1970s, exhibitions were held at The Glenbow-Alberta Institute, the AGGV, the VAG, the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), and again at the WAG.163 In 1989, Angela Davis and Sarah McKinnon curated No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919–1922 at the University of Winnipeg Art Gallery.164 Later No Man’s Land was shown at the National Archives in 1993 and 1998, and it travelled to Acadia University, Wolfville, Nova Scotia (1994), the Moose Jaw Art Museum, Saskatchewan (1995), the Thunder Bay Museum (2001), and the Red Deer 143

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and District Museum (2004).165 Hamilton’s work was also displayed in Europe at the Armando Museum in Amersfoort, The Netherlands. In 2002–2003, Against Time: Armando and Six Canadian Artists brought together Dutch and Canadian artists. More recently, at home in 2013, Hamilton’s paintings were included in Herstory: Art by Women in the University of Winnipeg Collection.166

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Epilogue No Man’s Land, like all biographies, is a piece of interpretive writing. Our goal in this social and women’s history was to try to understand Hamilton and her passion for art by bringing to light as much evidence as possible. The sources were scattered in private and public collections, but by piecing them together we believe that we have come to know something of the artist and the progression of her career. Contemporary newspaper reports and their reviews of Hamilton’s art, in addition to private and public correspondence, have provided the base for analysis. The secondary materials have situated Hamilton within the context of her peers, with whom she shared both a European and a Canadian experience—the experience of women trying to pursue careers as professional artists. We have concluded that circumstances in Hamilton’s life played a significant role in the decisions she made and the course that she followed. Her correspondence, especially, brings her voice into the study and reveals aspects of her character such as her pride, determination, stoicism, willfulness, grit, empathy, loyalty, and gratitude. Her letters expose the significance to her well-being of her network of female friends and supporters, both inside and outside the arts community. In many ways, Hamilton’s path was determined by circumstance. As a child she had shown an interest in art and then as a teenager she was given an opportunity to apprentice with a milliner, which eventually led to her marriage to a dry goods merchant in Port Arthur. Having learned the craft of millinery, she then gained business experience working with her husband. As such, she recognized the importance of publicity, an asset that she would carry into her art career. The subsequent loss of her stillborn son and then her husband were tragic events that determined much of the rest of her life. She was named executrix of her husband’s will and this responsibility gave her legal experience. Most significantly, as a young widow of twenty-five years, she inherited a sizeable amount of money. In an instant, she became a single woman again, without offspring, and free to travel with few domestic responsibilities. Hence in 1901, when her friends Adina Falconer and Jean Isabel Culver presented her with the prospect of going to Germany for two years, she eagerly accepted. For just under a decade, her career advanced steadily as she had the opportunity to live, study, exhibit, and travel in Europe. Mary Riter Hamilton arrived on the European continent as dramatic changes were taking place in the urban landscape as the cities grew and

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industrialized. With technological advances in printing, newspapers and magazines proliferated. Changes were also taking place in attitudes towards women as they gained confidence in finding their place within society. In this milieu, Hamilton learned to live independently and to follow her passion for art. Change was also taking place within the European art world as a new generation of artists distanced themselves from the traditional art establishment and adopted new styles—Impressionism, Post-Impressionism, and the avant-garde. Hamilton and her Canadian contemporaries, Florence Carlyle, Emily Carr, and Sophie Pemberton, to name a few, embraced some of these new ideas and carried them home with them. As they were privileged to study and travel abroad, their exhibits in the Parisian Salons and reviews in Studio and other European publications received acclaim at home. Accordingly, newspaper critiques of Hamilton’s Canadian exhibitions offer an insight into contemporary analysis of her painting. One reads about her transition from a precise, academic, classical style employing dark colours and carefully drawn figures to one that adopted elements of Impressionism and later Post-Impressionism, with their bright colours, loose brushwork, and ill-defined figures. Society pages of newspapers advertised Hamilton’s art exhibitions, her comings and goings, and, in considerable detail, her afternoon teas or “At Homes.” Guests were identified in their fashionable apparel and in their roles at the tea table. Clearly the events were organized to bring together women of elite society, whether in eastern Canada, Winnipeg, Victoria, or Vancouver. These were the women who were potential patrons and, indeed, some became patrons, including Lady MacMillan, wife of the lieutenant-governor of Manitoba (Winnipeg 1906); Mrs. Robert L. Borden, wife of the prime minister (Ottawa 1911); and HRH the Duchess of Connaught, wife of the governor general, and her daughter the Princess Patricia Ramsay. Other patrons were Sir Robert and Lady Borden (Montreal 1912), and the Honourable Douglas Cameron (lieutenant-governor of Manitoba) and Mrs. Cameron (Winnipeg 1912). The newspapers also acknowledged that patronage could extend to the purchase of the artist’s paintings by the Princess Patricia, Prime Minister Borden, and the Hon. Robert Rogers and his wife, Aurelia. Hamilton’s voice and ideas are brought out by newspaper and magazine interviews. For instance, during her 1912 Winnipeg exhibition, journalists reminded their readers that her show six years earlier had provoked art lovers to call for an art institution to be built in the city. In 1912, when the arguments 146

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came out again, Hamilton advanced her own opinions. Drawing on her European experience, she proposed a civic art museum and school for Winnipeg that would mount exhibitions and offer courses in the fine and applied arts, as well as design. She insisted that Winnipeg follow the example of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and offer travelling scholarships to students so they could visit the galleries and art academies of Europe. Winnipeg, at the centre of Canada, was an obvious site for an art museum, she said, and it was time for its citizens to commit to the city’s cultural life.1 In 1919, while residing in Victoria, Hamilton observed that Canadians needed to show more appreciation of their art and in doing so support their artists more effectively, as (she had found) it was impossible to live by art alone.2 Much later, in 1934, she pointed out that if European artists and writers were to come to British Columbia they would espouse “themes and motifs which out here are rather despised at present.” She was referring to Indigenous west coast culture, which would present “opportunities for the artist who wished to get away from the conventions and commonplaces of art.” She also reiterated her idea of a cross-Canada series, as painted by Paul Kane in the fur trade era. Like Kane, she wanted to create a documentary record.3 Letter writing, like the newspapers, brings Hamilton and her view of the world much more clearly into focus. We hear her voice, especially in her correspondence with her dear friend Margaret Hart, but letters exchanged between others on her behalf also reveal much about her life and personality. These files and the newspapers demonstrate the power of women working for women, as Hamilton’s career corresponded to the founding of a number of women’s organizations, for example: the Women’s Art Association of Canada, the Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire, the Women’s Canadian Club, and the University Women’s Club. Letters exchanged between ordinary citizens and government officials show that advocacy for Hamilton rose as high as the prime minister. Finally, hospital reports and correspondence between government and medical officials illuminate Hamilton’s old age. Mary Riter Hamilton was a western Canadian artist whose work can be found in galleries and private collections across the country and is in the market today. No Man’s Land is a social and women’s history that traces the life of an artist whose painting of china tea services led to a depiction of the destruction of war.

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Appendix Women Artists Who Were Contemporaries of Mary Riter Hamilton

ARMINGTON, Caroline Helena, b. Brampton, ON (1875), d. New York, NY (1939) Painter, etcher, and printmaker. Studied with J.W.L. Forster in Toronto (1892) and then at the Académies Grande Chaumière and Julian with Henri Royer, E. Schommer, and Paul-Jean Gervais. While in Winnipeg with her artist husband Frank Armington, she taught painting at Havergal College. During the war she was commissioned by Lord Beaverbrook to do a series of etchings for the Canadian War Memorials Collection. Source: Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (hereafter CWAHI).

CARLYLE, Florence, b. Galt, ON (1864), d. Crowborough, Sussex, England (1923) Painter recognized for her figure studies and landscapes. As a young woman she took art lessons with Paul Peel, who encouraged her to go to France. While there she studied with T. Robert-Fleury, Jules Lefebvre, and Adolphe Bouguereau, among others. On her return to Canada she taught painting at Havergal College, Toronto, where she had established a studio. After 1900 she travelled throughout Europe, finally settling in England. During the Great War she painted for the Canadian War Records and sold her paintings in support of the Red Cross. Sources: Susan Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession; and CWAHI.

CARR, Emily, b. Victoria, BC (1871), d. Victoria, BC (1945) Painter. Carr studied at the California School of Design in San Francisco; the Westminster School of Art in London, England; St. Ives, Cornwall, England; and the Académie Colarossi in Paris. Initially, her work was not well received, but after meeting Lawren Harris (Group of Seven) in the late 1920s she gained more attention, especially for her pictures of Indigenous communities on Vancouver Island. Source: CWAHI.

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CASEY, Lucille C. (MacArthur, McArthur), b. Mississippi (1844), d. at sea while returning to Canada from Scotland (1902) Lucille Casey married her second husband, John Adolphus MacArthur (McArthur), and came to Winnipeg in 1884. She was already a well-trained professional artist who, along with her husband, was instrumental in founding the Winnipeg Art Society. Between 1886 and 1888 she travelled in Europe, studied painting, and had some of her work accepted in the Paris Salons. In 1893 she exhibited at the Royal Canadian Academy (RCA) and at the World’s Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Only a few Casey paintings have survived and they are conserved in the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Source: “Casey, Lucille C. (McArthur) 1844–1902,” Manitoba Historical Society Biographies, online.

CASSATT, Mary, b. Pittsburgh, PA (1844), d. Château de Beaufresne, near Paris (1926) Painter and printmaker. Cassatt was born into a wealthy family and as a child travelled to Europe on a number of occasions. She began studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. In the 1860s she moved to Paris with her mother and, as women were not allowed to study at the École des Beaux-Arts, she took lessons independently. By the mid-1870s, she had decided to live in France permanently and in this period met Edgar Degas, who encouraged her to show her paintings with the Impressionists. She exhibited in the Salons with the Impressionists in the early 1880s, but by 1886 had developed her own style. Mothers and their children was a recurring theme in her paintings and prints. In 1904 she was awarded the Légion d’Honneur by the French government for her contribution to the arts, but by 1914 she had to stop painting as she became almost blind. Source: “Mary Cassatt Biography,” online.

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CHAPMAN, Evelyn, b. Sydney, Australia (1888), d. London, England (1961) Painter, war artist. Chapman studied with Dattilo Rubbo in Sydney, at the Bushey School of Art, Hertfordshire, England, and at the Académie Julian (1911–1914) in Paris. While in Paris she exhibited in the Salons. At the end of the Great War, she travelled to France with her father, who was going as part of the New Zealand War Graves Commission. Hence, she was the first Australian female artist to paint the battlefields after the war. Following her marriage, she gave up painting and lived in London to the end of her life. Her paintings of France, Belgium, and England can be found in the art gallery of New South Wales and her self-portrait is in the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Sources: Catherine Speck, Beyond the Battlefield; and “Evelyn Chapman,” National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, online.

CREASE, Josephine, b. New Westminster, BC (1864), d. Victoria, BC (1947) Sketching and watercolour landscapes. She studied antique and life classes in the Ladies’ Department, King’s College London. On her return to Canada she enjoyed taking students on sketching expeditions around Vancouver Island. She was a close friend of Sophie Pemberton and a founding member of the Island Arts and Crafts Society, where she exhibited her work from 1919 to 1941. She was also a member of the Victoria Women’s Canadian Club. Source: CWAHI.

EASTLAKE, Mary Alexandra, b. Douglas, ON (1864), d. Ottawa, ON (1951) Painter. Mary Eastlake studied with Robert Harris in Montreal, at the Art Students League in New York, and at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. In the early 1890s she travelled to London and Paris, and then she settled in the artists’ colony at St. Ives, Cornwall, where she married the English painter Charles H. Eastlake. They soon became designers of jewellery. After travelling extensively in Europe and Asia, they returned to Montreal and Almonte, Ontario. She was a member of the RCA, but resigned following her marriage. She exhibited with the Art Association of Montreal, the Ontario Society of Artists, and the RCA, among others. Source: CWAHI.

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EWART, Mary Frances Randolph Clay, b. Philadelphia, PA (c.1872), d. Philadelphia, PA (1939) Ewart lived in Winnipeg from 1907 to 1914, during which time she was president of the Women’s Art Association. Her work was shown in 150 Years of Art in Manitoba. Source: “Ewart, Mary Frances Randolph Clay, c. 18721939,” Memorable Manitobans, online.

HOOKER, Marion Nelson, b. Richmond, VA (1866), d. St. Catharines, ON (1946) Marion Nelson came to St. Catharines as a child and later studied art in Toronto and the Art Students League in New York. She toured Europe in 1902, exhibited in this period, and then married a Manitoba businessman, Frank Hooker, in 1907. She continued to paint and exhibit in Manitoba. A favourite theme was Anglican churches. Source: Marion Nelson Hooker by Mary Jo Hughes.

KITTO, Margaret, b. London, England (1871), d. Victoria, BC (1925) Watercolour painter. Margaret Kitto came to Victoria in the 1890s after studying art in England. She was known in Victoria as a “professional artist and art teacher.” From the early 1920s she ran an Art Deco Studio with a fellow artist where they created and exhibited household objects, like lampshades, table runners, etc. She also taught at the Sacred Heart Convent School and the Western Art Studio. With Josephine Crease she led sketching trips around the island and she, too, was active in the Island Arts and Crafts Society. Source: CWAHI.

KOLLWITZ, Käthe, b. Königsberg, Germany (1867), d. Moritzburg, Germany (1945) German printmaker and sculptor. From 1891 she lived in Berlin, where she was a member of the Secession. She was trained as a painter, but later turned to representation of the human body and began etching, especially female figures. In 1904 she studied the basic principles of sculpture at the Académie Julian, although she was primarily a printmaker. Subject matter included themes of mother and child, but also death and misery. Source: “Verein Berliner Künstler [Association of Berlin Artists],” Oxford Art Online: Grove Art Online. 151

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LORING, Frances, b. Wardner, Idaho (1887), d. Toronto, ON (1968) and WYLE, Florence, b. Trenton, Illinois (1881), d. Toronto, ON (1968) American sculptors who moved to Toronto in 1913 and by 1918 had made a reputation within the artistic community. Loring created monumental sculptures whereas Wyle devoted her art to more intimate, detailed pieces, such as animals and children. In 1938 Wyle was the first woman sculptor to be granted full membership in the Royal Academy of Art. Loring and Wyle were both awarded commissions as war artists for the Canadian War Memorial Fund (CWMF) during the Great War. Sources: Elspeth Cameron, And Beauty Answers; and “Archived – Celebrating Women’s Achievements,” Libraries and Archives Canada, online.

LYALL, Laura Muntz, b. Warwickshire, England (1860), d. Toronto, ON (1930) Laura Muntz Lyall came to Canada as a child. She studied with J.W.L. Forster and then, in the 1880s, at South Kensington Art School, and later, in Paris at the Académie Colarossi with J. Leblanc and others. In 1895 she received an Honourable Mention at the Paris Salon and in the same year was elected an Associate of the RCA. In Canada, she regularly exhibited in Montreal; indeed, she was exhibiting there in the spring of 1912, as was Hamilton. Laura Muntz Lyall, like Hamilton, became known for her pictures of maternity. Source: CWAHI.

MAY, Henrietta Mabel, b. Montreal, QC (1877), d. Burnaby, BC (1971) May studied with William Brymner at the Art Association of Montreal (1909–1912) and later was an art student in Paris, where she was influenced by the Impressionists. In 1916 she was made an Associate of the RCA and in 1918 she was commissioned by the CWMF to paint canvases of women working in the munitions factories. In 1920 she was a founding member of the Beaver Hall Group. In 1950 she held a retrospective show and sale of her paintings in Vancouver, where she was living. Source: CWAHI.

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McNICOLL, Helen, b. Toronto, ON (1879), d. Swanage, Dorset, England (1915) Helen McNicoll trained in Montreal under William Brymner, then studied life drawing and painting at the Slade School of Art, London. She spent a brief time in France and then returned to study in the artists’ colony at St. Ives, Cornwall. McNicoll became deaf as a child, but was well supported by her wealthy family. From 1906, her work was shown in exhibitions of the Art Association of Montreal and the RCA. In 1914 she was elected an Associate of the RCA. A Canadian Impressionist, she painted women and children extensively. Sources: Dictionary of Canadian Biography and Collections Canada, Library and Archives Canada, online.

MORISOT, Berthe, b. Bourges, Cher, France (1841), d. Paris (1895) Sister-in-law to Impressionist painter Édouard Manet, Morisot is known herself for her Impressionist works, particularly of women and children. She exhibited in the First Impressionist Exhibition in 1874 and in all but one of the next seven. Source: About.com.ArtHistory, online.

MUDIE-COOKE, Olive, b. London, England (1890), d. France (1925) Painter, British official war artist. Mudie-Cooke was one of the very few women hired as an official war artist in Britain. In 1916, in her early twenties, she first went to France as a volunteer ambulance driver for the Red Cross. Between 1916 and 1917 she created a number of wartime paintings that led to her 1920 commission as an official war artist. Sources: Catherine Speck, Beyond the Battlefield; and Witness: Women War Artists, a 2009 exhibition at the Imperial War Museum North, online.

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PEMBERTON, Sophie, b. Victoria, BC (1869), d. Victoria, BC (1959) Studied at the Slade School of Art, London (1892–96) and at the Académie Julian (1897), where she was the first Canadian to receive the Prix Julian for her portraiture. She showed her paintings in the Salons, at the Royal Academy, and at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition. In 1906 she was elected an Associate of the RCA. Retrospectives of her work were shown at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1954 and at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in 1967. Source: CWAHI.

REID, Mary Hiester, b. Reading, PA (1854), d. Toronto, ON (1921) Reid studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Art and, later, at the Académie Colarossi. She travelled widely in Europe with her husband, Canadian artist George Agnew Reid. She was a successful still life artist known for her flower paintings, which received favourable reviews in the press. Source: CWAHI.

SCHREIBER, Charlotte, b. Woodham Mortimer, Essex, England (1834), d. Paignton, Devon, England (1922) Painter and illustrator. She painted portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes in oil and watercolour, and illustrated three books while in England. In 1875 she moved to Canada and continued her work as well as becoming involved in the Toronto arts community. She was elected to the Ontario Society of Artists in the 1870s and she was the first woman to teach at the Ontario College of Art. In 1880 she was elected a charter member of the RCA and was the only female member until 1933. Her work was exhibited by the RCA, the Art Association of Montreal, and the Ontario Society of Artists. Source: CWAHI.

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STEVENS, Dorothy, b. Toronto, ON (1888), d. Toronto, ON (1966) Portrait painter and printmaker. Trained at the Slade School of Art, London, Académies Colarossi and Grande Chaumière. By 1914 she had exhibited at the RCA several times and in 1919 was commissioned by the CWMF to produce etchings of the home front. Her work can be found in collections of the National Gallery and the Art Gallery of Ontario. Source: CWAHI.

TULLY, Sydney Strickland, b. Toronto, ON (1860), d. Toronto, ON (1911) Painted Portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes. She studied in Toronto, in Paris at the Académies Colarossi and Julian, in London at the Slade School of Fine Art, and in New York at the Long Island Art School. She began her career painting photographs and designing Christmas cards. She opened studios in Toronto, London, Holland, and Jersey. She exhibited in Europe and North America, including the Art Association of Montreal. Source: CWAHI.

WATSON, Adele, b. Toledo, OH (1873), d. Pasadena, CA (1947) Studied at the Art Students League in New York and in several ateliers in Paris. She exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Toledo. Watson was a friend of Kahlil Gibran, as was Hamilton. During the Great War she moved to Pasadena and lived there for the most part until her death in 1947, but in the early twenties she resided in New York. Source: “Women’s Art in the Modernist Tradition,” Jeri L. Weinstein Wolfson Collection, online.

WYLDE, Theresa, b. England (c.1870), d. Newcastle?, England (1949) Victoria artist, founding member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria. She exhibited with the Society in the same years as Hamilton. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria has two of her paintings in its collection. Sources: CWAHI and “Wylde, Theresa Victoria (Miss), c.1870-1949,” British Columbia Artists, ARTISTS, online.

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Notes Preface 1.

Margaret A. Thorburn to Angela E. Davis, 5 December 1988, Angela E. Davis private collection. Margaret Thorburn’s husband was the grandson of Mary Riter Hamilton’s sister, Clara (1864 – n.d.).

2.

Angela E. Davis, “Mary Riter Hamilton: Manitoba Artist 1873–1954,” Manitoba History (1986), accessed 1 February 2008, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/ mb_history/11/hamilton_mr.shtml, and “An Artist in No Man’s Land,” The Beaver 69:5 (September 1989): 6–11. Both articles drew a response from readers who had an interest in the artist. The essay was first presented to the Women in Manitoba History conference at the University of Manitoba in 1986. See also: Davis to Patricia Vervoort, 9 January 1989, and Davis to Mrs. Pauline J. Thurston, 22 November 1988, Davis private collection. Here Davis relates how she became involved in researching Mary Riter Hamilton.

3.

For the purposes of this study there will be references to Library and Archives Canada (LAC), to the Public Archives of Canada, and to the National Archives. For the history of the Archives see: Alison Pier, Reference Services, LAC to Kathryn Young, 13 February 2017, personal communication. The “Dominion Archives” was founded in 1872 as a division of the Department of Agriculture. By statute, in 1912, the name changed to the “Public Archives of Canada,” and continued until 1987 when it was replaced by the “National Archives of Canada.” From 1872 to 1987, the head of the Archives was known as the “Dominion Archivist,” then from 1987 to 2004 as the “National Archivist.” In 2004 the National Archives and the National Library merged to become LAC under the LAC Act.

4.

See the exhibition catalogue: Angela E. Davis and Sarah M. McKinnon, No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton/Tableaux de Champs de Bataille de Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919–1922 (1989; 2nd ed., 1992, Winnipeg: University of Winnipeg, 1989). The exhibition ran from 5 November 1989 to mid-January 1990. It was co-sponsored by The War Amps and the University of Winnipeg. Technical assistance was provided by LAC and financial assistance came from the Manitoba Arts Council. The year before the exhibition opened, a video was launched by The War Amps: No Man’s Land from the Never Again! Series (Scarborough, ON: The War Amps, Video Distribution Department, 1988).

5.

Before long it became apparent that it would be impossible to locate all of Hamilton’s paintings as many were in private collections. Nonetheless, a number have been found. The battlefield collection was gifted to LAC. It has been inventoried and is available to the public in print and online.

No t e s t o Pa g e s x i i i – 4 6.

Davis to William Kent, 8 March 1993, Davis private collection.

7.

Davis to Judy and Wally Bishop, and Davis to Dr. and Mrs. E.C. Hart, 11 June 1993, Davis private collection.

Prologue 1.

Mary Riter Hamilton to Margaret Hart, 20 June 1922, Judy Bishop private collection. Punctuation is Hamilton’s.

2.

See Irene Gammel, “The Memory of St. Julien: Configuring Gas Warfare in Mary Riter Hamilton’s Battlefield Art,” Journal of War and Culture Studies 9:1 (February 2016): 20–4; Catherine Speck, Beyond the Battlefield: Women Artists of the Two World Wars (London: Reaktion Books, 2014) and Painting Ghosts: Australian Women Artists in Wartime (Melbourne: Thames and Hudson, 2004); Kathleen Palmer, Women War Artists (London: Tate Publishing, 2012), exhibition catalogue; Marguerite Helmers, “A Visual Rhetoric of World War I Battlefield Art: C.R.W. Nevinson, Mary Riter Hamilton, and Kenneth Burke’s Scene,” The Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914–1945, 5, no. 1 (2009): 78–94; and Jim Burant, “No Man’s Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton,” Queen’s Quarterly 112, no. 1 (2005): 28. See also Grace Devlin, “The Female Art of War: To what extent did the female artists of the First World War contribute to a change in the position of women in society?” (undergraduate dissertation, University of Bristol, 2015).

3.

Gammel, “Memory of St. Julien,” 27.

4.

For an overview of some of Hamilton’s paintings and works about her up to 2013, see “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist Database, Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI), http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist. php?ID_artist=23 (accessed 10 February 2016). Note: see Chapter 1 for our research concerning the date of Hamilton’s birth. It was in 1868, and not in 1873 as was cited in the CWAHI article and other publications.

5.

Hamilton always identified herself as a woman on her own, and an artist above all. Although she had a network of women friends, there seemed to be no particular woman in her life, i.e., one that she lived with for any period of time. See Shari Benstock, ed., The Private Self: Theory and Practice of Women’s Autobiographical Writings (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 286.

157

No t e s t o Pa g e s 4 – 5 6.

Locations of paintings discussed in the text are given in the notes. For details about Hamilton’s battlefield paintings, see Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, LAC, http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx (accessed 25 January 2017). This site includes an inventory with detailed descriptions and digitized images of almost all of the paintings and sketches that were gifted to the Archives in 1926. “Mary Riter Hamilton: Traces of War” is a website prepared by LAC with copies of a number of Hamilton’s battlefield paintings and some textual materials, such as correspondence with the Dominion Archivist at the time the gift was made. Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, “Traces of War,” http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/ military-heritage/first-world-war/mary-riter-hamilton/Pages/introduction.aspx (accessed 16 February 2017). For records of sales, see “Mary Riter Hamilton Sale Results,” Heffel: Canada’s National Fine Art Auction House, http://www.heffel. com/links/Sales_E.aspx?ID=5B5656 (accessed 13 November 2013) and “Mary Riter Hamilton on artnet,” Artnet, http://www.artnet.fr/art/artistes/mary+ritterhamilton/lake-louise-rMRsYKPPTVguxNMOA (accessed 3 November 2013). Note: there is an error here in the spelling of Riter.

7.

See Angela Davis handwritten notes and David L. Carl to Angela Davis, 12 November 1992, Angela Davis Private collection. David Carl and his sister Judy Bishop are the children of Ellen Hart and G.C. Carl and the grandchildren of Margaret Janet Hart and Edward Charles Hart. Margaret Hart and Mary Riter Hamilton were very good friends in Victoria during the Great War and throughout the 1920s. Hamilton was very fond of the Hart children, Ellen and her brother Edward (Ted), during these years. See Chapters 3, 4, and 5 for the Hamilton-Hart correspondence in the Judy Bishop private collection.

8.

Note: the Women’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC) was the Women’s Art Association (WAA) in the Mary Riter Hamilton records and has been used as such, where applicable.

9.

See Benstock, The Private Self, 215 and 300. Benstock has included diaries, journals, and memoirs as important pieces of women’s writing and she explores the correspondence of writers such as Jane Austen, Simone de Beauvoir, and Virginia Woolf. See also Carol Baines, “Professor Elizabeth Govan: An Outsider in Her Own Community,” in Challenging Professions: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Women’s Professional Work, eds. Elizabeth Smyth et al. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 13 and 44–64. Baines writes that Govan’s letters to her family were important in revealing her ideas about her work and her relationships with her network of women. See also Nancy F. Cott, ed., A Woman Making History: Mary Ritter Beard Through Her Letters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991) and The Grounding of Modern Feminism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 5 – 7 10. Kristina Huneault and Janice Anderson, eds., Rethinking Professionalism: Women and Art in Canada, 1850–1970 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2012): xix–xxvi. Huneault is a member of the CWAHI, which is an “open network of scholars” whose research focuses on women’s art and their cultural activity including “diversity of time, place, language, ethnicity and visual media.” For a study that focuses on American women artists and their search for professional status, see Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals: Women Artists & the Development of Modern American Art, 1870–1930 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001). 11. Mary Kinnear, In Subordination: Professional Women, 1870–1970 (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 6–14. Kinnear says that professional women were those who had post-secondary education and training in areas that demanded scientific or “esoteric skill and knowledge; evidence of a certificate or test to same; self-regulation; and service.” See also Smyth et al., Challenging Professions, 4–6. The authors also acknowledge the difficulties with defining professionalism and, in an effort to do so, present a number of articles on women in various professions, such as accounting, social work, and others. By exploring the women’s experience they confirm in many ways the criteria established by Kinnear. 12. Kristina Huneault, “Professionalism as Critical Concept and Historical Process for Women and Art in Canada,” in Rethinking Professionalism, 9, 10, and 14. Since the eighteenth century, painting as an activity was privileged and linked to professionalism in England and, after Confederation, in Canada. Moreover, painting (portraits . . .) was considered a fine art and distinct from commercial art, e.g., tinting photographs. 13. Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 7. For some more biographical information see: “Chapman, Evelyn, (1888–1961).” National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, http:/ www.portrait.gov.au/people/evelyn-chapman-1888 (accessed 1 March 2016) and “Mudie-Cooke, Driver Olive (1890–1925).” Lives of the First World War, thttps:// livesofthefirstworldwar.org/lifestory/4947424 (accessed 26 February 2017). 14. Joan Murray, The Birth of the Modern: Post-Impressionism in Canadian Art, c. 1900–1920 (Oshawa: The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2001), 11.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 9 – 1 2 15. For more commentary on Impressionism and its adoption by women artists, see Susan Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession: Florence Carlyle: Canadian Painter in the Age of Impressionism (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2009). See also Norma Broude, Impressionism. A Feminist Reading: The Gendering of Art, Science and Nature in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Rizzoli, 1990) for a deconstruction of Impressionism by gendered analysis. And for a review of the book, see Marilynn Lincoln Board, review of Impressionism. A Feminist Reading, by Norma Broude, Women’s Art Journal, 15, no. 2 (Autumn 1994–Winter 1995): 38–40. See also Paul Duval, Canadian Impressionism (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1990), 9. 16. “Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, Autopsy Report,” 2–5 April 1954, Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia, Archives of British Columbia.

Chaper One: Early Years—Artistic Beginnings, 1868–1901 1.

Fanny K. Huntley, interviewed by Major J.S. Matthews, 29 February 1952, Major J.S. Matthews collection, “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” MSS 54, vol. 13. 01972, and newspaper file M3958, City Archives of Vancouver, Vancouver. Fanny K. Huntley was an admirer, a friend, and a beneficiary of the Hamilton will. See Chapter 5, this volume.

2.

“The Annual Women’s Art Association Art Exhibition (WAA),” Manitoba Free Press, 5 December 1896. Hamilton’s records refer to the WAA and not the WAAC as it is known today.

3.

“The Industrial Exhibition, July 1897,” Winnipeg Tribune, 22 July 1897.

4.

“The December Industrial Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 15 December 1900.

5.

To date there has been an error in Hamilton’s birthdate. It has been cited as 1873, but this date is not confirmed by census data. The error may have begun with an entry in a dictionary of Canadian artists, published in 1968. See Colin S. MacDonald, “Hamilton, Mary Riter, (c) 1873–1954,” A Dictionary of Canadian Artists (Ottawa: Canadian Paperbacks, 1968). It would seem that MacDonald did not have access to the census records at the time and, following his dictionary entry, the birth date of 1873 was repeated. See instead, the 1871 and 1881 Ontario census records, which state that Mary Riter Hamilton was three years of age in 1871 (b. 1868) and thirteen years of age in 1881 (b. 1868). Her marriage certificate states that she was twenty-one years of age on 17 July 1889 (b. 1867). Her British Columbia death certificate, however, identifies her birth date as 7 September 1869. There is clearly a discrepancy in these records, but it would seem that the artist was born in either 1867 or 1868 (according to census and marriage records) or 160

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 – 1 3 1869 (according to her death certificate). In short, she was not born in 1873. For the purposes of this study, 7 September 1868 will be used as Hamilton’s date of birth. See Ontario census 1871 and 1881; Schedule B – Marriages, Huron County, Clinton, # 005309, MS 932, Reel 64, Archives of Ontario. See also Registration of Death (Hamilton, Mary Riter), Province of British Columbia, Department of Health and Welfare, Division Vital Statistics, Archives of British Columbia. Note: the artist was named Mary Matilda Riter, but she most often signed her name Mary Riter Hamilton, sometimes Mary Hamilton, and rarely MRH. Matilda was only signed on legal documents at the time of her husband’s death in 1893. She was Mary to her family and friends, and Hammy to some very close friends. 6.

See Lorna Stevens to Kathryn Young, 11 June 2012 and 21 December 2016, personal communication. Lorna Stevens is a descendant of the Zimmerman family and her genealogical research has revealed her Pennsylvania Dutch roots and those of Mary Riter Hamilton.

7.

Wallace Brown, “‘Victorious in Defeat’: The American Loyalists in Canada,” History Today, 27 (February 1977): 92–100. Following the American Revolution (1765–1783), the United Empire Loyalists were citizens who remained loyal to the British Crown. Many were discriminated against and thus fled to Canada with their families. They included Britons (English, Scots, Irish, Welsh), Pennsylvania Dutch (German Mennonites), African-Americans, and Native Americans, among others. See also Margaret A. Thorburn to Michael Ostroff, 25 January 1994, Michael Ostroff private collection. Thorburn indicates that she had been told that the family name was Ritter. See also “Greatest Woman Painter Born in Culross Township,” Teeswater News, 12 January 1949, and Norman Robertson, History of the County of Bruce and the minor municipalities, Province of Ontario (Toronto: W. Briggs, 1906), 344, Canadian Libraries: Internet Library, http://www.archive.org/ details/countybruce00robeuoft (accessed 18 August 2009).

8.

Bruce County Genealogical Society, Culross County, http://www.rootsweb. ancestry.com~onbcgs/bcgshist.htm (accessed 6 August 2009).

9.

1861 Canada Census, Ontario: Bruce County, Culross Township, Ward no. 5, Public Archives of Canada, microfilm, reel, C.1010.

10. Robertson, County of Bruce, 118, 347–8, and 360. 11. Bruce County Genealogical Society, Culross County. 12. Culross County Marriage Register: Marriage of John Ritter [Riter] (28 yrs) and Charity Zimmerman (22 yrs), 9 July 1859, Bruce County Marriage Register, 1859–1869, United Counties of Huron and Bruce; W.E. Britnell, ed., County Marriage Registers of Ontario, Canada, 1858–1869, vol. 8, Bruce County (Agincourt, ON: Generation Press, 1982), 4. The 1861 census identifies: John, farmer, age 30 years, Charity, age 24 years, John P., age 1 year, and John (Ryder), farmer, 161

No t e s t o Pa g e 1 3 age 61 (likely the grandfather); Church of Scotland faith; and living in Upper Canada. See 1861 Canada census. Note: there is a discrepancy between the census records of 1861, 1871, and 1881. John Saul Riter is said to be 30 years in 1861, 38 years in 1871, and 49 years in 1881. See also 1871 Canada census, Bruce County, Culross Township, Ward No. 5, Reel # C 9934 and 1881 Canada census, Bruce County, Culross Township, Ward. No. 5, Reel # C-13274, Archives of Ontario. For the purposes of this study John Saul Riter’s birthdate is identified as c. 1833. 13. See notes 5 and 12 above for 1871 and 1881 census citations. The 1881 census records John, Charity, and only three children: John (Paul) (20 yrs), Clara (16 yrs), and Mary (13 yrs). 14. “Greatest Woman Painter Born in Culross Township.” See also Thorburn to Ostroff, 25 January 1994, Ostroff private collection. The Riter sawmill was situated on the Steele farm between the 8th and 10th concessions on lot 23. 15. The handwritten document registers Riter as “Ritter, John (Teeswater), concession 10, lot 16, farmer 58.” See 1880 Bruce County Directory, Culross Township, Ritter, Con. 10, Lt. 16, Gazeteer and Directory of Bruce County. Township of Culross, http://www.ourroots.ca/e/page.aspx?id=3916075 (accessed 19 August 2009). And for John S. Riter in 1867: Con 18, Lots 23, 24, 25, Bruce Directory 1867, http://freepages.geneology.rootsweb.ancestry.com (accessed 19 August 2009). 16. Alexa Donaldson to Robert Amos, 10 October 1977, Robert Amos files, file III, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV), Victoria. Donaldson, born in Teeswater, wrote that her cousins still living at Teeswater recalled that they had gone to school with Mary Riter Hamilton. Donaldson’s grandfather bought the Riter concession, c. 1882. She also told Amos that news reports of Mary Hamilton’s exhibitions circulated around the town. See Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, xviii. Hamilton’s contemporary, Florence Carlyle (1864–1923), had a similar upbringing in a small Ontario town. 17. Florence Deacon, “The Art of Mary Hamilton,” The Canadian Magazine, 39:6 (October 1912): 557. 18. Canada Census records, Bruce County, 1861, 1871, and 1881. In 1861, the Riters identified themselves as members of the Church of Scotland, in 1871 as belonging to the English Church, and in 1881 as Methodists. At the time of her marriage, Mary Hamilton was registered as a Presbyterian; later, documents record the Hamilton family as Presbyterian. 19. “Greatest Woman Painter Born in Culross Township.” 20. Robertson, County of Bruce, 118. 21. See Lorna Stevens private collection.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 – 1 6 22. W.L. Morton, Manitoba: A History, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1967), 156 and 177. From 1876, the largest number of immigrants coming into Manitoba was from Ontario. 23. Quoted in Ibid., 157 24. Ibid., 158–59 and 187. By the 1870s, immigrants were arriving in Manitoba from Iceland, Italy, and Eastern Europe. 25. Huntley interview, 29 February 1952. 26. See “Fort William,” “Thunder Bay,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/thunder-bay/ (accessed 20 February 2017). 27. See “Thunder Bay,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http://www.britannica.com/ EBchecked/topic/594344/Thunder Bay (accessed 30 August 2009). Intense rivalry between the cities led to a unification of the harbour facilities in 1906, but efforts to amalgamate the two communities begun in the 1950s did not find resolution until 1970 with the creation of the city of Thunder Bay. 28. Huntley interview, 29 February 1952. 29. “The Paris Dry Goods House will be opened on the First of March,” Daily Sentinel, 25 February 1889. 30. “Now Opened The Paris Drygoods House,” Daily Sentinel, 4 March 1889. 31. See 17 July 1889, Schedule B – Marriages, County of Huron, Division of Clinton, MS 932 Reel 64 – Reg. # 5309, Archives of Ontario. See also David Nicholson to Sarah McKinnon, 30 December 2001, personal communication. 32. Weekly Sentinel, 26 July 1889. In the 1880s, Port Arthur had several newspapers: the Daily Sentinel, the Weekly Sentinel, and a Friday newspaper the Thunder Bay Sentinel. See also “Ship of the Month, No. 10 Campana,” The Scanner 3, no.1 (October 1970), Toronto Marine Historical Society, http://www.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/documents/scanner/03/01/default.asp?ID=c008 (accessed 20 February 2017). 33. Ibid. The News Chronicle, Port Arthur, 23 January 1919 records Mary Hamilton as living at Court and Pearl. 34. “Our People and Our Town: Impressions of the Silver Gateway by a Prominent Toronto Citizen–A Big Send-Off,” Weekly Sentinel, 26 July 1889. 35. Ibid. 36. “A New Firm. Hamilton & Hamilton,” Daily Sentinel, 29 November 1889. See also Alex Ross, City Archivist, Thunder Bay, to Sarah McKinnon, 15 November 2001, personal communication. Ross says that the Port Arthur Assessment Roll

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 6 – 1 8 for 1892 records C.W. Hamilton’s business as located in a rented building on the North part of Lot 2 on the East side of Cumberland Street. 37. “Community Notes,” Thunder Bay Sentinel, 4 December 1890. Years later Ross confirmed that the Hamiltons were well known in the Port Arthur community. Ross to McKinnon, 15 November 2001, personal communication. 38. Nicholson to McKinnon, 30 December 2001, personal communication. Death registration of infant son of C.W. and Mary Hamilton, 29 August 1892, Schedule C – Deaths, District of Thunder Bay, Division of Port Arthur, MS 935 Reel 63 – Reg. # 1085, Archives of Ontario. 39. See Epilogue, this volume. 40. Charles W. Hamilton, Schedule C – Deaths, District of Thunder Bay, Division of Port Arthur, # 1169, MS 935, Reel 67, Archives of Ontario. The death register records the cause of death as “syncope” (loss of consciousness from drop in blood pressure). 41. “Mr. Hamilton’s Death,” Thunder Bay Sentinel, 15 December 1893. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. “Mr. Hamilton’s Death,” Thunder Bay Sentinel, 22 December 1893. 45. Ibid. 46. Nicholson to McKinnon, 20 November 2001, personal communication. See Chapter 5. The plot in which the Hamiltons were buried was shared with George and Charlotte Burke. It is not clear what the connection was between the Burke and Hamilton families. See also Frank Riter to Michael Ostroff, 2 June 1994, personal communication. Riter informed Ostroff that Charles Hamilton was buried in the same plot as his stillborn son who had passed away on 29 August 1892. 47. “Heraldings,” Weekly Herald and Algoma Miner, 5 January 1894. William or Willard Hamilton was a shoe wholesaler. 48. See Chapter 4 for correspondence between W. Hamilton and the artist. 49. “Estate file of Charles Watson Hamilton, Husband of Mary Riter Hamilton,” Microfilm, MS 1793, Archives of Ontario, 18 January 1894. 50. Ibid. On 12 January 1894, Mary Hamilton had signed a declaration, saying: “that I am the Executrix therein named and that I will faithfully administer the Property of the said Testator by paying his debts and the legacies contained in his will.” 51. Ibid. 164

No t e s t o Pa g e 1 8 52. “Appendix A: Purchasing Power of the Canadian Dollar,” James Powell, A History of the Canadian Dollar, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/en/dollar_book/appendixa.pdf (accessed 10 September 2009). Note: Canadian inflation information is only available from 1914 so a U.S. inflation calculator was used to determine the inflation amount from 1893 to 1914 (from 1854 to 1914 the Dominion of Canada was under the gold standard. The value of the Canadian dollar was fixed in terms of gold and was valued at par with U.S. currency). To determine the value of Hamilton’s estate in 2015, see “Seven Ways to Compute the Relative Value of a U.S. Dollar Amount –1774 to Present,” Measuring Worth, http://www. measuringworth.com/uscompare/result.php?year_source=1895&amount=3500 (accessed 8 February 2016). This table was used for the estate value from 1893 to 1914 (relative value of $3,500 in 1893 ranges from $3,890 to $8,280 in 1914). See “Inflation Calculator,” Bank of Canada, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/ related/inflation-calculator (accessed 8 February 2016). Conservatively, the value of Hamilton’s estate and Mary Hamilton’s inheritance, $3,890 in 1914, would be worth $80,669 in 2015. See also economist Norman Cameron (retired, University of Manitoba) to Kathryn Young, 16 December 2008, 21 November 2014, and 4 February 2016, personal communication. 53. Oxford Dictionary: “professional”: belonging to, connected with, a profession. Women artists of the period understood that to be a professional meant to be serious as an artist and to be accepted by the artistic community. See Kinnear, In Subordination, 8–18, Kirsten Swinth, Painting Professionals, and Kristina Huneault, “Professionalism.” 54. Ellen Easton McLeod, In Good Hands: The Women of the Canadian Handicrafts Guild (Montreal and Kingston: Published for Carleton University by McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999), 36–49. See also “Dignam, Mary Ella,” Artist Database, CWAHI, http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist. php?ID_artist=99 (accessed 28 January 2017). 55. Huneault, “Professionalism,” 28. See also Kathleen Dowsett, “The Women’s Art Association of Canada and its Designs on Canadian Handicraft, 1898–1939” (M.A. Thesis, Queen’s University, 1998), 27–8 and Swinth, Painting Professionals, 117–123. Huneault argues that American women’s art associations were first founded in the 1870s following the Civil War. 56. Virginia Berry, Vistas of Promise: Manitoba 1874–1919 (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1987), 32. 57. Angela Davis, “Laying the Ground: The Establishment of an Artistic Milieu in Winnipeg, 1890–1913,” Manitoba History 4 (1982), http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/ mb-history (accessed 12 September 2008).

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No t e s t o Pa g e 1 9 58. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 45. According to Berry, Mary Clay Ewart (c. 1872–1939), an important figure in the organization of art in Winnipeg, was “an internationally trained painter and sculptor originally from Philadelphia.” See also Virginia Berry fonds, “Women Artists and Women’s Art (1874–1919),” P5748, file 35 and 39; “China Painting,” P5736, folder 31; and “Women Artists’: Mary Riter Hamilton, (1873–1954),” P5738, folder 87. Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg. 59. Kathryn A. Young, “With Every Note Played”: A History of the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, 1894–2014 (Winnipeg: Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, 2015), 7–9. For an earlier version of this booklet, see Valorie Dick, “Let Us Enjoy Music”: A History of the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, 1894–1994 (Winnipeg: Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, 1994). Mrs. Angus Kirkland, a founding member, was central to keeping the vision alive, a vision that took form at the club’s first meeting in the home of Mrs. Lauchlan Alexander (L.A.) Hamilton at 434 Assiniboine Avenue, wife of the Land Commissioner for the CPR. Constance Hamilton was later president of the Club between 1899 and 1900, and related to Mary Hamilton by marriage. See “Constance Hamilton,” The History of Metropolitan Vancouver, http://www.vancouverhistory.ca/archives_ hamilton.htm (accessed 7 December 2013). Constance Hamilton (1862–1945) was the wife of Lauchlan Alexander Hamilton (1852–1941), a brother or relative of Mary Hamilton’s husband. The Hamiltons lived in Vancouver and then, from 1888, in Winnipeg, until 1899 when they moved to Collingwood, north of Toronto. In 1900, they moved to Toronto. More than once the artist was a guest of the Lauchlan Hamiltons in Ontario. The WMC of Winnipeg continues today. Each year it presents a number of recitals that promote young musicians. Many later became household names in Canadian musical history, including Glenn Gould, piano (1954–55), Teresa Stratas, soprano (1963–64), and Anton Kuerti, piano (1978–79). The Women’s Musical Club of Toronto was founded in 1899. 60. Young, ”With Every Note Played,” 10, and “Dame Nellie Melba, 1861–1931,” Encyclopedia Britannica, http:// www.britannica.com/EBchecked topic 373804/ Dame Nellie Melba (accessed 5 April 2008). 61. Young, “With Every Note Played,” 46. Galt, Sanford Evans, and Riley all served as presidents of the WMC. For Jean Isabel Riley, see “Culver, William Henry (1850–1900),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http:// www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/culver_wh.shtml (accessed 14 September 2012); for Constance Bodington Hamilton, see note 59; Margaret Jane Smith, “Galt, George Frederick (1855–1928),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/?docs/people/galt_gf.shtml (accessed 29 January 2017); and for Mary Irene Gurney, “Evans, William Sanford, (1869–1949),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 9 – 2 1 evans_ws.shtml (accessed 29 January 2017). The husbands of all of these women were prominent members of the Winnipeg community. 62. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 32. The Industrial Exhibition continued up to 1915 when it was cancelled because of the Great War. 63. Morton, Manitoba, 259. In the late 1890s, Brandon and Portage la Prairie emerged as small cities. 64. Ibid., 263. 65. Alan Artibise and Gilbert A. Stelter, “Introduction” in Gateway City: documents on the city of Winnipeg, 1873–1913, edited by Artibise and Stelter (Winnipeg: Manitoba Record Society with University of Manitoba Press, 1979), Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/books/mrs05.pdf, 7 (accessed 14 March 2008). 66. Ibid., 18. 67. Armstrong’s Point is a peninsula that is formed by a bend in the Assiniboine River, south of the commercial district. 68. Artibise and Stelter, Gateway, 21. 69. Kathryn Young and Chris Dooley, “Housing a Prairie City: Winnipeg’s Residential Built Environment, 1870–1921” (A Report Submitted to the Planning, Property and Development Department, City of Winnipeg, December 2007). Tyndall stone quarries are located at Stonewall near Winnipeg—the source of much of the distinctive stonework extant in the city today in the historic warehouse and financial districts and in the upscale neighbourhoods. 70. Quoted in Morton, Manitoba, 263. 71. Ibid., 70. 72. Ibid. 73. Morton, Manitoba, 315. See Chapter 2 for some European examples of women demanding more rights. See: “Margret Benedictsson, (1866–1956),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/margret-benedictsson/ (accessed 26 February 2017); “Lillian Beynon Thomas, (1874–1961),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/ docs/people/thomas_lb.shtml (accessed 26 February 2017); “Frances Marion Beynon, (1884–1961),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/francis-marion-beynon/ (accessed 26 February 2017); and “Nellie MClung, (1873–1951),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/nellie-letitia-mcclung/ (accessed 26 February 2017). 74. See Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 31. By the late 1880s, Florence Carlyle was also committed to becoming an artist. 167

No t e s t o Pa g e s 2 1 – 2 3 75. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 2–5 December 1895. 76. Whitney Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, 4th ed. (New York: Thames & Hudson World of Art, 2007), 243. Also see Huneault, “Professionalism,” 18–19. 77. Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, 245–6. 78. Ibid., 247. Chadwick argues, “women’s creative presence was more powerfully felt in Chicago in 1893 than at any other time in the country’s history.” The Women’s Building displayed women’s artwork from all over the world, ethnographic displays created by different cultures, historic and contemporary household goods, prints and engravings from the Renaissance to the present, and literature. There was opposition from some women who wanted to exhibit alongside men in the Fine Arts Building rather than having their work displayed with that of amateurs. “One critic charged that a mix of professional and amateur works led to a mélange of mediocrity.” Ibid., 247. Also see ibid, 249. 79. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Exhibit,” Town Topics, 10 December 1898. 80. McLeod, In Good Hands, 2, 11–22, 36–49. 81. Ibid. 82. “Women Artists,” Berry fonds, P5748, folder 35, Archives of Manitoba. See also microfilm and print files of the daily and weekly newspapers. See Swinth, Painting Professionals, 2. From the 1880s, in the United States art and artists, including women, achieved more status as art magazines and newspapers with full-time critics publicized their work. 83. Hamilton’s mother continued to live near Clearwater, Manitoba, and Lauchlan and Constance Hamilton, related to Charles Hamilton, lived in Winnipeg. 84. “Women Artists,” Berry fonds, P5748, file 39, Archives of Manitoba. See also Huneault, “Professionalism,” 18–9. Huneault points out that although Mary Hiester Reid is best known for her painting, she, too, painted china. See Introduction for Huneault’s arguments regarding the importance of craft production to our understanding of women’s art professionalism. See also Janice Anderson, “Negotiating Gendered Spaces: The Artistic Practice of Mary Hiester Reid,” in Quiet Harmony: The Art of Mary Hiester Reid, edited by Brian Foss and Janice Anderson (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario), 31 and 38. 85. Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 31. She also concedes that there were some women who were successful at combining their careers with marriage, such as Marion Hooker, Laura Muntz Lyall, and Mary Hiester Reid. See also Appendix. 86. Gill Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde: Modernism and “Feminine” Art, 1900 to the late 1920s (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 87. Perry notes that, of the women artists studied in her

168

No t e s t o Pa g e s 2 3 – 2 6 book, those with children had at most one child. See also Smyth, et al., Challenging Professions, 12. 87. See McLeod, In Good Hands, 4–5, and “Schreiber, Charlotte,” CWAHI, http:// www.cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=40 (accessed 12 December 2013) and Appendix. 88. Mary Jo Hughes, Marion Nelson Hooker: Two Lives, One Passion (Winnipeg: Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1999), 6. 89. Virginia G. Berry, “Casey, Lucille C.,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13, University of Toronto/Université Laval, 2003, www.http://wwwbiographi.ca/en/ bio/casey_lucille_c_13E.html (accessed 30 January 2017). See Appendix. 90. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 35. 91. Ibid. See Chapter 2 for more information on the Julian and other Parisian art academies. 92. “Women Artists,” Berry fonds, P5748, folder 35, Archives of Manitoba. 93. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 35. 94. Berry, “Casey, Lucille C.” 95. “Women Artists,” Berry fonds, P5748, folder 35, Archives of Manitoba. 96. “Hooker, Marion Nelson (1866–1946),” Manitoba Historical Society Biographies, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/hooker (accessed 9 December 2009). 97. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 21. Frances Horsman (1863–1949) from Guelph, Ontario was another Manitoba artist. She taught French and art at St. John’s Ladies College in the 1880s. In 1886, she married Thomas Sharman and they moved to a sheep farm at Oak Lake, Manitoba, where she continued her painting. 98. Hughes, Marion Nelson Hooker, 6, 12, 14, 19 and Berry, Vistas of Promise, 56. In 1905, Hooker was elected to the OSA. 99. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 35. 100. “Forster, John Wycliffe Lowes,” National Gallery of Canada: Library and Archives, http://www.gallery.ca/english/library/biblio/ngc051.html (accessed 2009). John Wycliffe Lowes Forster (1850–1938) was a Canadian portrait painter who studied at the South Kensington Art School in London and for three years at the Julian Academy in Paris. 101. “Royer, Henri Paul (1869–1938),” Artnet, http://www.artnet.com (accessed 26 November 2012). See Chapter 3 for biographical information on Paul-Jean Gervais. Biographical information was not found for E. Schommer. 102. “Armington, Caroline,” Artist Database, CWAHI, http://cwahi.concordia.ca/ sources/artists/displayArtist.php?ID_artist=6 (accessed 9 December 2009). See 169

No t e s t o Pa g e s 2 6 – 2 9 the bibliography that accompanies this webpage for more information on the Armingtons in Canada and Europe. 103. Prizes were recorded in the newspapers of 1895, 1897, 1898, and 1900. 104. A rough count yields thirty-seven mentions of Hamilton’s activity and work in these years. 105. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition, Manitoba Free Press, 7 February 1895. 106. Berry, Vistas of Promise, 36. 107. “North West Exhibition–Regina,” Manitoba Free Press, 7 August 1895. 108. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 2–5 December 1895. 109. “Art Association – The Ceramics Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 4 February 1896. 110. “Mrs. C.W. Hamilton – the Art Exhibits,” Manitoba Free Press, 18 July 1896. 111. “Mrs. C.W. Hamilton Moved Her Studio,” Manitoba Free Press, 23 September 1896. This may be the first Hamilton advertisement for classes in watercolour painting. 112. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 5 December 1896. 113. See also Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 98. Butlin argues that it was in this period that journalists, often women, began to feature women artists such as Florence Carlyle, Mary Hiester Reid, and Laura Muntz Lyall, and their work. 114. “Exhibition, 1897,” Winnipeg Tribune, 22 July 1897. 115. “Brandon Fair–China Painting,” Winnipeg Tribune, 5 August, and “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 27 September 1897. 116. “1897 Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 23 July 1897; “Mrs. Hamilton will resume classes,” Manitoba Free Press, 1 October 1897; and “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Manitoba Free Press, 18 November 1897. 117. “Crowds at the Fair–the Fine Arts,” Manitoba Free Press, 13 July 1898. This may be the first time that Mary Hamilton’s maiden name, Riter, was mentioned in print. It later became her artistic signature. 118. “Mrs. Hamilton of China Painting Fame,” Town Topics, 16 July 1898. 119. “Prizes at Exhibition,” Morning Telegram, 13 July 1898; and “Mrs. Hamilton’s Flower Pictures,” Morning Telegram, 16 July 1898. 120. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Exhibit,” Town Topics, 10 December 1898. In particular, the article mentioned Mrs. Culver’s china painting and it was noted that she had received a “favourable comment” at the Chicago Exposition.

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No t e s t o Pa g e 2 9 121. “An Art Exhibit: A Beautiful Display made by Mrs. Hamilton and her Pupils,” Manitoba Free Press, 5 December 1898. The exhibition included the work of Hamilton’s pupils: Mesdames Bawlf, Conklin, Culver, McIntyre, Munson, Whitla, and Whyte. For information about the husbands of these society women, see J.M. Bumsted, Dictionary of Manitoba Biography (Winnipeg: The University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 17–18, 158–9, 265; and Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people. In particular, Nicolas Bawlf (1849–1914) was a prominent Winnipeg grain merchant and one of the founders of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange in 1887; John James Conklin (1868–1952) was city and editorial editor of the Winnipeg Free Press; W.H. Culver (1850–1900) was a lawyer with Aikins, Culver & Hamilton and the father of Jean Isabel Culver; Daniel J. McIntyre (1852–1946) and William Albert McIntyre (1859–1938) were both well-established educators in early Winnipeg; John Henry Munson (1859–1918) was a lawyer with Munson, Allan, and Laird; Robert J. Whitla (1846–1905) was a wealthy dry goods and wholesale merchant; and William Methuen Whyte (1843–1914) became general superintendent of the Canadian Pacific Railway. See also Alan F.J. Artibise, Winnipeg: a social history of urban growth, 1874–1914 (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1975); William Bruneau, “Music and Marginality: Jean Coulthard and the University of British Columbia, 1947–1973,” in Smyth, et al., eds., Challenging Professions, 96. Bruneau points out that Coulthard’s connections with the Vancouver and Canadian establishment gave her a social and political base. 122. “An Art Exhibit,” Manitoba Free Press, 5 December 1898. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Exhibit,” Town Topics, 10 December 1898, reports that although the watercolours were very good, they did not receive as much attention as the china, as this was a ceramic exhibition. 123. “An Art Exhibit,” Manitoba Free Press, 5 December 1898; and “Culver, William Henry (1850–1900),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, 2012, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/culver_wh.shtml (accessed 14 September 2016). Agnes Baxter Culver, née Winks (1857–1904), was also a student of Mary Riter Hamilton. She married W. H. Culver. Their daughter, Jean Isabel Culver (1883–1965), married Conrad Stephenson Riley. Jean Culver/Riley became a close friend to Mary Riter Hamilton. Agnes Baxter Winks/Culver arrived in Winnipeg in 1881 from Montreal where, given her skill in watercolour and oil painting, she had likely studied art. She exhibited her work in art shows organized by the WAAC (Winnipeg) and she won prizes at the Industrial Exhibition art exhibits. See also Berry, Vistas of Promise, 41. Kate Farrell Chown (1859–1916), another student of Hamilton, arrived in Winnipeg in the 1880s as the wife of Dr. H.H. Chown, prominent surgeon and dean of the Medical School. She had lived in Detroit and then several Ontario towns before settling for a time in Kingston, where she studied art at the Ottawa Ladies’ College before coming to Winnipeg and taking classes with Hamilton. She exhibited her work in the 1895 exhibition. 171

No t e s t o Pa g e s 2 9 – 3 2 124. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Exhibit,” Town Topics, 10 December 1898. 125. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Exhibition,” Winnipeg Tribune, 5 December 1898. 126. Town Topics, 10 December 1898. 127. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Winnipeg Tribune, 5 October 1899; and Deacon, “The Art of Mary Hamilton,” 557. In Deacon’s interview with Hamilton in 1912, the artist revealed that although she had sketched as a child, her week’s study with Grier and the Reids in Toronto had been the little formal training she had undertaken before travelling to Europe. See also Berry, Vistas of Promise, 36; and Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 97. In the 1890s, E. Wyly Grier’s portrait studio was in the Imperial Bank Chambers. See also: “Reid, George Agnew, 1860–1947,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ george-agnew-reid/ (accessed 16 February 2017), “Grier, E. Wyly, 1862–1957,” Archives of Ontario, Archeion, http:/www.archeion.ca/wyly-grier-family-fonds (accessed 28 February 2016); and “Reid, Mary Hiester, 1854–1921,” Artist Database, CWAHI, http://cwahi.concordia.ca/sources/artists/displayArtist. php?ID_artist=59 (accessed 28 February 2016). 128. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Winnipeg Tribune, 5 October 1899; and “Mrs. Hamilton’s Christmas Art Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 18 December 1899. 129. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Town Topics, 22 December 1900, reported that Land Commissioner L.A. Hamilton, his wife, and daughter would leave Collingwood to reside in Toronto. 130. “Exhibition, 1900,” Morning Telegram, 26 July 1900. 131. “Fine Arts at the Fair,” Town Topics, 4 August 1900. 132. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Studio Will Reopen,” Manitoba Free Press, 25 September 1900. 133. “Mrs. Hamilton-Teacher of China Painting,” Winnipeg Tribune, 16 October 1900. 134. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Exhibition,” Morning Telegram, 13 November 1900. 135. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Town Topics, 22 June 1901. 136. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Winnipeg Telegram, 5 August 1901. See note 123 for more information on Agnes Baxter Culver and “Riley, Conrad Stephenson (1875– 1960),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs. mb.ca/docs/people/Riley.shtml (accessed July 2012). Alexandrina Falconer was Adina to her friends. Adina Falconer (b. 1878 or 1880–d. 1960s) was the daughter of the eldest sister of Agnes Baxter Culver. This sister (not identified to date) married a Mr. Falconer and moved west, likely to Winnipeg. Unfortunately, Mr. Falconer died, likely in an accident. Agnes Baxter Winks travelled to Winnipeg to visit her sister after she was widowed. A year later, she married William Henry Culver and their child, Jean Isabel Culver, was a first cousin of Adina Falconer. 172

No t e s t o Pa g e s 3 2 – 3 4 Jean Culver later married Conrad Stephenson Riley and they had eight children. See the Manitoba Historical Society website for more biographical information on the prominent Winnipeg Riley family. Jean Culver/Riley’s brother, George William Culver (b. 1880), was the father of Gerry Culver of Vancouver, the author of this piece of correspondence: “I believe that my aunt Jean Riley (née Culver) studied violin in Berlin in about 1900–02 and Adina accompanied her as chaperone.” Adina Falconer worked in the library at the University of Manitoba for many years. Copy of email correspondence from Gerry Culver to Denise Fuchs, 31 March 2001, in Denise Fuchs to McKinnon, 31 March 2001, personal communication. See also Meribeth Coyne, née Stobie, and Deborah Riley in conversation with Kathryn Young, 19 May 2017. Meribeth Stobie married Robert Sanford Riley in 1950, the youngest son of Jean Isabel Culver/Riley and Conrad Stephenson Riley, with whom she had three children, Sanford, Patrick, and Nancy. Robert Sanford Riley passed away in 1955 at twenty-nine years old and Meribeth Stobie Riley subsequently married James Coyne. Deborah Riley is married to Sanford Riley, Meribeth Coyne’s eldest son, and as such is her daughter-in-law. The two women related memories of Jean Isabel’s family, her homes at Eastgate and then Westgate, Armstrong’s Point, and family Sunday lunches and dinners where Adina Falconer was a regular guest. Meribeth remembered that Jean Isabel continued her study of the violin throughout her life and from time to time played with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra.

Chapter Two: Study in Europe, 1901–1911 1.

Quoted in Mrs. W. Garland Foster, “Coals to Newcastle: Art Another Canadian Product—Mary Riter Hamilton. A Canadian Artist Whose Work Attests the Fact,” The Western Home Monthly (May 1930), 49.

2.

“Franz Skarbina (1849–1910),” askArt, http://www.askart.com/artist/Franz_ Skarbina/11070930/Franz_Skarbina.aspx (accessed 1 July 2015). See also J.E.M. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” The Gold Stripe (2 May 1919), 22; and Emily D. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis: Jews and the New Culture, 1890–1918 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 36.

3.

Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 7.

4.

Maria Tippett, By a Lady: Celebrating Three Centuries of Art by Canadian Women (Toronto: Penguin Books, 1992), 51. See also Huneault, “Professionalism,” 12. For Eastlake, Stevens, and McNicoll, see Appendix.

5.

Culver to Fuchs, 31 March 2001 and Fuchs to McKinnon, 31 March 2001, personal communication.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 3 4 – 3 9 6.

Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. Bruce recalls an interview he had with Hamilton in 1919, when she told him she had painted in Holland in the summer of 1903 and returned to Venice in the summer of 1904.

7.

Philipp Blom, The Vertigo Years, 1900–1914 (New York: Perseus Books Group, 2008), 2–3 and 30. See also Peter M. Wolf, Eugène Hénard and the Beginning of Urbanism in Paris, 1900–1914 (New York: Peter Wolf, 1968), 16. Between 1870 and 1914, the population of Paris grew from 1.8 million to over 2.8 million.

8.

Blom, The Vertigo Years, 282.

9.

Ibid., 320–21 and 330. See also Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, 232, 242, 254. Chadwick points out the relationship between women in the middle class and the reform of the decorative arts in England and America.

10. Quoted in Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, 232 and 234–5. Morisot counted Manet, Renoir, and Degas as her friends. For early and later Canadian Impressionists, see Duval, Canadian Impressionism. See also Appendix. 11. Quoted in Chadwick, Women, Art and Society, 232. 12. Perry, Women Artists, 6. 13. Quoted in ibid., 6–7. 14. Hamilton’s address in Berlin is written into the frontispiece of Fr. Charley, The New Opera Glass: Containing the Plots of the Most Popular Operas and a Short Biography of the Composers [no publication information], photocopy of frontispiece and preface, Lorna Stevens private collection. The book is signed by Hamilton. Notes in her hand inside the small book identify performances in 1903–04, such as, “Tannenhäuser,” “Magic Flute,” “Manon,” and dancer “Isadora Duncan,” among others. 15. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 558. 16. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis, 8. 17. Quoted in Peter Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 1900 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 46 and 47–8. 18. Fritzsche, Reading Berlin, 109. 19. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis, 79–80. 20. Ibid., 79–80. Nearly all artists went to the Café des Westens, which closed in 1915. 21. Ibid., 36. 22. Quoted in Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 8. 23. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis, 36. See also “Verein Berliner Künstler [Association of Berlin Artists],” Oxford Art Online: Grove Art Online, http://www.oxfordarton174

No t e s t o Pa g e s 3 9 – 4 2 line.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/TO88767?print=true (accessed 29 March 2010). From the early 1890s, Leistikow, Liebermann, and Skarbina were involved in breakaway movements that concluded in the Berlin Secession. 24. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis, 36–40. There were other Secessionist movements in Central Europe in the same period for the same reasons; e.g., the Vienna Secession developed because of the preferential treatment given to Gustav Klimt (1862– 1918). Max Liebermann (1847–1935), from a prominent and wealthy Jewish family, was elected president of the Berlin Secession. He had won prizes in Paris and Munich for his genre paintings of working people, but believed his work was not appreciated in Berlin. See also Tilmann Buddensieg, ed., Berlin 1900–1933 (New York: Cooper-Hewitt Museum, The Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Design, 1987), 26 and 86. Buddensieg concludes that the movement died out after 1914 because of conflicting ideas among the artists. 25. Bilski, Berlin Metropolis, 66. Paul Cassirer (1871–1926) and his cousin Bruno Cassirer (1872–1941) played an important role in the dissemination of modern art throughout western Europe, and Paul was known as the “impresario of modern art.” 26. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 558. 27. Mahlstick, “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Exhibit,” Town Topics, 23 June 1906. Note: Mahlstick was an art critic(s) who wrote for several national newspapers, including the Toronto Globe. These critics were likely members of the Mahlstick Club (1899) formed in eastern Canada to bring together like-minded artists and critics. See “Artists Organizations,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/artists-organizations (accessed 31 January 2017). 28. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 558. 29. Billy Klüver and Julie Martin, “Carrefour Vavin,” in The Circle of Montparnasse: Jewish Artists in Paris, 1905–1945, edited by Kenneth E. Silver and Romy Golan (New York: The Jewish Museum, 1985), 69. 30. Quoted in Blom, The Vertigo Years, 7–8. 31. “Cartes d’Exposant,” (exhibitor’s cards), “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” P4896, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba. 32. Klüver and Martin, “Carrefour Vavin,” 69–78. The École des Beaux-Arts, France’s leading art academy, is situated on the Right Bank near the Louvre. 33. Suzanne Rodriguez, Wild Heart: A Life. Natalie Clifford Barney’s Journey from Victorian America to Belle Époque Paris (New York: HarperCollins, 2002), 83. 34. Tippett, By A Lady, 45. For Florence Carlyle’s experience in the Parisian art schools, see also Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 40–70.

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No t e s t o Pa g e 4 2 35. Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 15–17. From 1881 there was a Union des Femmes Peintres et Sculpteurs that promoted women’s art, offered exhibition space, and held annual exhibitions beginning in 1882, but it did not have permanent premises nor could it compete with the male Salon des Artistes Français. Moreover, before the 1890s, the only state-funded art school in Paris that taught decorative and applied art rather than the “masculine arena” of high art was the École Nationale pour les jeunes filles. In 1897 the École des Beaux-Arts admitted women (the ateliers remained closed to women until 1900), but most foreigners chose to patronize the private academies. Perry also points out that most of the female students were from the middle class and had financial resources, a necessity for a professional career in art. See Huneault, “Professionalism,” 12. 36. Swinth, Painting Professionals, 12–3. American students often began their study in the United States but continued in Europe. The most famous American art schools opened in the 1880s, such as the National Academy of Design, later the Art Students League, New York; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 37. Catherine Fehrer, The Julian Academy, Paris, 1868–1939, Spring Exhibition 1989: Essays by Catherine Fehrer (New York: Shepherd Gallery, 1989), iv. See also Tippett, By a Lady, 27. In the same period, the Chicago Institute (1880s), London’s Royal Academy (1890s), and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1890s) opened their doors to women artists. At the same time, exhibitions, international fairs, and publications were promoting women’s art and encouraging women in the art schools to think of practising art full-time. Canada was slower to acknowledge the work done by women artists, but the Montreal Exhibition of 1892 included the work of Americans Morisot and Cassatt, both an inspiration to Canadian women artists. See Appendix. 38. Fehrer, Julian Academy, iv and 1–3. See also Ann Sutherland Harris and Linda Nochlin, Women Artists, 1550–1950 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978), 53. Sutherland Harris and Nochlin point out that men and women painted on different floors of the Julian. There were male nude models for women painters as early as 1877. They also note that it was difficult for women artists during the period in England, as well, but the exhibitions did include a few names: “Many of these women were solid professionals from every standpoint” (ibid., 53). 39. Ibid., iv. Fehrer’s book includes a large number of photographs of paintings by professors and students of the Julian. Identification of the individuals includes addresses revealing that many of them lived in the same arrondissement as Hamilton, i.e., 14 rue du Luxembourg; 11 rue Montagne-Ste.-Geneviève; 73 Notre-Damedes-Champs (John Singer Sargent, American painter); 41 rue Madame; 14 rue Gay-Lussac; 27 rue Campagne première and 203 boulevard Raspail. Most students studied with more than one professor while at the Julian. 176

No t e s t o Pa g e s 4 2 – 4 4 40. Klüver and Martin, “Carrefour Vavin,” v and 77. 41. Fehrer, Julian Academy, v, 1–2. There were at least 12 branches, some for women only. For instance, 55 rue du Cherche-Midi, Paris 6e, taught women from 1896 and most likely was the one Mary Riter Hamilton attended. But there were also: 27 La galerie Montmartre, Passage des Panoramas, which at first offered separate ateliers for men and women and then, later, for women only; 51 rue Vivienne, Paris 2e, women only; 5 rue de Berri, Paris, 8e, women only; 28 rue Fontaine, Paris 9e, women and later men. 42. Ibid., 2 and 133. Fehrer compiled the lists of professors and students from the Julian Academy’s journal. No dates were recorded. She also included the names of other Canadian students who had been prize winners at the academy: Caroline H. Armington, née Wilkinson (painter and engraver) and her husband Frank Milton Armington (painter and engraver), Clarence A. Gagnon (painter and engraver), Alexander Y. Jackson (painter), Sophie Pemberton (painter) and Percyval TudorHart (painter and sculptor). See also “Pemberton, Sophie files,” Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, BC (AGGV), SC 1226.1, 1227.1 and 1228.1. Folder 1228.1 contains a photograph of Pemberton at the Julian Academy, ca. 1904. See also “Paul-Jean Gervais,” Augusta Stylianou Gallery, http://www.augustastylianougallery.com/Gallery/PaulJeanGervais/PaulJeanGervais.html, (accessed 20 October). 43. Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 18; and Tippett, Emily Carr, 87–88. See also “Académie Colarossi,” Artists’ Biographies: British and Irish Artists of the 20th Century, http://www.artbiogs.co.uk/2/schools/academie-colarossi (accessed 31 January 2017). The Colarossi was founded in 1815 and much later the school was purchased by the Italian sculptor Filippo Colarossi (n.d.). 44. Quoted in Klüver and Martin, “Carrefour Vavin,” 77. 45. Quoted in Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 35. 46. Foster, “Coals to Newcastle,” 49. See also James Beechey, “Jacques-Émile Blanche. Rouen and Brescia,” The Burlington Magazine 140, no. 1138 (1998): 54–6; and “Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861–1942),” Musée d’Orsay, http://www.musee-orsay.fr/ index.php?id=851&L=0&tx_commentaire_pil%BshowUid (accessed 20 October 2012). 47. Maryse Renault-Garneau, ed., Jacques-Émile Blanche et Jean Cocteau. Correspondance (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1993), 5–7. As an accepted French member of English society, Blanche painted portraits of Thomas Hardy and George Moore, among others. 48. Beechey, “Jacques-Émile Blanche,” 48, 54–6. See also Renault-Garneau, JacquesÉmile Blanche, 5–6.

177

No t e s t o Pa g e s 4 4 – 4 6 49. “Studio Notes,” Studio 47, no. 195 (June 1909): 50. 50. Amos, Robert, files, File III, AGGV. See also “Luc-Olivier Merson,” Art Cyclopedia, http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/merson (accessed March 2010); “Claudio Castelucho,” Smithsonian American Art Museum, http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=3847 (accessed 20 October 2012); “Tudor-Hart, Percyval, (1873–1954),” Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951, http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/ person.php?id=msib2_1208266267 (accessed 26 February 2017). Tudor-Hart was known for his paintings, drawings, sculptures, and textiles. See also “Tudor-Hart, Percival,” Advanced Search, Canadian Heritage Information Network, http:// www.chin.gc.ca (accessed 10 December 2013). 51. Cited interview of Mary Hamilton by Jean Howarth, “This Column,” Province (4 March 1948) in Robert Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton 1873–1954 (AGGV, 1978), 6. See also Deacon, “The Art of Mary Hamilton,” 558; and “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” Berry fonds, P5738, folder 87, Archives of Manitoba. 52. “Distinguished Canadian Artist,” Edmonton Journal, 5 February 1912. 53. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 6. See “Kahlil Gibran: Biography and Works,” http://www.arab2.com/gibran/ (accessed 15 October 2012) and “Rabindranath Tagore—Biography,” Nobel Prize, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1913/taagore-bio.html (accessed 15 October 2012). See “William Brymner, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http:// www.biographi.ca/en/bio/ brymner_william_15Ehtml (accessed 8 July 2015); “Emily Carr” in Appendix; “Maurice Cullen, (1866–1934),” National Gallery of Canada, http://www.gallery. ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?iartistid=1229 (accessed 28 July 2015); note 42 for Sophie Pemberton and Chapter 1 for George Agnew Reid; and “Curtis Williamson,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia. ca/en/article/Curtis-Albert-Williamson (accessed 28 July 2015). See also Duval, Canadian Impressionism. 54. L’Affaire reported on Hamilton’s work in 1905 and 1906: “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” Berry fonds, P5738, folder 87, Archives of Manitoba. See also “Cartes d’Exposant.” Hamilton’s exhibitor’s cards were dated 29 April 1905, 30 June 1909, 30 June 1911. 55. Valerio Terraroli et al., “Aesthetic Experimentation and Transformation of Artistic Language at the Dawn of the Twentieth Century,” in Art of the Twentieth Century, 1900–1919: The Avant-garde Movement (Milan: Skira Editore, 2006), 112. The Indépendants included artists such as Seurat and Signac. 56. Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde, 40–1. 57. See L’Affaire, 1905, and Art Exhibition by Mary Riter Hamilton under the Patronage of the Women’s Canadian Club, Empress Hotel, Victoria, BC, 12–19 March 178

No t e s t o Pa g e s 4 6 – 4 7 c. 1913, Art Exhibition Catalogue, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Artists’ Files, File 1, Archives of British Columbia. 58. Quoted in Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 6. 59. L’Affaire, 1905, Berry fonds, P5738-87, Archives of Manitoba. See also, W. Garland Foster, “Les Pauvres and its Artist,” Museum and Art Notes: Art Historical and Scientific Association of Vancouver IV, no. 2 (June 1929), 65 in “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. See also Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 8. 60. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. 61. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 558. 62. L’Affaire 1906, “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” Berry fonds, P5738, folder 87, Archives of Manitoba. See also Sylvain Allaire, “Les canadiens au salon officiel de Paris entre 1890–1910: sections peintres et dessin,” Journal of Canadian Art History IV (1977–78), 141. 63. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. See Chapter 5 for more biographical information on Rogers who, before becoming an MP, had been minister of public works in the Manitoba government. 64. Quoted in “Canadian Art in Paris Salons,” Manitoba Free Press, 25 December 1907. Note: the derivative “May” was used by family and close friends, but does not appear in any formal writing. Frank Milton Armington and James Wilson Morrice were also mentioned in Taylor’s piece. 65. No title, Manitoba Free Press, 4 May 1911, “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” Virginia Berry fonds, P5738, folder 87. For more references to these paintings, see: Art Exhibition by Mary Riter Hamilton under the Patronage of the Women’s Canadian Club, Empress Hotel, Victoria, BC, 12–19 March c. 1913, Art Exhibition Catalogue, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Artists’ Files, File 1, Archives of British Columbia. 66. See Mary Riter Hamilton, SF Panama-Pacific International Exhibition, 1915, AskArt: The Artists’ Bluebook, http://www.askart.com/askart/interest/panama_ pacific_exposition (accessed 13 November 2013). For a reference to Les Panores shown in 1909, see “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Holding an Exhibition of her Works, Town Topics, 13 April 1912 and “Arrangements Complete for Mary Riter Hamilton Exhibit in Auditorium of the Winnipeg Industrial Exhibition, Town Topics, 20 April 1912. 67. No title, Manitoba Free Press, 4 May 1911. 68. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 363. See also “Pictures by American Painters in the Paris Salons,” The International Studio 50, no. 200 (October 1913),

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 4 7 – 5 1 43. The author of the article also highlights two paintings of mother and child (Maternity) by American artists in the Salons of the Société des Artistes Français and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts that year. 69. Perry, Women Artists and the Parisian Avant-Garde, plate section. 70. Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, Plate 16. 71. See “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Artists’ Files, File 2, Archives of British Columbia. Handwritten notes, likely in the hand of Angela Davis, indicate that Les Pauvres was purchased by the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1929. It is currently the property of the Museum of Vancouver. 72. Foster, “Les Pauvres and Its Artist,” 66. See Figure 2. 3 for image of Maternity, Plate 1. 73. The Gold Fish: Reflections, ca. 1907, David Smith, the Smith family, and the Estate of Marjorie Bernice Smith, née Hacking private collection. 74. Untitled – Cathedral Interior, ca. 1908, AGGV, Gift of Ruth Minshal. 75. Tippett, By A Lady, 47. See also Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 45. 76. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. 77. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 563. See also Sona K. Johnston and William R. Johnston, The Triumph of French Painting: Masterpieces from Ingres to Matisse (Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 2002), 76. The Johnstons point out that a favourite painting of the late-nineteenth century was Jean-François Millet’s Goose Girl (c. 1863), likely an inspiration for Hamilton. 78. Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 126. See also Swinth, Painting Professionals, 103–04. 79. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 361. See also “Mary Riter Hamilton, 1873 [sic]-1954,” Market Scene, Giverney [sic], Important Canadian Art, 23 November 2010, Toronto, Sotheby’s Catalogue, http://www.sothebys.com/en/ auctions/ecatologue/lot56.html/2010/important-canadian-art-f00137 (accessed 2 February 2017) and A.K. Prakash, Independent Spirit, Early Canadian Women Artists (Toronto: Firefly Books, 2008), 132–133. For an image of Claude Monet’s The Artist’s Garden at Giverny, 1900, oil on canvas, 81 x 92 cm., The Musée d’Orsay, Paris, see “A Site for Sight: Monet in his Garden at Giverny,” http://www. giverny.org/gardens/fcm/stanford (accessed 29 October 2016). 80. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. 81. “Winnipeg Woman Wins Distinction: Returns with Laurels as an Artist,” Morning Telegram, 9 May 1906.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 5 1 – 5 4 82. “Exhibition of oil and water color paintings and sketches held at YMCA building, 274 Portage Avenue,” Manitoba Free Press, 12 June 1906; “Mary Riter Hamilton Exhibit,” Morning Telegram, 13 June 1906; “Proof of Artistic Success,” Manitoba Free Press, 13 June 1906; “Mrs. Hamilton’s Picture Exhibit,” Town Topics, 16 June 1906. 83. Quoted in Foster, “Coals to Newcastle,” 49. See also Huneault, “Professionalism,” 40. 84. Catalogue for the Mary Riter Hamilton June exhibition, “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” Berry fonds, P5738, folder 87, Archives of Manitoba. Exhibition Catalogue. 85. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Picture Exhibit.” See also Bumsted, Dictionary of Manitoba Biography, 166. MacMillan was lieutenant-governor of Manitoba from 1900 to 1911. 86. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Picture Exhibit”; “Exhibition of Oil and Water Color Paintings and Sketches by Mrs. M.R. Hamilton at 274 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, 12–13 June 1906,” copy of exhibition catalogue cover, Amos files, File III, AGGV. 87. “Mary Riter Hamilton Exhibit.” 88. “Proof of Artistic Success.” 89. See Susan Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 142 and 162. See also Kristina Huneault, “Impressions of Difference: The Painted Canvases of Helen McNicoll,” Art History, 27, no. 2 (April 2004); “McNicoll, Helen Galloway,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/mcnicoll_helen-galloway_14E.html (accessed 7 January 2014); and “Helen Galloway McNicoll,” Library and Archives Canada (LAC), http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/ femme/030001-1166-e.html (accessed 7 January 2014). 90. “Review of Mrs. M.R. Hamilton’s Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 16 June 1906. 91. Mahlstick, “Mrs. Hamilton’s Picture Exhibit,” Town Topics, 23 June 1906. 92. Ibid. 93. “Exhibition, 1906,” Manitoba Free Press, 27 July 1906. 94. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 6. Mssrs. Mackenzie and Company were located at 95 Yonge Street. 95. “1906 Toronto Exhibition at Art Galleries of O.B. Graves Ltd., 222 Dundas St., Toronto, 7–14 November 1906,” Exhibition Catalogue, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, P4896, Catalogues, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba. 96. Ibid. 97. “Mary Riter Hamilton At Home,” Manitoba Free Press, 14 December 1906. 98. Ibid. 181

No t e s t o Pa g e s 5 4 – 5 6 99. This was also the site of the YMCA and Hamilton’s June exhibition. The building would later become the Henry Birks building. 100. “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Classes,” Town Topics, 8 September 1906. 101. Manitoba Free Press, 4 October 1906, “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” Berry fonds, P5738, folder 87, Archives of Manitoba. See Huneault, “Professionalism,” 25. Huneault writes that by the late nineteenth century there were more opportunities for women in art education in the schools. 102. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Manitoba Free Press, 8 April 1907. The newspaper reported that she went east to New York from where she sailed to Antwerp. She most likely went on to Paris by train. 103. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. 104. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 16. See Chapter 5. 105. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. 106. Robert Laird Borden (1854–1937) was elected prime minister of Canada, 10 October 1911. “Robert Laird Borden,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www. canadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/Sir-Robert-Borden (accessed 5 February 2016). 107. Deacon, “The Art of Mary Riter Hamilton,” 558, 562. 108. Mary Riter Hamilton, interviewed by Major J.S. Matthews, n.d., Major J.S. Matthews collection, “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” MSS 54, vol. 13, 01972, City Archives of Vancouver. See also Robin Waterfield, Prophet: Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998). Gibran lived at 14 and 54 avenue du Maine, Montparnasse. 109. See Chapters 4 and 5. Mary Riter Hamilton, interviewed by Major J.S. Matthews, n.d. Major J.S. Matthews collection, MSS 54, vol. 13, 01972, City Archives of Vancouver. Wallace lived in Hamilton’s neighbourhood at 40 rue Denfert-Rochereau. 110. Maria Tippett, Emily Carr: A Biography (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1979), 87–8. Carr spent a month at the Colarossi and then transferred to the studio of Scottish artist John Duncan Fergusson. See also Duval, Canadian Impressionism, 100. He argues that Impressionists helped to mould her technique, although she did not practise it for very long. Joan Arden Murray argues that it was in this period that Carr’s work used colour, looser brush strokes, and became more dynamic. She began to paint in flat planes with strong contours suggesting that she had been also influenced by the Post-Impressionists. Murray includes Carr in her list of Post-Impressionists. Joan Arden Murray, Canadian Art in the Twentieth Century (Toronto: Dundurn Press, 1999), 35. 111. Tippett, Emily Carr, 88–9. 182

No t e s t o Pa g e s 5 6 – 5 9 112. E.A. Taylor, “The American Colony of Artists in Paris,” The Studio 52, no. 217 (February 1911): 263–80; and “The American Colony of Artists,” International Studio (August 1911): 109–10. 113. The Salon des Beaux-Arts refers to the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français. 114. Taylor, “The American Colony of Artists,” International Studio. Note: three art magazines important for English-speaking artists in this period were: The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art (London publication); The International Studio (New York publication), and The Connoisseur (British art and dealers’ magazine, London). Articles published in London for a European audience were often repeated in The International Studio, which added information, such as art gallery openings, more specific to a North American readership. 115. Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 9. Hamilton may have decided to return to Canada because she had heard that her mother was ill in Manitoba. 116. See also the “Art Exhibition – 1912,” Citizen (Ottawa), n.d. [winter 1911], Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, catalogues, P4896, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba.

Chapter Three: An Artist’s Career, 1911–1919 1.

Mary Riter Hamilton, quoted in Anne Anderson Perry, “Artists and Their Doings: O Canada! What of Art: Noted Woman Painter and Patriot Speaks of our National Needs,” Western Women’s Weekly, 1 February 1919, 4–5.

2.

“Studio Notes,” Studio 47, no. 196 (July 1909), 154.

3. “Maurice Cullen (1866–1934),” National Gallery of Canada; “Clarence Gagnon (1881–1942),” National Gallery of Canada, https://www.gallery.ca/en/see/collections/artist.php?artistid=1229 (Cullen) and 1932 (Gagnon) (accessed 24 may 2017). For a small biography of Morrice, see Lucie Dorais, J.W. Morrice, Canadian Artists Series (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1985). Dorais writes that Morrice, who spent many years in Paris, exhibited regularly at the Salons and was influenced first by Manet and later by James McNeill Whistler (1834–1903). Whistler was known for his lightness and complexity of compositions. Critics also saw Whistler’s influence in Hamilton’s work. See Appendix for further details about Helen McNicoll. 4.

Laurier Lacroix, “The Surprise Today is the Commonplace of Tomorrow: How Impressionism was Received in Canada,” in Visions of Light and Air: Canadian Impressionism, 1885-1920, edited by Carol Lowrey (New York: Americas Society Art Gallery, 1995), 44. Another Art Association of Montreal (AAM) spring show in 1913 included work not only by the Impressionists but also by the Post-Impres-

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 5 9 – 6 1 sionists and Lacroix says began to “legitimize” the movements in Canada. For more on Helen McNicoll, see Huneault, “Impressions of Difference.” 5. Murray, The Birth of the Modern, 14. The Canadian Art Club (CAC) held an exhibition every year up until 1915, when it disbanded. 6.

Lacroix, “The Surprise Today,” 42–3, 46–7. He also argues that Impressionist paintings were being created in Canada as early as the 1890s by Mary Eastlake, who exhibited some of her work in the spring show of the AAM in 1894; likewise, by 1896–7 Cullen and Morrice were applying Impressionist techniques to their winter paintings.

7.

“Studio Notes,” Studio 47, no. 196 (July 1909), 154–55.

8.

“Winnipeg Artist Mary Riter Hamilton Achieved Success in World Centres,” Manitoba Free Press, 6 November 1911. See also “Walker, Sir Byron Edmund (1848–1924),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, https://www.biographi. ca/009004-.php?BioId=42011 (accessed 26 January 2013) and “History,” National Gallery, https://www.gallery.ca/en/library.php (accessed 6 February 2016). Eric Brown was appointed full-time curator in 1910 and, after the National Gallery was incorporated by an Act of Parliament, director in 1913. See: “Brown, Eric, Director (1877-1939),” National Gallery, https://www.gallery.ca/en/about/ people.php#eric_brown (accessed 27 February 2017).

9.

“Winnipeg Artist.”

10. “Notice of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Toronto Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 22 November 1911. 11. “Canadian Woman Artist from Paris: Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gives Notable Exhibition of Paintings,” Toronto Star Weekly, 25 November 1911. The article included reproductions of some of the paintings that had appeared in the show: The Studio—A Study by Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton; The Father Confessor; and The Girl and the Gold Fish. 12. “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912,” Mary Riter Hamilton (1873–1954) fonds, P4896, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba. 13. Toronto Daily Star, n.d., quoted in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 14. Mail and Empire, n.d. (Toronto), quoted in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 15. Ibid. 16. Toronto World, n.d., quoted in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 17. Globe (Toronto), n.d., quoted in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 18. Quoted in Foster, “Coals to Newcastle,” 49.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 6 1 – 6 3 19. “Review of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Toronto Exhibition,” Vandyke Brown, Manitoba Free Press, 30 December 1911. 20. See “Lyall, Laura Muntz (1860–1930),” Artist Database, CWAHI, http://cwahi. concordia.ca/sources/artists/display/Artist.php?ID__. . .artist=38 (accessed 26 February 2017). See Appendix. 21. Brown, “Review of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Toronto Exhibition.” 22. See “An Interesting Art Exhibition. Work of Well Known Canada Artist is Now on View in this City,” Ottawa Journal, n.d., December 1911 and a loose sheet from Hamilton’s scrapbook with newspaper clipping, n.d./n.p. about this exhibition with fashion details, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. Adam Shortt (1859–1931) was a co-editor with Arthur G. Doughty (1860–1936), Director of the Public Archives (1904–1935), of Canada and Its Provinces, 23 vols. (Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Company, 1914); and Documents Relating to the Constitutional History of Canada, 1759–1791 (Ottawa: Printed by S.E. Dawson, Printer to the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, 1907, revised 1918). Shortt was a civil service commissioner from 1908 to 1918 and in this post worked with Doughty. See Chapter 5 for Mary Riter Hamilton– Doughty correspondence. See “Shortt, Adam,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/adam-shortt (accessed 6 January 2017) and “Doughty, Sir Arthur George,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-arthur-george-doughty (accessed 30 January 2017). 23. Quoted in Foster, “Coals to Newcastle,” 49. See also Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 20. Gibson became famous for his drawing of the Gibson Girl who represented the beautiful, and independent American woman. 24. Quoted in The Monitor (Boston), and then quoted in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912,” Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, catalogues, P4896, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba. 25. “An Interesting Art Exhibition.” 26. “Fine Display of Pictures: Exceedingly Interesting Collection by Canadian,” unnamed newspaper, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. 27. Ibid. See Chapter 2, illustrations, 2–6. 28. Invitation to the Montreal Exhibition of Mary Riter Hamilton’s paintings, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, invitations, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. See also The Montreal Gazette, n.d., Feb 1912, quoted in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912,” and Foster, “Coals to Newcastle,” 49. The Duke of Connaught was a son of Queen Victoria and brother to Edward VII, who became King in 1901.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 6 3 – 6 7 29. The Montreal Standard, n.d., Montreal Daily Witness n.d., Montreal Daily Star, n.d., and “Une artiste Canadienne,” Le Canada (Montreal), n.d., are all quoted without article titles in “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912. See also “Art Exhibition: Impressions of Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Pictures,” The Montreal Gazette, n.d., quoted in Art Exhibition Catalogue, 1912 and Marie-Claude Saia to Angela Davis, 17 February 1993, Angela Davis private collection. Saia included in her letter the list of 33 Mary Riter Hamilton works that were exhibited in Montreal that February. 30. “Distinguished Canadian Artist,” Edmonton Journal, 5 February 1912. 31. Jim Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2005), 3, 15–16. See also Young and Dooley, Housing a Prairie City, 36–7; and Esyllt W. Jones, Imagining Winnipeg: History Through the Photographs of L.B. Foote (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2012), 8, 9, and 12 for photographs showing some of the fashions of the day. 32. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 5–9. 33. Now Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. 34. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 15–17. 35. Young and Dooley, Housing a Prairie City, 36–7. 36. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 11 and 13. 37. Ibid., 23 and 67. See also Bumsted, Dictionary of Manitoba Biography, 44. Campbell was Attorney General of Manitoba from 1900 to 1911; and from 1911 to 1913, minister of education and minister of public works. 38. “Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/imperial-order-daughters-of-the-empire (accessed 6 January 2017). The IODE was organized in Montreal in 1900 for women of the Empire. It drew from “the upper echelons” of Canadian society and made a significant contribution during the First World War. See also Huneault, “Professionalism,” 39. See Chapter 5 for Hamilton and an IODE initiative. 39. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 128–9. See also Russ Gourluck, A Store Like No Other: Eaton’s of Winnipeg (Winnipeg: Great Plains Publications, 2004) for a study of the Eaton’s department store. The Hudson’s Bay Company store in this period was a small store on Main Street, but in 1926 it relocated to a new stone building near the legislative building. 40. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 130, and photos on 148 and 152. 41. See Dale Barbour, Winnipeg Beach: Leisure and Courtship in a Resort Town, 1900– 1967 (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2011) and Gregory Thomas and 186

No t e s t o Pa g e s 6 7 – 6 8 Sheila Grover, 100 Summers on Lake Winnipeg: A Resort History of Victoria Beach (Winnipeg: Gregory Thomas and Sheila Grover, 2014). 42. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 166–7. See also Dick, “Let Us Enjoy Music.” 43. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Manitoba Free Press, 29 March 1912. 44. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Manitoba Free Press, 3 April 1912; “Mary Riter Hamilton One of our Own Artists,” Winnipeg Saturday Post, 20 April 1912; and “Notice of Exhibition,” Saturday Post, 27 April 1912. 45. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Town Topics, 13 April 1912; and “Canadian Artist of Note,” Winnipeg Telegram, 13 April 1912. 46. The exhibition catalogue actually states that the Mary Riter Hamilton paintings will be on view from 4 May to 18 May at the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau. See “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 47. Blanchard, Winnipeg 1912, 79. Cameron was appointed lieutenant-governor in 1911, while Laurier was still prime minister, then he served under the Borden Conservatives until 1916. See also Bumsted, Dictionary of Manitoba Biography, 43. In 1910, the Winnipeg Telegram identified Cameron as one of 19 Winnipeg millionaires. 48. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Town Topics, 13 April 1912; “Mrs. Hamilton’s Art Exhibition,” Town Topics, 20 April 1912; and “Exhibition of Paintings of Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton,” Town Topics, 27 April 1912. See also “Notice of Exhibition,” Manitoba Free Press, 24 April 1912. 49. “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 50. Forward to the “Art Exhibition Catalogue – 1912.” 51. Ibid., 5. See also Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 22. Butlin notes that an important impetus to the career of Florence Carlyle had been the purchase of one of her paintings in 1883 by the Princess Louise Caroline Albert, daughter of Queen Victoria. 52. See Bumsted, Dictionary of Manitoba Biography, 210; and “William Culver Riley (1907–1970),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http://www. mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/riley_wc.shtml (accessed 21 September 2012). 53. “Exhibition of Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton,” Town Topics, 27 April 1912. See Chapter 2 for biographies of a number of these women. 54. “The Opening Promises to be a Social Event of Importance,” Town Topics, 4 May 1912. 55. Vandyke Brown, “Review of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Exhibit,” Manitoba Free Press, 7 May 1912.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 6 8 – 7 0 56. Brown, “Review,” Manitoba Free Press, 11 May 1912. 57. See Chapter 1. 58. “Art Gallery for Winnipeg,” Manitoba Free Press, 15 May 1912. The same debate was being carried out in Vancouver. See Perry, “Artists and Their Doings,” 4–5. 59. Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 180; and “History: About the Winnipeg Art Gallery,” Winnipeg Art Gallery, http://wag.ca/about/history (accessed 16 September 2010). See also Angela E. Davis, “The Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1912 and 1987: An Historical Assessment,” Manitoba History 17 (Spring 1989), http:// www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/mb_history/17/winnipegartgallery 1912.shtml (accessed 16 September 2010). The Winnipeg Art Gallery relocated several times, including to the Manitoba Archives Building on St. Mary Avenue, before moving to its present home on Memorial Boulevard. See also Angela E. Davis, Art and Work: A Social History of Labour in the Canadian Graphic Arts Industry to the 1940s (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1995), 84 and 87; and “Studio Talk,” Studio 62, no. 255 (July 1914), 146, with its notice of the opening of a “recent art institution in the colonies,” the Winnipeg Museum of Fine Arts (1912). 60. Davis, “The Winnipeg Art Gallery.” See also Davis, Art and Work, 83. She points out that the close relationship between the technological developments in commercial art in this period and the rise of a national art predates the Group of Seven’s appearance in the 1920s. She argues that artists working in the fine arts were often one and the same as those working in the graphic arts, such as J.E.H. MacDonald of the Group of Seven. The relationship between the fine and applied arts, rather than being distinct, was more one of overlap. See also Chapter 2 for a discussion of the Berlin debate regarding fine art and the applied arts arising from the British Arts and Crafts movement. Buddensieg, Berlin, 86 and 110. 61. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Winnipeg Telegram, 28 May 1912. The date of Hamilton’s arrival in Victoria is not known. 62. “Notice of Mrs. Hamilton enjoying visits to Banff National Park,” and “Notice that Mrs. Hamilton had spent most of her summer in Banff and was now off to Emerald Lake,” Craig and Canyon, July and Sept 1912, “Hamilton, Mary Riter (1873–1954), Artist’s Files, Robert Amos, file III, AGGV. Quoted in Robert William Sandford, Emerald Lake Lodge: A History and A Celebration (Calgary: McAra Printing, 2002), 42; see also 27–36. 63. See Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 175–6. In 1912 Florence Carlyle also painted in the Canadian Rockies. 64. “Mary Riter Hamilton,” Winnipeg Saturday Post, 30 November 1912. While in Calgary, Hamilton held an exhibition of her paintings.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 7 0 – 7 2 65. Peter Grant, Victoria: A History in Photographs (Victoria: Heritage House, 2010), 6, 15–18, 62–77. See this small book for a number of historic photographs of Hamilton’s Victoria. See also City of Victoria: History, http://www.victoria.ca (accessed 17 November 2010). Note: the University Women’s Club formally is identified as the Canadian Federation of University Women, Victoria (CFUW), but common usage and that employed by Hamilton was to identify the organization as the University Women’s Club. 66. See “Hamilton, Mary Riter (1873–1954),” Artist’s files: Amos, file I, AGGV. Robert Amos was curator of the 1978 Mary Riter Hamilton exhibition and Assistant to the Director at the AGGV. Amos’s handwritten notes reveal that Hamilton gave lessons on Government Street in an upstairs studio, as well as having her studio and living quarters in the 700 block of Fort Street, and then later on Fort Street between Langley and Wharf. 67. Ibid. 68. “Mrs. Edward C. (Margaret) Hart (1867–1941)” in Audrey M. Thomas, Women of Influence: A Partial History of CFUW Victoria, 2014, http://cfuwvictoria.ca/ wp-content/uploads/2014/03/CFUW-Victoria-history-2014rev.pdf (accessed 4 January 2017). Margaret Janet Hart, née McPhee, was a university-educated teacher, born in Antigonish, NS. She married Edward Hart in Victoria in 1898. She was a charter member and president of the CFUW, Victoria, a member of the Historical Association, and the Women’s Canadian Club. On her maternal side she was of United Empire Loyalist stock, as was Hamilton. During the First World War she devoted herself to war work, as well as loaning her home in Victoria on Courtney Street to the Red Cross so that it could be used for Nursing Sisters when they returned from overseas. 69. “Henry Esson Young,” The History of Vancouver, http//www.vancouverhistory.ca/whoswho_Y.htm (accessed 24 September 2012). See also “Mrs. Henry (Rosalind) Esson Young (1874–1962) in Audrey M. Thomas, Women of Influence: A Partial History of CFUW Victoria, 2014, http://cfuwvictoria.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2014/03/CFUW-Victoria-history-2014rev.pdf (accessed 4 January 2017). Rosalind Young, née Watson, was born in Huntingdon, Quebec, the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman. She was educated at McGill where she received an M.A. and was gold medalist. She later became the first university-educated female high school teacher in BC. She married Young in 1904. She was a charter member and the first president of the CFUW, Victoria. Her family home in 1911 was at 1208 Oliver Street. See also Tippett, Emily Carr: A Biography, 109. 70. “Hamilton, Mary Riter, (1873–1954)” Artist’s Files: Amos, file I, AGGV. In Vancouver, some of her friends included Mesdames Catley, James, and J.W. Gordon, as well as Mrs. James’s niece, Miss Farmer (from White Rock).

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No t e s t o Pa g e 7 2 71. “The Victoria Sketch Club,” http://www.myartclub.com (accessed 25 September 2012). The club was particularly prominent during the interwar years, and in 1935 was the largest group of its kind in the country. From the beginning, the “Sketch Club” was an official part of the Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS), with exhibitions and classes where artists painted en plein air in the summer and from models and still life during the winter. In 1952, the IACS became The Victoria Sketch Club. See also: John Lover, The Victoria Sketch Club: A Centennial Celebration (Victoria: The Victoria Sketch Club, 2008). 72. “Josephine Crease,” The Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria, BC, Women Artists: Past, Greater Victoria Region, http://www.bcwomenartists. ca/19th20th_2.html (accessed 27 September 2011). See Appendix. 73. “Kitto, Margaret E.,” Artist Database, CWAHI, http://cwahi.concordia.ca./ sources/artists/displayArtistphp?ID_artist=130 (accessed 25 September 2012). See Appendix. 74. “Island Arts and Crafts Club Pamphlet, Victoria, 1913,” and “Island Arts and Crafts Society Minutes, 1909–1944,” IACS, Papers Relating to 1911–40 Q/ C1s4.1, Archives of British Columbia. The minutes of the Society for 3 September 1913 record that Mary Hamilton was elected as a new member. In the pamphlet published by the Society, the executive of the club is identified and the list of members includes Mary Riter Hamilton, of Fort Street. J. Crease is listed as vicepresident and Margaret Kitto as a member. In 1915, the list of members includes Hamilton, 514 Fort Street; Emily Carr, Simcoe Street; and Kitto, Heyward Ave. Hamilton is not listed as a member in 1916. In 1918, Kitto and Crease, but not Hamilton, are listed as members. For more information on Theresa Wylde, see “Wylde, Theresa Victoria (Miss), c.1870–1949,” British Columbia Artists, ARTISTS, http://www.british-columbia-artists.ca/bcaart-w.pdf (accessed 6 February 2017), 29; and “Wylde, Theresa Victoria, ca. 1870–1949,” Artist Files, CWAHI, http://www.cwahi.concordia.ca/centre/all_artists.php (accessed 7 February 2017). Emily Carr joined the Society in 1913–4, on her return from France and four years of teaching art in Vancouver. In 1913, the Society established the School of Handicraft and Design (applied and fine art), which was staffed by instructors trained in London, Paris, and Amsterdam. Winter sketching trips were organized from 1912. See also Moncrieff Williamson, “Memorial Exhibitions Compare Artists’ Work,” Victoria Daily Times, 21 November 1959. Williamson reviews exhibitions of Mary Riter Hamilton and Sophie Deane-Drummond, née Pemberton, at the AGGV. Williamson suggests Mary Riter Hamilton is the better of the two painters and cites a number of her European works. 75. Nicholas Tuele, British Columbia Women Artists, 1885–1985: An Exhibition Organized by Nicholas Tuele at the Art Gallery of Victoria (Victoria: AGGV, 1985), 11. 190

No t e s t o Pa g e s 7 2 – 7 4 76. Newspaper clipping, n.d., IACS, Papers Relating to 1911 to 1940 Q/C1s4.1, Archives of British Columbia: “The School of Arts and Crafts opened on 25 January 1913. On Wednesday evenings the instructor for drawing and painting from still life will be Mary Riter Hamilton.” See also handwritten notes from Angela Davis, “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s Files, File 2, Archives of British Columbia. See also “Women Artists and Women’s Art (1874–1919),” Berry fonds, P5748, folder 35, Archives of Manitoba for the opening of the Winnipeg School of Art in the same period. 77. “A Salon at the Empress,” Daily Colonist, ca. 22 March 1913, Hamilton, Mary Riter, Artist’s Files, File 1, Archives of British Columbia. 78. “A Salon at the Empress.” See also Kathryn Young to Paul Crawford, January– February 2014, personal communication, Kathryn Young private collection. Paul Crawford, Director/Curator, Penticton Art Gallery, provided information on An Italian Head and another portrait in the Penticton collection: A Woman’s Head, n.d., pastel on paper, 23” x 16 ¾, signed lower right Mary Hamilton. He also said that three oil on panels, (no dimensions) c. 1915, depicting BC historical views (likely Nanaimo), signed by Mary Riter Hamilton, were sold by Kilshaw’s Auctioneers Ltd. The Antique and Fine Art Auction for Victoria and Vancouver for $1,100.00 in 2008. 79. “A Salon at the Empress.” 80. Catalogue of the Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Island Arts and Crafts Club, 16, 17 and 18 October 1913, Alexandra Club, IACS, Papers Relating to 1911 to 1940, Q/C/Is4.1, Archives of British Columbia. Also exhibiting were J. Crease, M. Kitto, T. Wylde, and E. Carr. See also “Art Exhibit is Very Creditable,” Daily Colonist, 19 October 1913. 81. “Art Exhibit is Very Creditable.” 82. Edith Cuppage, “The Ladies Review,” The Week, Victoria, 6 December 1913. 83. Brother of Sophie Pemberton. 84. Cuppage, “The Ladies Review,” Hamilton, Mary Riter, Artist’s Files, File 1, Archives of British Columbia; and “Hamilton, Mary Riter, Artist’s files,” Amos, File 1, AGGV. 85. Catalogue of the Fifth Annual Exhibition of the Island Arts and Crafts Club, 19, 20, 21 November 1914, Alexandra Club and Catalogue of the Eighth Annual Exhibition of the Island Arts and Crafts Club, Pemberton Bldg, 23–7 October 1917, IACS, Papers Relating to 1911 to 1940, Q/C/Is4.1, Archives of British Columbia. 86. “Studio Talk,” Studio 62, no. 255 (July 1914), 146, 315–16. Following the inauguration of the Winnipeg Art Museum in 1912, a year later a School of Art opened in Winnipeg, as did the Ontario College of Art, formerly the Toronto School of Art. 191

No t e s t o Pa g e s 7 4 – 7 5 87. “Catalogue of Paintings Exhibited by Western Canadian Artists,” Eighth Annual Report of the Winnipeg Industrial Bureau, “Women Artists and Women’s Art (1874–1919),” Berry fonds, P5748, folder 39, Archives of Manitoba. 88. “Art Gallery Will Be Opened Today,” Manitoba Free Press, 19 June 1914. See also “Catalogue of Paintings Exhibited by Western Canadian Artists” and Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 189. Florence Carlyle sent three of her pictures to the 1914 Winnipeg exhibition. See also Patricia E. Bovey, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald and Bertram Brooker: Their Drawings (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1975). The introduction to the catalogue includes biographies of FitzGerald and Brooker. Patricia E. Bovey and Ann Davis, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: The Development of an Artist (Winnipeg: The Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1978–9). FitzGerald became a member of the Group of Seven in 1932, but earlier was in correspondence and had established a friendship with Lawren Harris, in particular. See Maggie Callahan, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald: His Drawings and Watercolours (Edmonton: The Edmonton Art Gallery, 1982), and Duval, Canadian Impressionism, 136, for a discussion of FitzGerald and Impressionism. 89. Benedict Burton, M. Miriam Dobkin, and Elizabeth Armstrong. A Catalogue from San Francisco’s Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915, Lowie Museum of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 30 October 1982–31 December 1983, exhibition catalogue. See “Mary Riter Hamilton,” in “Art Exhibition – SF Panama-Pacific International Exhibition 1915,” AskArt, http://www.askart.com/askart/interest/panama_pacific_exposition_of_san_ francisco_1.as (accessed 13 November 2013). 90. Cuppage, “The Ladies Review,” and “Stefansson, Vilhjalmur,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/vilhjalmur-stefansson (accessed 20 August 2009). 91. “Anderson, Rudolph Martin,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.caom/articles/rudolph-martin-anderson (accessed 25 September 2012). Anderson was an American zoologist, conservationist, and explorer. He received his PhD in the United States, and then he came to Canada, where he took part in explorations of Alaska and the Canadian Arctic with Stefansson. Mary Riter Hamilton’s portraits of the Andersons are included in the collection of her paintings gifted to LAC. See “Mary Riter Hamilton, Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, vols. 202 and 300, LAC, Ottawa. 92. “Huntly (Huntley) Green, Gertrude,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/gertrude-huntly-green-emc/ (accessed 13 June 2013). Gertrude Huntly Green (1889–1987) (born Huntly, married Green) was a classical musician trained in violin and piano who had studied in Paris and made her debut there in 1908 at the Salle Erard. She later gave recitals in France, England, Canada, and the U.S. She took up residence in Victoria in 1914 where 192

No t e s t o Pa g e s 7 5 – 7 7 she taught advanced students, performed, and conducted an orchestra that raised funds during the war. 93. This is the only reference to Hamilton’s piano but it suggests that she had learned to play the instrument, perhaps during her marriage in Port Arthur. 94. N. de Bertrand Lugrin, “Mayfair’s Victoria Letter,” January 1928, “Artist’s Files: Mary Riter Hamilton,” P5738, folder 87, Berry fonds, Archives Manitoba. In a chatty newsletter about Victoria, de Bertrand Lugrin said that Victoria had some artists of international fame, such as Sophie Pemberton, at the time settled in London, and Mary Riter Hamilton, currently of Winnipeg. See “Cherniavsky, Jan,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/ en/article/jan-cherniavsky-emc/ (accessed 17 August 2015). The Cherniavsky brothers (Jan, b. 1892, pianist; Leo, b. 1890, violinist; and Mischel, b. 1893, cellist) lived and performed on the west coast between 1914 and 1917. 95. de Bertrand Lugrin, “Mayfair’s Victoria Letter.” 96. Hamilton’s lawyers to Provincial Secretary, Henry Esson Young, n.d., “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s Files, Archives of British Columbia. 97. See Chapters 4 and 5 for more information on the Hamilton-Young friendship. 98. Hamilton’s lawyers to Provincial Secretary Henry Esson Young, n.d. See also “Inflation Calculator,” Bank of Canada, http://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/ inflation-calculator/ (accessed 8 February 2016). 99. There are no financial documents to confirm what she was paid. 100. E.O.S. Scholefield to Hamilton, 2 August and 15 November 1915, “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s Files, Archives of British Columbia. 101. Scholefield to Hamilton, 15 November 1915. 102. Hamilton’s lawyers to Provincial Secretary Henry Esson Young, n.d. 103. John Forsyth to Mary Riter Hamilton, 2 November 1918, “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s Files, Archives of British Columbia. 104. H.J.S. Muskett, Private Secretary, Government House, Victoria, on behalf of the Lieutenant-Governor F.S. Barnard to Mary Riter Hamilton, 15 March 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. Muskett said her account for three more pictures of the lieutenant-governors had arrived this morning and he would endorse it and send it on to the Treasury for payment to the enclosed address. 105. Willard E. Ireland to Mrs. A.H. Huntley, 26 June 1950, “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s Files, Archives of British Columbia. 106. Ibid.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 7 7 – 7 8 107. Jerymy Brownridge to Kathryn Young, 9 April 2012, Young personal communication. Brownridge was director of operations and management services, Government House, BC. He wrote in reply to a request to see Hamilton paintings at Government House, but he replied that they did not exist in 2012 and likely had perished in the fire of 1957. 108. The financial records for these commissions are not extant. See Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 9. See also “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s Files, Archives of British Columbia. The commission stipulated that the portraits would be drawn from photographs and engravings. 109. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 9. In 1908 Henry Esson Young was provincial secretary and minister of education in the British Columbia legislature. In this period, Hamilton also painted a large portrait of the Young family that, because of its size, proved to be unwieldy. It was later cut down into separate portrait sections. In 1914, she travelled with the Young family to Great Central Lake on Vancouver Island where they cruised aboard the Cangara, a steamer ship owned by the Department of Education. During this family expedition the artist’s photograph was taken by well-known photographer Leonard Frank as she sketched in the forest. Candid shots of this outing are the only ones known of Hamilton at the time. See also “Copyright: Leonard Frank,” http://www.whitepinepictures.com/seeds (accessed 25 September 2012) and “Leonard Frank Studio fonds,” MemoryBC, the British Columbia Archival Information Network, http://www.memorybc. ca/24788.rad (accessed 25 September 2012). See also Mary W. Higgins to Davis, 7 July 1993, Davis private collection. Mary Higgins was Henry and Rosalind Young’s daughter. She pointed out that neither the Youngs nor the Harts had cottages at Central Lake, but if they stayed overnight it was likely at “The Ark” run by Joe Drinkwater, a well-known character of the time. 110. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 9. 111. Ibid. See also W.S. Terry, Belgian Consul, Letter of Introduction for Mary Riter Hamilton, 14 March 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 112. Jay Winter, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 28–30. 113. Unidentified writer to S.J. Crowe, MP, Vancouver, 28 January 1918, Mary Riter Hamilton (1873–1954) fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 114. Quoted in Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 10. 115. Ibid. See “Training for the Trenches,” Global Bird Photos Collection, http:// www.globalbirdphotos.com/ve_new2/208_217_military_matters.pdf (accessed 7 February 2017). This site includes a photograph of J.A. Paton with other members 194

No t e s t o Pa g e s 7 8 – 8 0 of the 29th. See J.E.M. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” The Gold Stripe: A Tribute to the British Columbia Men who have been killed and wounded in the Great War. A Book of War, Peace and Reconstruction, No. 2, Victoria: The Amputation Club of British Columbia, 22–23. 116. Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. See Chapter 5 for Hamilton’s gift of most of her battlefield collection to the Public Archives of Canada. 117. Perry, “Artists and Their Doings,” 4. 118. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 10. 119. Ibid., 11. See also Lieutenant Colonel F.A. Robertson to Margaret Hart, 1 April 1924, Judy Bishop private collection. In this letter, Robertson writes that the officers of the 5th Regiment were not very happy with the purchase of the Empress of Asia as they didn’t think it was appropriate for the mess hall. 120. See Bertie L. Currie to Mary Riter Hamilton, 31 August 1921, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 121. Terry, Letter of Introduction. See also Currie to Hamilton, [ca. 1923], Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 122. H.J.S. Muskett to Mary Riter Hamilton, 15 March 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 123. Captain H.H. Ellis to the French consul general, 22 March 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 124. Lieutenant Colonel C.W. Peek, House of Commons, to Lieutenant Colonel G. Grassie Archibald, Canadian Section – 3rd Echelon, Les Havres, France, 24 March 1919, Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 125. See “Currie, Sir Arthur William,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/Sir-arthur-currie (accessed 5 February 2017). Sir Arthur W. Currie (1875–1933), the first Canadian commander of the Canadian forces (1914–1918), succeeded general Julian Byng, British Commander of the Canadian forces. Sir Arthur Currie was also the first Canadian to be awarded the rank of general. Currie served as inspector general of the militia forces in Canada from 23 August 1919 to 30 July 1920 and as such was in charge of demobilizing the troops from Europe. See also Grant, Victoria, 78. Grant pointed out that Currie, although born in Ontario, grew up in Victoria, where he had worked as a real estate agent and school teacher. It is possible that Hamilton, Paton, or her friends, knew the Currie family. 126. J.A. Paton to Margaret Hart, 17 March 1919, Judy Bishop private collection.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 8 0 – 8 3 127. “Canadian Artist Going to Europe,” Daily Colonist, 18 March 1919. See also Bruce, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” 23. Bruce states that over 50 paintings had been stored with the Harts before Hamilton left for Europe. 128. Mary Riter Hamilton to Margaret Hart, 25 March 1919, Bishop private collection.

Chapter Four: Painting with Purpose, 1919–1925 1.

Frederick G. Falla, Paris Correspondent for the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, New York City, “Dauntless Canadian Woman Tells of Grim Experiences While Painting the Nightmare Land of the Somme. In a Vivid Interview Mary Riter Hamilton Talks of Her Three Years Work Alone in the Heart of Devastated France,” New York City: McClure Newspaper Syndicate, 10 September 1922, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba.

2.

Jonathan Vance, Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997); and Winter, Sites of Memory.

3.

Falla, “Dauntless Canadian Woman.”

4.

Tippett, By A Lady, 57.

5.

Laura Brandon, Art or Memorial? The Forgotten History of Canada’s War Art (Calgary: Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute and University of Calgary Press, 2006), 33.

6.

See Chapter 5 and the Epilogue.

7.

“Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” Archives Search, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/results/ arch?form=arch_simple&lang=en&FormName=MIKAN&simple+Search&PageNum=1&SortSpe (accessed 7 February 2017). The collection includes only paintings executed between 1916 (two portraits) and 1919 to 1921.

8.

9.

See literary historian Gammel, “The Memory of St. Julien”; art historians Burant, “No Man’s Land,” Palmer, Women War Artists, and Speck, Beyond the Battlefield; and literature specialist Helmers, “A Visual Rhetoric.” Brandon, Art or Memorial?, xiv. Max Aitken (1879–1964) was born in Ontario, but grew up in New Brunswick. A “slight, energetic, and charismatic man,” he made his fortune in Canada and then relocated to London where he acquired an interest in the Daily Express. During the war, he used the newspaper to spread his ideas and influence. See Sue Malvern, Witnessing, Testimony and Remembrance: Modern Art, Britain and the Great War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 69 and 75. She writes that Lord Beaverbrook initiated the British War Memorials

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 8 3 – 8 4 Committee. It was patterned after the Canadian War Memorial Fund (CWMF) and met for the first time in 1918. 10. Vance, Death So Noble, 164. Arthur Doughty was appointed Dominion Archivist in 1904 and collaborated with Aitken to collect paintings, motion pictures, photographs, medals, pamphlets, and official histories. See Chapter 5 for Doughty and Hamilton correspondence. 11. Susan Butlin, “Landscape as Memorial: A.Y. Jackson and the Landscape of the Western Front, 1917–1918,” Canadian Military History 5, no. 2 (Autumn 1996): 62–70. See also: “Group of Seven,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/group-of-seven (accessed 7 February 2017). The Group of Seven was founded in Toronto in 1920 as “an organization of self-proclaimed artists.” Original members included: Franklin Carmichael, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Franz Johnston, Arthur Lismer, J.E.H. MacDonald, and F.H. Varley. Only Harris was independently wealthy; all the rest made their living working as commercial artists, most in the same firm, The Grip. Tom Thomson was considered part of the group, although he died in 1917. After their first exhibition in 1920 at the Toronto Art Gallery, they came to identify themselves as a national school of Canadian landscape painters. 12. Terresa McIntosh, “Other Images of War: Canadian Women War Artists of the First and Second World Wars” (M.A. thesis, Carleton University, Ottawa, 1990), 17, 21–2, 26. See Appendix. 13. For some information on Appleton, see Letter from Colonel H. Appleton, Roccabella, Victoria to Sir Arthur William Hill, Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, 8 May 1925, http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.visual.klde12441 (accessed 13 January 2016). Appleton, a botanist, is requesting return of some of his field books. 14. Quoted in McIntosh, “Other Images of War,” 16. 15. Ibid., 17. McIntosh notes that the application of maritime artist Mrs. E. Dorothy McAvity (1876–1958) was also rejected. 16. Ibid., 17. 17. Gammel, “The Memory of St. Julien,” 21, 27–8. 18. Winter, Sites of Memory, 2. See also Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 85. Speck points out that there was a rush of patriotism following the war and for women who had volunteered for the Red Cross, etc., it was a continuation of their service. 19. Winter, Sites of Memory, 45. Winter wrote that in northern Europe the work of associations of the disabled was recognized before the end of the war and they often published newsletters or magazines. See also Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 12.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 8 5 – 8 6 20. See Helmers, “A Visual Rhetoric,” 79. 21. Winter, Sites of Memory, 1–2. 22. “The Somme Valley,” google maps, http://.www.google.ca/?qws-rd=ss1#q=the+ somme+valley+google+maps (accessed 7 February 2017). See Tim Cook, Shock Troops: Canadians Fighting the Great War, 1917–1918. Vol. 2 (Toronto: V. King Group, 2008), 4–8. 23. Before the Battle of Vimy Ridge, Canadian soldiers had been integrated into British divisions under the command of British generals. The Western Front extended east in France up to the Vosges mountains. See Chapter 3 for Currie biography. “Battles of the Western Front 1914-1918,” The Great War 1914–1918,” http://www.greatwar.co.uk/battles (accessed 7 February 2017); “The Battle of Vimy Ridge, 9–12 April 1917,” Canadian War Museum, http://www.warmuseum. ca/cwm/exhibitions/vimy/index-e.shtml (accessed 7 February 2017); and “Battle of Passchendaele,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/battle-of-passchendaele (accessed 7 February 2017). See Cook, Shock Troops, 4–8, 6–7, and 80–106 for battle details. Cook points out that the “raw and untried Canadian Division” arrived at the Western Front in August 1915. See also Tim Cook, Vimy: The Battle and the Legend (Toronto: Allen Lane, 2017), 4–6. 24. Vance, Death So Noble, 57. See also Cook, Vimy, 6, 370, and 384. 25. A March sailing was only possible from New York as the Saint Lawrence River would have been frozen until April, at least. 26. Mary Riter Hamilton to Margaret Hart, 9 December 1925, Bishop private collection. 27. See inventory of Mary Riter Hamilton paintings, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” LAC. Hamilton gifted 227 paintings and sketches to LAC but there were others that were held in private collections. 28. Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 22. See “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” LAC for descriptions of the painting materials and their suppliers. For instance, her work included: Oil Paintings: oil on cardboard, oil over charcoal on paper, oil on plywood, oil on cardboard laid down onto cardboard, oil on commercial board, oil on thin cardboard, oil on paper, oil on canvas, oil on woven paper, oil on wood panel, oil on commercial canvas board, oil on light cardboard with separate wood backing, oil on brown woven paper, oil on woven paper laid down onto pressed board, oil on unstretched canvas, oil on pressed board; Drawings: pastel on paper laid down on cardboard, charcoal, heightened with white chalk on woven paper, charcoal with white chalk on brown cardboard, charcoal and white chalk on buff paper, black and white chalk on paper, red chalk, etching with drypoint, coloured aquatint on paper, hand-coloured aquatint on cardboard, coloured etching on 198

No t e s t o Pa g e s 8 6 – 9 0 cardboard, pastel on paper, pencil on paper. Suppliers of Art Materials: Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet, 10 rue Vavin and 2 rue Brea, Paris and Wandenberg Frères/Doreurs Miromers, 10 place Delaborde, 1 & 2 rue de Vienne, Paris. 29. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, note 21. 30. Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 24; and McIntosh, “Other Images of War,” 51–4. McIntosh argues that Hamilton likely did not see actual crucifixions but had been told about them, but Davis believed that she had witnessed the event. 31. Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 24. 32. A copy of the book was found in her effects following her death in 1954. See Chapters 2 and 5. See also Michael Ostroff to Sarah McKinnon, 10 August 2008, personal communication. Ostroff relates his interview with Major Matthews, archivist of the Vancouver Archives, who said that when he had spoken with Hamilton shortly before her death she said that her friendship with Wallace, fostered before 1911, resumed after she returned to France in 1919. She said that Wallace had agreed to give her a copy of James Joyce’s Ulysses when it was published in Paris in 1922. See also Janet Flanner, Paris was Yesterday, 1925–1939 (New York: The Viking Press, 1972), xiii and x. Flanner writes that the publication of Ulysses in 1922 was the most exciting literary event of the year for the expat community in Paris. The buzz around the publication concentrated around Shakespeare and Company and its owner, Sylvia Beach, a personal friend and supporter of Joyce. See also Noël Riley Fitch, Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation: A History of Literary Paris in the Twenties and Thirties (New York: W.W. Norton and Company. 1985), 12 and 16. 33. Quoted in Fitch, Sylvia Beach, 16. 34. Ibid. 35. Benstock, The Private Self, 173. 36. See Chapter 3, p. 81 for Hamilton’s own reference to the support that she received from “High Brows.” 37. M. Roy, letter of introduction for Mary Riter Hamilton, 15 April 1919, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 38. “Kemp, Sir Albert Edward (1858–1929),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http:// www.biographi.ca/en/bio/kemp_albert_edward_15e.html (accessed 8 February 2017). Kemp became Minister of Militia and Defense and Minister of OMFC in the Borden government and was the man in charge of demobilization of the Canadian military forces. He remained in France until 1920. 39. “Cavendish, Sir Victor Christian William (1868–1938), Governor General, The Duke of Devonshire.” Archives of the Government of Canada,, http://www.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 9 0 – 9 4 gg.ca/99/fgg/bios/01/devonshire_e.asp (accessed 9 February 2017). Sir Victor Christian William Cavendish, 9th Duke of Devonshire, was appointed Governor General of Canada during the Borden regime. 40. F. Gibson, Lieutenant Colonel, Assistant Deputy Minister, OMFC, to Hamilton c/o Monsieur Lucien Lefebvre-Foinet, 19 rue Varin, Paris, 1 May 1919, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 41. In correspondence Hamilton always referred to her Victoria friends as “Mrs. . . . .” An exception was her Winnipeg friend, Adina Falconer. 42. John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields,” www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/JohnMcCrae. flanders-fields.htm (accessed 16 November 2015). See also Cook, Shock Troops, 4–8 and 31–38. 43. See Introduction and Benstock, The Private Self, 211 and 215. 44. Hamilton to Hart, 7 May 1919, Bishop private collection. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Hamilton to Hart, 4 June 1919, Bishop private collection. It is not clear how she travelled between the battlefield areas and train stations, beyond the references that she often had to walk. She may well have been picked up by local residents or farmers in their vehicles prepared to give her a lift to Arras or one of the other centres, but the documents do not confirm this. 48. Ibid. Underlining is Hamilton’s. 49. See Chapter 3 for biographies of Rosalind and Henry Esson Young. 50. Hamilton to Rosalind Young, 9 June 1919, Bishop private collection. 51. Hamilton to Hart, 29 July 1919, Bishop private collection. 52. McIntosh, “Other Images of War,” 46. Villers-au-Bois was the resting place for soldiers of the 4th Canadian division. 53. See “List of Paintings,” included in J.E.M. Bruce, “An Artist Impressionist on the Battlefields of France,” The Gold Stripe, 3 (1919), 11; and “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” LAC. 54. Helmers, “A Visual Rhetoric,” 79. 55. Brandon, Art or Memorial?, 156, 158. 56. See The Return Home, 1919, “Mary Riter Hamilton Sale Results,” Heffel: Canada’s National Fine Art Auction House, http://www.heffel.com/links/Sales_E. aspx?ID=5B5656 (accessed 13 November 2013). In July 2007 the painting was listed at $3,000.00 to $4,000.00, but it sold for $5,175.00 CAD.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 9 4 – 9 7 57. Gammel, “The Memory of St. Julien,” 27–8. 58. Hamilton to Taylor, 29 July 1919, Bishop private collection. Chinese workers were hired by the demobilizing forces to remove unexploded shells and to bury the dead. For Chinese labour during and following the First World War, see “Gommecourt and Area,” World War One Battlefields, http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/ somme/gommecourt.html (accessed 7 September 2011) and “Cemeteries on the Somme Battlefields, France,” The Great War, 1914–1918, http:// www.greatwar. co.uk/places/somme-cemeteries.htm (accessed 7 September 2011). 59. Hamilton to Hart, 29 July 1919, Judy Bishop private collection. 60. Ibid. 61. For ultimate sale of the Victoria property, see Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” 2 June 1939, Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. Details of Mr. Gordon Burdick’s exchange of the Victoria property for a Mary Riter Hamilton painting priced at $2,400 in 1914 are found in this document. See “Inflation Calculator,” Bank of Canada, http://www. bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculator (accessed 8 February 2016) ($2,400 in 1914 = $49,770 in 2015). The lots are identified as: 1, 2, 3, & 4, Block 5, Section 65, Victoria District Plan 1358 – certificate of title: # 922521. Annual taxes were $19.00, but there were arrears for 1936, 1937, and 1938. The assessed value of the lots was $65.00 each, but in June 1938 Hamilton said that she would not accept anything less than $500.00 for them, but a month later said she would take $100.00 for them (it is not clear whether she meant $100.00 for each lot or for all 4 lots, together). 62. Hamilton to Taylor, 7 June 1919, Bishop private collection. 63. Taylor to Hart, 9, 11 and 16 July 1919, Bishop private collection. 64. Hamilton to Taylor, 29 July 1919, Bishop private collection. 65. Taylor to Hart, 18 August 1919; Royal Bank of Canada to Hart, 8 October 1919; Royal Bank of Canada to Hart, 18 November 1919; and Royal Bank of Canada to Hart, 23 November 1920, Bishop private collection. 66. “Headquarters ‘B’ Group, Cemetery Caretakers Branch . . . Menu for Christmas Dinner, France 1919,” Bishop private collection. 67. Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 11. 68. Hamilton to Mrs. J.W. McTavish, 7 October 1919, McKinnon private collection. Note: the return address on this letter was Miami, MB, home of her brother, John Paul Riter. 69. Bruce, “An Artist Impressionist,”11. 70. Ibid. 201

No t e s t o Pa g e s 9 7 – 9 9 71. Quoted in Bruce, “An Artist Impressionist,” 12. In this letter Hamilton said that she had been living in a hut in the “Canadian camp,” but that it had been moved by 20 Chinamen who picked it up and carried it to Nine Elms camp. For information on Nine Elms cemetery, see “Nine Elms Cemetery,” 10th Canadian Infantry Battalion at Vimy Ridge, The Great War, 1914–1918, http://www.invisionzone. com/forums (accessed 7 September 2011), and “Cemeteries and Locations on the WW1 Ypres Salient Battlefields, Belgium,” The Great War, 1914–1918, http:// www.greatwar.co.uk/places/ypres-salient-cemeteries.htm (accessed 7 September 2011). See also Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 11. 72. Quoted in Bruce, “An Artist Impressionist,” 12. 73. “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton at Work on the Battlefield,” Vancouver Daily World, 1 December 1919. See “Arras: First World War,” Webmatters: Maps, http://www. webmatters.net/france/ww1_arras.htm (accessed 14 May 2011). This map of the Pas-de-Calais region in northern France illustrates a number of the battle areas that were the subjects of Hamilton’s paintings. Within easy reach of Arras were Souchez and Vimy. See also Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 14 and 23. 74. “The Canadian Artist Mary Riter Hamilton is in France,” Western Women’s Weekly, 6 December 1919. The driver is identified as Sergeant Moore from British Columbia. 75. See Huneault, “Professionalism,” 39. Again we are reminded of the value of organizations like the IODE for artists. 76. “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton at Work on the Battlefield.” 77. “IODE to Hold Exhibition of Mrs. Hamilton’s Pictures: Artist Now in France Painting Scenes of Devastated Areas,” Vancouver Province, 1 April 1920. 78. See Patrick H. Brennan, “Byng’s and Currie’s Commanders,” Canadian Military History, II, no. 2 (Spring 2002): 5–16. 79. “War Has Developed New Style in Art of Painting: This is Exemplified in Exhibition of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Pictures Now Proceeding Under Auspices of IODE in Aid of Amputation Club of BC – Will Continue Until Thursday Next,” Vancouver Province, 10 April 1920. 80. “Showing Paintings at Private View: Collection of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Pictures of Vimy Ridge District Being Shown Today,” Daily Colonist, 20 April 1920. 81. “Pictures of Vimy Opening to the Public: The Remarkable Collection of Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton of Now Historic Territory Being Shown Here,” Daily Colonist, 2 May 1920. 82. “War Paintings Now on Exhibition Here: Lieutenant-Governor Yesterday Opened Exhibit of Mrs. Riter Hamilton’s Pictures,” Daily Colonist, 11 May 1920.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 9 9 – 1 0 3 83. Hamilton to Hart, 15 February 1920, Bishop private collection. 84. Ibid. 85. Quoted in Currie to Hamilton, 31 August 1921, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 86. Hamilton to Hart, 15 February 1920, Bishop private collection. 87. Ibid. 88. Ibid. 89. Hamilton to Hart, 14 May 1920, Bishop private collection. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Hamilton to Hart, n.d. September 1920, Bishop private collection. See also Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 90 and 97. Australian Evelyn Chapman was the first woman to arrive in the Somme area and Hamilton was soon to follow. They were confronted with not only the devastated landscape but the littered remains of human corpses. Both set their easels up in situ, but canvases may have been completed in their studios. 93. Hamilton to Hart, n.d. September 1920. 94. In the 1920s the ancient medieval town was called Ypres. Today, with restoration of its original Flemish name, it is Ieper. The Ypres Salient was a triangular piece of town land that was occupied by the Germans from 1914. It was the scene of many battles during the war. 95. “The Ypres Salient Battlefields, Belgium,” The Great War 1914–1918, http://www. greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient (accessed 8 February 2017). 96. See Helmers, “A Visual Rhetoric,” 89–92, for her analysis of this painting, which reveals how Hamilton “encodes” different times: the time of creation, time of memory (when the soldiers used the road), and time of the viewer (now experiencing emptiness and loss in the vacant landscape). As such, the painting can offer simultaneously an image of the past, present, and future. According to Helmers, in Hamilton’s retrospective painting she presents “a new perspective of the scene” where “past bleeds into the present of her images.” 97. Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 99–102. 98. Hamilton to Hart, 5 April 1921, Bishop private collection. 99. Ibid.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 0 3 – 1 0 5 100. Hamilton to Hart, [ca. 1921], Bishop private collection. See Chapter 3 for more information on the University Women’s Club of Victoria as both Margaret Hart and Rosalind Young served as presidents. 101. Currie to Hamilton, 27 May 1921, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder, 4, Archives of Manitoba. 102. Currie to Hamilton, 29 August 1921, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 103. Currie to Hamilton, 31 August 1921, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. Paton, friend of the Belgian Consul, had contacted Currie about Hamilton’s location. 104. See Chapter 3 for Hamilton’s 1911 exhibition. 105. W.B. Hamilton to Hamilton, 5 November 1921, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. The letter was written on W.B. Hamilton Shoe Co. letterhead and signed by William or Willard Hamilton, Hamilton’s brother-in-law. It is addressed to Mrs. May Hamilton at 3 rue Joseph Bara, Paris. 106. Foster, “Les Pauvres and Its Artist,” 66. See also Margaret Grégory to McKinnon, 4 May 1996, McKinnon private collection; and Annick Notter to Angela Davis, 26 March 1993, Davis private collection. Musée des beaux-arts d’Arras has in its possession Le Plateau de Notre-Dame de Lorette en 1919, 92S.5, oil on wood, 46.1x59.2cm., donated by Mary Riter Hamilton in 1929. 107. McIntosh, “Other Images of War,” 54. 108. On 21 March 1918, for the first time in over a year, the Germans launched a massive offensive against the Allied forces in the Somme valley. It overwhelmed the British Fifth Army, but the French held the onslaught towards Paris, and then with the first major deployment of American troops, the Allies fought on to victory on 4 April. The Germans had inflicted about 200,000 casualties and taken 70,000 prisoners, but overall they suffered almost as many losses. See “Second Battle of the Somme ends,” History, http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/ second-battle-of-the-somme-ends (accessed 8 February 2017). 109. See “Invitation to Inauguration de la Maquette du Panthéon Interallié de la Somme.” Saturday, 10 June 1922 in foyer of the Paris Opera House, to be opened by Monsieur Léon Bérard, Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts. Drawing of the Panthéon by M. Louis Duthoit, Architect. Exhibition of paintings: “Les Champs de Batailles de la Somme” by Mrs. Mary R. Hamilton and M. Georges Scott. The invitation was accompanied by a booklet: “Panthéon aux Morts Français et Alliés Á Amiens. Les Batailles de la Somme.” This was under the patronage of the French President, King of England, President of the United

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 0 5 – 1 07 States, Kings of Italy and Belgium, Ministers of Foreign Affairs, Minister of War, Minister of Marine, Maréchal Foch, Maréchal Douglas-Haig, Maréchal Joffre, Pétain and General Pershing, Ville D’Amiens, Dép’ De La Somme, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” invitations, P4896, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba. French, British, and American allies were central to the defeat of the Germans in the Battle of the Somme, 21 March 1918. The exhibition included some paintings by French painter and illustrator Georges Scott. See “Georges Scott, 1873–1943,” Museum Syndicate, www.museumsyndicate.com/artist.php?artist979 (accessed 16 November 2015). Note: “L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques” and “the Order of Public Instruction” are sometimes used interchangeably by the press to denote the award granted to Hamilton. See also Falla, “Dauntless Canadian Woman.” 110. Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 13. See AMOPA, Association des Membres de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques, http://www.amopa.asso.fr/ordre. htm (accessed 7 June 2012). L’Ordre des Palmes Académiques was established by Napoleon 1st in 1808 as an honorary title to recognize members of the universities, which included high schools. In 1866 the terms were extended to include those “who have rendered distinguished service to education” and the award became a decoration. Academic Palms could be granted to foreigners who contributed “to the expansion of French culture in the world.” See also Archives nationale de France, Paris: A.N., F/17/40228, dossier des Palmes académiques; A.N., AJ/13/1205, dossier IX, le fonds de l’Opéra (Gala pour le comité du Panthéon aux morts de la Somme); A.N., F/21/4733, 4875, 4895, dossier le fonds de l’administration des Beaux-Arts. Monument aux morts de la Somme à l’Exposition d’Amiens; A.N., F/21/4743, dossier l’Exposition à l’Opéra. 111. “Canadian Artist Is Highly Praised: Mrs. Hamilton Has Pictures in Somme Exhibition,” Morning Journal, Ottawa, 12 June 1922, via Canadian Press Cable, London and A. Reuter dispatch from Amiens. “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. M. Klotz was a former prime minister of France. 112. “Plan of Allied Memorial Now Showing at the Opera,” [likely from the International Herald Tribune], “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. See also, “Canadian Artist Is Highly Praised. . . .” 113. Falla, “Dauntless Canadian Woman.” Photographs in the article include: the artist at work near Souchez, Vimy Ridge; a preliminary sketch of German prisoners; and the artist in her Parisian studio with a dog. Note: rue Joseph Bara is a small road in the 6th arrondissement between the boulevard Montparnasse and the Luxembourg Gardens, métro Vavin. 114. Ibid. 115. Ibid.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 0 7 – 1 0 9 116. “With the Artists,” New York Times (European edition), 17 September 1922, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. 117. Newspaper clipping, no provenance, [ca. 29 September 1922], “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. A number of these newspaper clippings are pasted on to scrapbook sheets of paper and in some cases the sheets are held together with tape. They would seem to have come from Hamilton’s personal collection following her death. 118. Hamilton to Hart, 20 June 1922, Bishop private collection. 119. Hamilton cable to Hart, [ca. February 1923], Bishop private collection. 120. Maternity would have been sold at $416 in Canada, at the time ($5,720 in 2015), if the franc had been at 6 francs to the dollar. 121. Hamilton to Hart, [ca. February 1923], Bishop private collection. 122. Hamilton to Hart, 3 February 1923, Bishop private collection. Hamilton had hoped to sell her lots back to the people from whom she had bought them, but in the interim they had died and she never recovered the value of her investment, nor did she ever recover the paintings that had been used for payment. 123. Hamilton to Hart, [ca. early 1923], Bishop private collection. 124. Ibid. 125. Hamilton to Hart, 3 February 1923, Bishop private collection. 126. Hamilton to Hart, 7 February 1923, Bishop private collection; and Davis and McKinnon, No Man’s Land, 13. 127. Currie to Hamilton, [c. 1923], and Currie to Hamilton, 9 June 1923, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 128. Although from time to time in the Hamilton–Hart correspondence there are references to friends in Paris, names are never mentioned nor is there any more information about them. 129. Hamilton to Hart, 25 July 1923, Bishop private collection. Note: we know that she was living on rue Joseph Bara in the summer of 1922. 130. Hamilton to Hart, 25 July 1923, Bishop private collection. In addition to the discussion of the $50, this letter also states that 1500 FRS had been sent to the Bank of Montreal and Hamilton was concerned that Hart had “dipped” into her own pocket to help her out. As a result, she said she had not spent any of the money: “ . . . you have already done far, far too much and if the property cannot be sold, nor the pictures, I would have no money to return it and knowing your big heart and all the rest of it, I realy [sic] must not allow you to do so much, it is not right.” 131. Ibid. 206

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 0 9 – 1 14 132. See Appendix. Katharine C. Watson to Hart, 29 November 1923 and 1 February 1924, Bishop private collection. Watson explained that her sister, Adele, who lived in New York (38 W. 10th Street, New York City), had seen notice of the Hamilton exhibition of the battlefield paintings in 1922. Hence, Katharine Watson decided to make contact with Hamilton when she was in Paris a year later. See “Women’s Art in the Modernist Tradition,” Jeri L. Weinstein Wolfson Collection, www. jlwcollection.com/jlwcollection.com/Adele.Watson (accessed 31 October 2012). 133. Watson to Hart, 29 November 1923, Bishop private collection. In a postscript to the letter Watson told Hart that Mary Riter Hamilton did not know that she had taken Hart’s address nor that she was writing a letter to her to seek help. 134. Ibid. 135. Ibid. 136. Watson to Hart, 1 February 1924, Bishop private collection. 137. “Canadian Art,” Daily Colonist, 3 February 1924. Note: although there was hope of building a new National Gallery, the collections continued to be housed in the Victoria Memorial Building from 1911 to 1959. 138. Ibid. 139. “Dr. Tolmie Asked to Appeal at Ottawa: University Women Urge National Gallery Committee to Preserve Canadian Artist’s War Pictures,” Daily Colonist, 17 February 1924. See also Huneault, “Professionalism,” 32. See pp. 115–116 for an explanation as to why Hamilton’s pictures were at Marble Arch, London. 140. Power of Attorney Document, 22 March 1924, signed by Mary Riter Hamilton, Margaret Hart, and Parisian lawyers, Lamenlique and Gouget (Gougat), Bishop private collection. 141. Lieutenant Colonel F.A. Robertson to Hart, 1 April 1924, Bishop private collection. 142. Ibid. 143. Quoted in ibid. 144. W.B. Hamilton to Hamilton, 9 April 1924, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 145. Hamilton to Hart, 12 July 1924, Bishop private collection. 146. Ibid. 147. “Walker, Sir Byron Edmund (1848–1924).” 148. Hamilton to Hart, 12 July 1924, Bishop private collection. Hamilton likely means 1924, rather than 1922 that appeared in her letter.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 4 – 1 1 6 149. Hamilton to Hart, [ca. July 1924]. See Catalogue: “Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919, 1920, 1921. In Aid of the Allied Somme Battlefield Memorial. Surrey House, Marble Arch, 1923. Impressions of the Battlefields after the Armistice, Paintings, Drawings, and Pastels,” “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” catalogues, P4896, folder 6, Archives of Manitoba, and Hamilton to Hart, n.d. February 1923. Bishop private collection, exhibition catalogue. 150. J. Coudurier de Chassaigne, CBE, Commissaire General, to M.L.F. Klotz, Deputé Ancien Ministre, Président du Conseil Général de la Somme, Paris, 23 July 1923, Bishop private collection. Hamilton received copies of the correspondence between the French and British officials later. 151. Coudurier de Chassaigne to Hamilton, Paris, 19 October 1923, Bishop private collection. 152. Hugh F. Glanville to Coudurier de Chassaigne, London, 14 February 1924, Bishop private collection. 153. Glanville to Coudurier de Chassaigne, London, 26 February 1924, Bishop private collection. 154. Hamilton to Hart, 12 July 1924, Bishop private collection. 155. See “Paintings by Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919, 1920,1921 . . . .” 156. Newspaper clipping from a French newspaper, n.d., “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” clippings, P4896, folder 8, Archives of Manitoba. 157. Quoted in Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 13. See also Margaret A. Thorburn to Davis, 5 December 1988, Davis private collection. Thorburn wrote: “I have in my possession a scarf/runner painted by Aunt May, should you ever wish to use it in a show.” 158. Quoted in Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 13. See also “Hugh John Macdonald (1850–1929),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http:// www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/macdonald_hj.shtml (accessed 3 November 2012). Macdonald came to Winnipeg in 1882, served as a Conservative MP in the 1890s and later, briefly as an MLA in the Manitoba legislature. He was president of the Manitoba Club in the 1890s and head of a number of other Winnipeg organizations. Today Dalnavert, his historic home, is open to visitors. It is situated at 61 Carlton Street, Winnipeg, and has been restored by the Manitoba Historical Society. 159. Hamilton to Hart, 12 July 1924, Bishop private collection. 160. See note 129. 161. Hamilton to Hart, 16 August 1924, Bishop private collection. She was now living at 206 boulevard Raspail. 208

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 6 – 1 19 162. T.A. Fraser to Rosalind Young, 2 October 1924, and Hamilton to Hart, [ca. January 1925], Bishop private collection. 163. Currie to Hamilton, 17 January 1925, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. See also Hamilton to Hart, [ca. January 1925], Bishop private collection. The documents do not make it clear as to why she had been hospitalized in Hertfordshire. 164. Hamilton to Hart, [ca. January 1925], Bishop private collection. 165. Hamilton to Hart, ca. spring 1925, Bishop private collection. 166. Pierre Dupuy, Secretary to the Commissioner General for Canada in France, [High Commissioner], Head Officer, Custom Office, Montreal, 26 October 1925, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. The letter was written from the Canadian Embassy, 17–19 boulevard des Capucines, Paris. 167. Hamilton to Secretary to the Commissioner General for Canada in France, 26 November 1925, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” correspondence, P4896, folder 3, Archives of Manitoba. 168. Hamilton to Hart, 9 December 1925, Bishop private collection. See “S.S. Minnekahda (II),” Atlantic Transport Line Steamships, http://www.atlantictransportline.us/content/56Minnekahda.htm (accessed 8 November 2015).

Chapter Five: Missed Opportunities, Shattered Dreams, 1925–1954 1.

Hamilton to Eric Brown, 26 March 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC.

2.

Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” 12 April 1934, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia, Archives of British Columbia.

3.

“Battle Areas of France Depicted: Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Has Collection Portraying Post-War Scenes,” Montreal Gazette, 21 December 1925.

4.

There is no documentary evidence that this idea ever came to fruition.

5.

“Battle Areas.” Hamilton knew members of the IODE who also belonged to the Monteregian Club, e.g., Lady Grace Julia Drummond. See “Lady Grace Julia Drummond, (n.d.),” Quebec History, L’Encyclopédia de l’ histoire du Québec/The Québec History Encyclopedia, http://www.faculty.marianopolis.edu/c.belanger/ quebechistory/encyclopedia/LadyGraceJuliaDrummond-QuebecHistory.htm (accessed 9 February 2017).

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 1 9 – 1 2 1 6.

For Hamilton’s first few months in Winnipeg, it seems that she stayed with Mrs. Weir, whom she had met in Paris. By May, though, she had moved in with her friend Adina Falconer, at 426 Assiniboine Ave. See Arthur Doughty to Hamilton, 11 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 202, LAC. See also “Doughty, Sir Arthur George,” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http:// www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/sir-arthur-george-doughty (accessed 30 January 2017). In 1904 Arthur Doughty was appointed Dominion Archivist and Keeper of the Records for the federal government.

7.

“Woman Painter Tells of Work in War Zone; Mary Riter Hamilton Returns to Open Studio,” Manitoba Free Press, 6 January 1926; and “Mary Riter Hamilton will be Guest Speaker,” Manitoba Free Press, 26 January 1926.

8.

“Afternoon Tea in Honor of Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton,” Manitoba Free Press, 30 January 1926.

9.

“Mary Riter Hamilton: A Canadian Artist Who Has Arrived,” Manitoba Free Press, 4 May 1926.

10. “She Has Done What She Could,” Manitoba Free Press and reprinted in the Free Press Evening Bulletin, 1 May 1926. 11. Madge McBeath, “One of Our Last War Workers Comes Home,” Toronto Star Weekly, 20 February 1926. See also Madge McBeath, “Canadian Women in the Arts,” Maclean’s 27, no.12 (October 1914): 23–5, 105–8. 12. Mary S. Rolland, Regent of the Margaret Hingston Chapter of the IODE, to Mrs. J.M.C. Muir, Regent of the Montreal Municipal Chapter, Montreal, 2 January 1926, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” Correspondence, P4896, folder 5, Archives of Manitoba. See also: Vance, Death So Noble, 240. Vance writes that the IODE kept the memory of the war alive by distributing sets of reproductions of the Canadian War Memorial Fund paintings to Canadian schools and Hamilton may have known about this project. 13. L.E.F. Barry to Hamilton, 5 January and 22 February 1926, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” Correspondence, P4896, folder 5, Archives of Manitoba. See also “Hamilton, Mary Riter,” Artist’s File, Amos, file 1, AGGV. Robert Amos’s notes mention that Mrs. William Fowler, president of the IODE, and Barry were friends of Hamilton. 14. Hamilton to Barry, 25 February 1926, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” Correspondence, P4896, folder 5, Archives of Manitoba. 15. Robert Rogers (1864–1936) came to Manitoba in 1881 and married Aurelia Regina Widmeyer (1867–1934) at Clearwater in 1885. See “Robert Rogers (1864–1936),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http:// www.mb.ca/docs/people/rogers (accessed 1 December 2011) and “Aurelia Regina

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 1 – 1 23 Widmeyer Rogers (1867–1934),” Memorable Manitobans, Manitoba Historical Society, http:// www.mb.ca/docs/people/rogers_arw (accessed 1 December 2011). Aurelia was involved in many Winnipeg community organizations, including the Women’s Canadian Club, the IODE, and the Women’s Musical Club. The Rogers may have been family friends of the Riters when living at Clearwater. 16. Hamilton to Aurelia Rogers, 26 March 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 17. Ibid. 18. Brown to Hamilton, 15 April 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. See Plates 31 and 19 for the images of Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold) and Market Among the Ruins of Ypres. 19. Brown to J.H. King, 15 April 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 20. Speck, Beyond the Battlefield, 8. 21. Hamilton to Rogers, 26 April 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 22. Ibid. 23. Hamilton to Rogers, 10 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamiton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Rogers’s exchange with Doughty was by telephone. Her letter to Hamilton is not in the extant record, only Hamilton’s reply. 24. Hamilton to Rogers, 10 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 25. “Reverend Canon William Bertal Heeney (1873–1955),” A Real Companion and Friend: The Diary of William Lyon Mackenzie King, LAC, http:// www. collectionscanada.gc.ca/king/023011-1050.25-e.html (accessed 10 January 2012). Canon Heeney was Rector of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Winnipeg (1909– 1942). Heeney and King were good friends. 26. “John Bracken (1883–1969),” Memorable Manitobans: Manitoba Historical Society, http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/people/bracken_j.shtml (accessed 10 January 2012). John Bracken was premier of Manitoba from 1922 to 1943. 27. Hamilton to Rogers, 10 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 28. Rogers to Doughty, 13 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 29. Doughty to Hamilton, 11 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 202, LAC.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 3 – 1 2 5 30. Ibid. These paintings would seem to be the “unsolicited” paintings sent earlier by Hamilton. 31. Ibid. In his letter of 11 May 1926, Doughty is referring to his knowledge of Hamilton’s earlier correspondence with Rogers. See Hamilton to Rogers, 26 March 1926 “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 32. H.O. McCurry, secretary, National Gallery, to Doughty, 8 June 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. McCurry refers to Hamilton’s letter of 27 May to Doughty. Then he says that he will arrange for the 7 paintings (5 oils and 2 prints) “received in good condition” by the National Gallery to be sent to the Public Archives, according to Hamilton’s request. He adds that the artist has asked that she be informed of the expenses related to their removal from the National Gallery. 33. Doughty to Hamilton, 10 June 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 202, LAC. 34. Hamilton to Doughty, 16 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 35. Hamilton to Doughty, 27 May 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 36. Hamilton to Doughty, 10 June 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Included with this letter was her telegram to Doughty of 27 May 1926 with its notice of the shipment by the Canadian National Railway of five boxes of 109 paintings, each box containing a numbered catalogue. 37. Hamilton to Doughty, 20 July 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 38. See “Memo Re: Mary Riter Hamilton Pictures,” “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Of these, 109 pieces were received in May 1926, 110 in July 1926, and 7 at an unspecified date (one seems to be missing from this tally). 39. Hamilton to Doughty, 20 and 27 July 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Here Hamilton apologized for the delay in dispatching her paintings. She said that she was sending the list but wanted to have him frame those that were coming. Four telegrams were also sent by Hamilton to Doughty regarding expedition of the pictures, insurance, and her apologies for the delay. 40. Doughty to Hamilton, 3 August 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 202, LAC.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 5 – 1 26 41. Ibid. 42. Doughty to Hamilton, 17 August 1926 and Hamilton to Doughty, 10 August 1926, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Hamilton wrote to Doughty to correct her mailing address from 201 to 203 Devon Court, Broadway Avenue, Winnipeg. (She later moved to 509 Devon Court.) 43. See “William Lyon Mackenzie King, (1874–1950),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/william-lyon-mackenzieking/ (accessed 9 February 2017); and “Bennett, Richard Bedford (1860–1930),” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/bennett_ richard_bedford_17E.html (accessed 9 February 2017). The King minority government received a majority in September 1926. King was prime minister up to 28 July 1930, when he was defeated by R.B. Bennett. Bennett held office until 14 October 1935. King was returned to power, and then re-elected with a resounding majority in 1940. He resigned in 1948 and was succeeded by Louis Saint-Laurent. 44. Bertie Currie to Hamilton, 31 October 1926, “Mary Riter Hamilton fonds,” Correspondence, P4896, folder 4, Archives of Manitoba. 45. Falconer to Hart, n.d., Bishop private collection. “Hammy” was a term of endearment used by a number of Hamilton’s friends. 46. “Devon Court,” Winnipeg Building Index, Architecture/Fine Arts Library, The University of Manitoba, http://www.wbi.lib.umanitoba.ca/Winnipeg Buildings/ showBuilding.jsp?id= . . . 326 (accessed 9 February 2017). Devon Court, 376 Broadway Avenue, was designed by Chicago architect John D. Atchison. It opened in 1909 and was demolished in 1981. For several slides (many coloured) of the building exterior, interior, and floor plan, see this website. 47. Hamilton to Hart, 28 February 1927, Bishop private collection. This letter was never sent. 48. Quoted in Falconer to Hart, ca. summer 1927. See E. Cobham Brewer, “Time,” Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1898, http://www.bartleby.com/81/16525.html (accessed 14 June 2013). The quotation is drawn from Shakespeare, King John, iii. 1. 49. Falconer to Hart, [ca. summer 1927]. 50. See Exhibition Catalogue, 11 November 1927, “Mary Riter Hamilton,” P5738, folder 87, Berry fonds, Archives of Manitoba. Hamilton’s students included: Conrad Riley (11 years), Joey Rogers (12 years), Nancy Tewings (12 years), and Bill Gooderham (12 years), among others. See also Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton. Amos, in writing of the Rogers’ exhibition, identified “a lovely pastel of Isabel Coursier,” a Hamilton student, entitled Ski Jumping Champion. 213

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 6 – 1 2 9 51. “Sketch Club Notes,” Manitoba Free Press, 26 November 1927. See Chapter 1 for Marion Nelson Hooker. See also Bovey, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald and Bertram Brooker: Their Drawings; and Bovey and Davis, Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald. 52. “Winnipeg Women Whose Work Shows Outstanding Features: A Woman Painter,” Western Home Monthly, n.d. February 1928. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Hamilton to Hart, 4 July 1928, Bishop private collection. 56. Ibid. 57. Hamilton to Hart, 1 September 1928, Bishop private collection. 58. Hamilton to Hart, 3 September 1928, Bishop private collection. 59. W.G.W. Fortune and Elizabeth Fortune to Hart, 2 January 1929, Bishop private collection. The Fortunes wrote to Hart on Hamilton’s behalf as she was in a Vancouver hospital in early January 1929, so we know that she was in the province by the New Year, at least. 60. The Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Art was established in 1925. It later became the Vancouver School of Art. See Maria Tippett, Stormy Weather: F.H. Varley. A Biography (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1998). 61. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Services Report,” 12 April 1934, Provincial Mental Hospital Essondale, Archives of British Columbia. The Essondale “Social Service Report” includes notes from the Family Welfare Bureau of Vancouver when Hamilton was in their care. We know that Hamilton was in a private hospital(s) and the Vancouver General Hospital in 1929 and again in 1934, and in Essondale Psychiatric Hospital from 1939 to 1943. She was first recorded by the Family Welfare Bureau of Vancouver in April 1934 when Miss Batchelor (possibly Hamilton’s landlady or her friend) asked for help for Hamilton, who was not eating enough and was suffering from pernicious anaemia. 62. W.G.W. and Elizabeth Fortune to Hart, 2 January 1929, Bishop private collection. 63. Ibid. See also Elizabeth Fortune to Hart, 7 January 1929, Bishop private collection. Fortune said that Hamilton was “seriously ill” and that only time would tell the outcome. 64. Hart to Hamilton, 7 January 1929, Bishop private collection. 65. Ibid. 66. Hamilton to Hart, 26 February 1929, Bishop private collection. 67. Bruce to Hart, 8 March 1929, Bishop private collection.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 2 9 – 1 32 68. Ibid. Bruce had rented an apartment in Caroline Court at 1058 Nelson Street. See also W.G.W. Fortune to Doughty, 12 March 1929, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings”, RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Fortune confirmed Hamilton’s residence at the time as Caroline Court. 69. Bruce to Hart, 8 March 1929, Bishop private collection. 70. Bruce to Hart, 2 April 1929, Bishop private collection. 71. Hamilton to Hart, 20 April 1929, Bishop private collection. 72. Hamilton to Hart, 14 August 1929, Bishop private collection. 73. Hamilton to Hart, telegram, 19 August 1929, Bishop private collection. 74. Hamilton to Hart, 20 August 1929, Bishop private collection. 75. “Margaret Hart’s legal statement regarding her affairs with Mary Riter Hamilton, ca. 1929–1930,” Bishop private collection. See Chapter 3, note 84 for a reference to Mrs. McPhee’s portrait. She was Margaret Hart’s mother. 76. “Statement of Mary Riter Hamilton. Re: Transactions with Mrs. M.J. Hart, Victoria,” n.d., Major J.S. Matthews Collection, “Hamilton, Mary Riter file,” MSS 54, vol.13.01972 and newspaper files M3958, City Archives of Vancouver. 77. Hamilton to Hart, notarized document, 3 March 1930, Bishop private collection. 78. Fortune to Messers. Clerihue and Straith, Permanent Loan Co., Victoria, 27 May 1932, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Easter Morning was not mentioned in Fortune’s letter. It may have been returned to Hamilton earlier. See “Alcohol and Education,” Rev. W.G.W. Fortune, BC Archives. Fortune was an advocate for temperance. 79. See “Hon. James Horace King (1873–1955),” The Speakers of the Senate of Canada, Parliament of Canada, http://www.lop.parl.gc.ca/About/Parliament/ speakers/sen/sp-25King-e-htm (accessed 10 February 2017). 80. Fortune to Doughty, 12 March 1929, “Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 81. Ibid. 82. Fortune to Hon. W.L. Mackenzie King, Prime Minister of Canada, 6 May 1929, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 83. Ibid. See also Hon. J.H. King to Doughty, 16 May 1929, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings”, RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. Here King asked Doughty to confirm the details of the Hamilton gift of paintings to the Archives. 84. Fortune to Hon. J.H. King, 21 October 1929, and other correspondence on this matter 8, 9, and 17 October 1929, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 215

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 2 – 1 3 4 85. Ibid. 86. Hon. J.H. King to Doughty, 30 November 1929, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 87. Fortune to Doughty, 27 October 1930, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 88. Fortune to Doughty, 5 and 24 January 1931, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 89. Fortune to Henry Herbert Stevens, 25 July 1933, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. See “Henry Herbert Stevens, (1878–1973),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia. com/articlles/henry-herbert-stevens (accessed 3 October 2012). 90. “Inflation Calculator.” 91. W.H. Grant, private secretary to H.H. Stevens, to Doughty, 2 August 1933, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings”, RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 92. Doughty to Stevens, 31 August 1933, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. At the time of this correspondence, Hamilton was living at #21, 1504 W. 14th Street, Vancouver. 93. Ibid. 94. E.T. Squire to the Superintendent, Public Archives, 27 February 1936, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 95. Acting Dominion Archivist to E.T. Squire, 8 April 1937, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 96. Ibid. 97. See also Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 16. The James-Hamilton friendship predated the Great War. 98. Grace James to Mackenzie King, 2 December 1939, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. See Chapter 5, note 43. King defeated R.B. Bennett on 14 October 1935 and remained in power until he resigned in 1948. 99. H.R.L. Henry, private secretary to Prime Minister Mackenzie King, to Grace James, 2 December 1939, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. See Chapter 5, note 17 for Hamilton’s ideas about receiving an annuity from the National Gallery for her paintings. Administration of the old age pension was the responsibility of the provinces up to the 1950s. 100. James to Mackenzie King, 15 December 1939, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 216

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 4 – 1 35 101. George S. Pearson, Minister of Labour, Province of British Columbia, to H.R.L. Henry, 16 December 1939, and Henry to James, 20 December 1939, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 102. Mary R. Hamilton,” Social Services Report, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia, 27 September 1939, Archives of British Columbia. From 12 April 1934 Hamilton was a ward of the Family Welfare Bureau because of her impoverished condition and generally poor health. See also Mary R. Hamilton, Admission Slip, Ward Notes, 16 September 1939, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia, Psychiatric Hospital, Archives of British Columbia. Hamilton was admitted to Essondale Psychiatric Hospital on this day with a diagnosis of senile dementia. 103. Quoted in Pearson to James, 20 December 1939, “Mrs. Mary Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. See also “History: BC Mental Health Timeline,” BC Mental Health and Addiction Services, http://www.bcmhas.ca/ AboutUS/History.htm (accessed 20 January 2012). The hospital was conceived in 1909 by Esson Young, a cabinet minister at the time, and it officially opened in 1913. It was considered to be state of the art for psychiatric hospitals of the time. In 1930, the Female Chronic Unit (later called East Lawn) was opened and a school for psychiatric nurses was established. 104. James to Mackenzie King, 10 January 1940, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. 105. Ibid. 106. Norman Fee, Acting Deputy Minister (Archives), to A.D.P. Heeney, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, memorandum, re: Mary Riter Hamilton, 20 January 1940, “Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton Gift of War Paintings,” RG 37, Vol. 300, LAC. See also, “Heeney, Arnold Danford Patrick (1902–1970),” The Canadian Encyclopedia, http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/ arnold-heeney (accessed 11 January 2017). A.D.P. Heeney had written to Major N.G. Lanctot, Dominion Archivist, to ask if Hamilton had ever been thanked for her gift. His reply came from Norman Fee, Acting Deputy Minister (Archives), who said there was no record of a thank you in the Archives’ documents. A.D.P. Heeney was the son of Canon Heeney of St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Winnipeg. He was educated at the University of Manitoba and Oxford, and he became principal secretary to Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King in 1938. 107. See Chapter 2 for more information on Les Pauvres. 108. Foster, “Les Pauvres and Its Artist,” and “Coals to Newcastle.” 109. “Her Collection Enriches Ottawa Archives,” Calgary Herald, 10 March 1934.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 5 – 1 3 7 110. Ibid. For a comparison of Emily Carr’s activity in the same period, see James Adams, “Far Away, So Close,” Globe and Mail, 19 June 2012. Adams points out that, in the last 15 years of Carr’s life, she exhibited in Seattle, San Francisco, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Tate in London, the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Exposition Internationale in Paris. Nonetheless, he argues that although Carr had achieved iconic status in Canada, even today her work is not widely accepted or shown internationally. 111. “Her Collection Enriches Ottawa Archives.” 112. “Attractive Art Exhibition Opens: Work of Mrs. Hamilton and Her Pupils Is Now On Display,” Vancouver Province, 25 June 1935. 113. Quoted in Amos, Mary Riter Hamilton, 11. 114. Angela Davis’s chronology of Hamilton’s life, Mary Riter Hamilton, Artist’s Files, Archives of British Columbia. 115. “Greatest Woman Painter Born in Culross Township.” 116. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” 12 April 1934, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. When entered on the rolls of the Family Welfare Bureau, Hamilton claimed that her mother (brother?) also had died of pernicious anaemia. 117. There is no confirmation that this exhibition was held. 118. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” 20 May and 10 November 1935, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives British Columbia. 119. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” 29 September, 16 October, 25 October, and 8 December 1937; 17 March, 13 July, 25 August 1938; and 2 June 1939, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. 120. Denise Fuchs to McKinnon, 25 March 2001, personal communication. Fuchs reports an email exchange with Gerry Culver, who told her that between 1937 and 1940, Hamilton lived in the walk-up apartment. 121. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” n.d. January 1939, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. 122. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” January 1939. See also: “Inflation Calculator.” 123. Mary R. Hamilton, “Social Service Report,” January 1939 and 9 August 1943, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. The report in 1943 says that Hamilton was admitted to the VGH for removal of a cataract. See Chapter 4 for Rosalind Young’s earlier appeal to the Masonic Order for financial support for Hamilton.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 7 – 1 39 124. Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton, Propensity Slip (Committal),” 2 April 1954, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. Hamilton was discharged on probation, 25 July 1942, into the care of Mr. and Mrs. J. Erickson, Port Coquitlam. Diagnosis: senile dementia/improved. As there was no further word from 25 July 1942 to 25 January 1943, the artist was “discharged in full.” See also Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Autopsy Report” and “Social Service Report,” Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. 125. Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, Ward Notes, 20 September 1939 and “Propensity Slip,” 2 April 1954,” Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. 126. Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Ward Notes,” 23 September–19 December 1939, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. 127. Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Ward Notes,” 19 January 1940, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. 128. Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Ward Notes,” 19 December 1940 to 25 January 1943. See also Mrs. Young to Hamilton, 30 May 1941 and reply, n.d., “Hamilton, Mary Riter (1873–1954),” Artist’s File, Amos, file 3, AGGV. Young said she had thought of Hamilton while attending the funeral of a mutual friend that day. She continued to say that she had seen a letter from Hamilton when at a meeting of the Alliance Française and realized that she, too, had not forgotten their friendship. She wrote that she did not know where Hamilton was located, but thought it might have been the studio where she had seen her “some years ago.” Hamilton replied to Young and said that she had hoped to get to Victoria, but now was “here” [Essondale]. She said that she had pictures for Young and she tried to explain the Hart affair. 129. Jean Howarth, “This Column,” Vancouver Province, n.d. June 1948. For another example of friends trying to help aging artists, see Elspeth Cameron, And Beauty Answers: The Life of Frances Loring and Florence Wyle (Toronto: Cormorant Books, 2007), 337; and Christine Boyanski, Loring and Wyle: Sculptors’ Legacy (Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1987). Sculptors Frances Loring and Florence Wyle lived into their eighties and were beset by illness and shortage of money. They were moved from hospital to a home for the aged and their friends rallied around them and sold sculptures to raise money. 130. Howarth, “This Column.” 131. Ibid. 132. Ibid. 133. Ibid.

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 3 9 – 1 4 0 134. Ibid. See also “Lawren Harris,” The Art History Archive – Canadian Art, http:// www.arthistoryarchive.com/arthistory/canadian/Lawren-Harris.html (accessed 22 January 2012). Lawren Harris (1885–1970) studied in Berlin from 1904–8 and later became a member of the Group of Seven. See also Bess Harris and R.G.P Colgrove, eds. Lawren Harris (Toronto: Macmillan of Canada, 1969); Andrew Hunter, Lawren Stewart Harris: A Painter’s Progress (New York: The Americas Society, 2000); and James King, Inward Journey: The Life of Lawren Harris (Toronto: Thomas Allen Publishers, 2012). 135. Howarth, “This Column.” 136. “Greatest Woman Painter Born in Culross Township.” See also Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Ward Notes,” 6 April 1954, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. Hamilton’s eyesight had been compromised from her last years in Paris when she lost the sight in her left eye, later replaced by a glass orbit. Then, in 1948, she was diagnosed with glaucoma. 137. Mrs. F.K. Huntley, letter to the editor, Teeswater News, 13 February 1951. 138. See Chapter 3. 139. “Gallery Opens Mary Hamilton Art Exhibit,” Vancouver Sun, 21 January 1949 and “In the Realm of Art: Vimy Ridge Paintings,” Vancouver Province, 22 January 1949. This show was the one likely organized by Lawren Harris. 140. “Joint Sponsors for Exhibit,” Vancouver News Herald, 1 February 1952; “New Exhibit at Art Gallery,” Vancouver Sun, 4 February 1952, and “Victoria Artist,” Daily Colonist, 24 February 1952. 141. “Victoria Artist.” 142. Matthews meeting with Fanny Huntley, 29 February 1952. “Statement.” Major J.S. Matthews Collection, “Hamilton, Mary Riter file,” MSS 54, vol.13.01972, City Archives of Vancouver. 143. Major J.S. Matthews, speech, 4 March 1952, quoted in James Skitt Matthews, Early Vancouver, Vol. 7 (Vancouver: City of Vancouver, 2011), 143, http://www. archive.org/details/EarlyVancouverVol7_685 (accessed 3 October 2012). See Chapter 4 for images. See also Inventory of Hamilton’s paintings, LAC. 144. Naomi Lang, “Famous Artist Goes Right on ‘Painting in Her Mind,’” Vancouver Sun, 5 March 1952. See also Butlin, The Practice of Her Profession, 98. Butlin’s observations about the number of women journalists who wrote about Florence Carlyle is confirmed in this study, where significant pieces on Hamilton were penned by Florence Deacon, Edith Cuppage, Anne Anderson Perry, W. Garland Foster, Jean Howarth, and Naomi Lang. 145. “Famous Artist.”

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 0 – 1 41 146. Mrs. Hamilton, Mary Riter, Registration of Death, Essondale, B.C. Provincial Mental Hospital, 5 April 1954. Province of British Columbia, Department of Health and Welfare-Division of Vital Statistics, Archives of British Columbia. 147. “Autopsy Report,” 2 April 1954, Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, Archives of British Columbia. Note: the “Autopsy Report” carries the date of Hamilton’s admission to the hospital and begins with a short summary of her clinical history. The autopsy was performed on 9 April 1954. Before arriving at the hospital, Hamilton had been living in a boarding house at 1821 Haro Street, Vancouver. See: Hamilton, Mrs. M.R., Application for an Order for the Admission of a Patient to a Public or Private Mental Hospital or to a Provincial Clinic of Psychological Medicine, “Mental Hospitals Act,” 31 March 1954, Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, Archives of British Columbia. 148. “Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Mary R.,” Certification of Examination of a Patient’s Clothing and Person, on Admission, by the Attendants, 2 April 1954, Provincial Mental Health Services, Provincial Mental Health Hospital, Essondale, BC, Archives of British Columbia. For an earlier inventory of Hamilton’s possessions see: Frank Riter and Michael Ostroff, telephone conversation, 2 June 1994. Riter said that he had in his possession a list of Hamilton’s possessions, signed on 12 April 1951, by Mrs. Telfer (wife of Douglas Telfer), Hamilton, and Miss Higginbotham. The list included books, kitchen items, picture frames, a square trunk, a grey steamer trunk, a long wooden box—likely a field box for painting stool, a small trunk, bedding, unfinished pictures, a cupboard, a canvas stool, two tables, a screen, newspapers and press notices, and a note saying that a box of correspondence would be kept by Miss Higginbotham. Ostroff private collection. 149. “As of 30 August 1954 Letters of Administration of all the estate which by law devolves to Mary Riter Hamilton of Vancouver, Province of British Columbia, died 5 April 1954 at Port Coquitlam, granted by the Supreme Court of British Columbia to Frank R. Riter of Kelowna, one of the lawful next of kin of the said intestate,” Vancouver Probate Registry, 31 August 1954, Ostroff private collection. Frank R. Riter was the son of John Paul Riter, Mary Hamilton’s eldest brother. Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Death Certificate,” Province of British Columbia, Department of Health and Welfare-Division of Vital Statistics, Archives of British Columbia; and Mrs. M.R. Hamilton, “Autopsy Report,”[the autopsy was carried out on 9 April 1954] and Mrs. Mary R. Hamilton, “Ward Notes,” 2–5 April 1954, Provincial Mental Health Services, Essondale Hospital, Archives of British Columbia. 150. “Famed Artist Buried,” Vancouver Sun, 12 April 1954; “Blind Artist’s Rites Held Here,” Vancouver Province, 14 April 1954; “Canada’s First Woman Artist Laid at Rest: Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton,” Vancouver Province, 15 April 1954 (included photograph); and “Famed Artist Buried,” Daily Colonist, 17 April 1954. 221

No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 1 – 1 4 3 151. See Chapter 1, note 49. Frank R. Riter to Michael Ostroff, 2 June 1994, personal communication, Ostroff private collection. Riter confirmed that Hamilton was buried in the same plot as her husband and stillborn son. See also “Famed Artist Buried,” Vancouver Sun; and “Noted Painter’s Last Wish Gives Port Arthur Picture,” Port Arthur News Chronicle, 23 November 1954. 152. McKinnon to Young, 28 March 2012, personal communication. McKinnon was invited to speak about the artist for the unveiling of the Teeswater plaque, on 17 October 2007. See also Lorraine Cornelius to McKinnon, 30 September 2008 and David Nicholson to Sarah McKinnon, 8, 16, 19 October 2008, McKinnon private collection. The tombstone was raised on 13 September 2008 and the poppy seeds were a gift from the Lake Superior Scottish Regiment who had received them from Belgium in 2005 in commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Nicholson wrote: “It’s about recognition of an important Canadian artist as well as someone who lived here [Port Arthur/Thunder Bay] before . . . . It’s a way to honour her memory for future generations . . . .” 153. “As of 30 August 1954 Letters of Administration of all the estate which by law devolves to Mary Riter Hamilton of Vancouver, Province of British Columbia, died 5 April 1954 at Port Coquitlam, granted by the Supreme Court of British Columbia to Frank R. Riter of Kelowna, one of the lawful next of kin of the said intestate.” Estate of Mary Riter Hamilton. In Probate: Supreme Court of British Columbia, Vancouver Probate Registry, 31 August 1954, Michael Ostroff private collection. See also Harold W. Tupper (Shulman, Tupper & Southin) to Frank R. Riter, 7 July 1954, Ostroff private collection. Tupper reported that the estate totaled $539.24 (the contents of two bank accounts) and included paintings of “indeterminate value.” Expenses would have included the funeral at $317 and a charge of $50 to the City of Vancouver for the artist’s care in a “supervised” boarding house. There is no mention of Tupper’s fees in this letter. See also Riter to Jean (Bruce) Sanderson (Hamilton’s niece), 5 November 1954, Ostroff private collection, and “Inflation Calculator,” for the value of Hamilton’s estate in 2015: material goods without the paintings $539 in 1954; $4,835 in 2015. 154. Frank R. Riter to Sanderson, 16 June 1954, Ostroff private collection. 155. Frank R. Riter to Sanderson, 20 August and 5 December 1954, Ostroff private collection. See also “Inflation Calculator” for the value of Hamilton’s estate in 2015: $1,300 in 1954; $11,663 in 2015. The paintings, valued at $600 in 1954, would be worth $5,382 in 2015. The paintings were appraised by Alex Fraser: oil paintings, pastels, drawings, and watercolours, and were mostly portraits of men and women. Fraser said, “They are extremely unsalable and have very little market value. There are 48 pictures in all and may possibly realize the sum of about $600.00.” 156. See Ostroff to Frank R. Riter, 18 April 1994, Ostroff to McKinnon, 9 November 2000, and Etta Riter to Frank R. Riter, 17 November 1954, Ostroff private collection. 222

No t e s t o Pa g e 1 4 3 157. “$1500 Painting Presented to the City: Hangs in Library,” Port Arthur News Chronicle, 9 November 1954; and “Noted Painter’s Last Wish.” See also “Inflation Calculator”; and P. Vervoort, “Painting Locked Away,” Lakehead Living, 13 May 1987. Vervoort discovered that the painting had been locked away in a vault in the 1950s because the subject of mother and nursing child was seen as distasteful. In the 1960s the painting was offered to Lakehead College of Arts, Science and Technology (later Lakehead University), but even here it was rejected “because it wasn’t a good thing for young people to see.” See also “Valuable Painting Loaned to the Winnipeg Art Gallery,” Port Arthur News Chronicle, ca. 1971; and Reana Mussato to Young, 23 November 2012, personal communication. Reana Mussato was Public Art Coordinator, Cultural Services & Events, City of Thunder Bay. In 2013 the painting hung in Thunder Bay’s City Hall on the second floor where “it was visible to anyone coming out of the elevator.” 158. Frank R. Riter to Sanderson, 5, 12, 17 November and 5 December 1954, Ostroff private collection. The beneficiaries included next of kin: Frank R. Riter and his sisters Pearl and Ruth; Jean (Bruce) Sanderson; Harold and Etta Riter in Winnipeg (son and daughter of Joseph Riter); and friends: Jean Isabel Riley (née Culver) and Adina Falconer, Frances Higginbotham, and Fanny Huntley. See Mary W. Higgins to Davis, 6 January 1989, Davis private collection. Higgins explains that she has in her possession a number of Hamilton paintings and miscellany that were given to her parents, Dr. and Mrs. H.E. Young. See “1901 Census Records for Lisgar, Manitoba, Records with Surname Riter R360, Automated Genealogy, http://www.automated geneology.com/census/ SurnameList.jsp?surname=Riter&districtld=78&desc=Search+province+of+Manitoba+in+the+1901+Census+of+Canada+records+for+surname+Go=Go (accessed 12 February 2017) for John Paul Riter’s family: wife Maria (Mariah Simpson), Ruth (b. 4 April 1892), Charles (b. 30 September 1898), Pearl (b. 28 September 1900). And see R.T. Riter (Frank R. Riter’s son) to Kathryn Young, personal communication, 10 November 2012. Frank R. Riter, executor, was born in 1906. In a final letter on this topic, Frank R. Riter wrote to Sanderson in March 1956 to say that he was still unable to track down Jean Isabel Riley, Adina Falconer, and Frances Higginbotham. See Frank R. Riter to Sanderson, 16 March 1956, Ostroff private collection. 159. Copy of letter from W.M. Kaye Lamb, Dominion Archivist, to Frank R. Riter, 23 February 1955 and 9 March 1955, McKinnon private collection. See pp. 9–10 for the “Letter of Gift.” 160. See Catherine Speck, Beyond the Battlefield; Gammel, “Memory of St. Julien”; and A.K. Prakash, Independent Spirit: Early Canadian Women Artists (Toronto: Firefly, 2008) for recent anthologies. In addition, Hamilton’s art has been listed

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 3 – 1 4 4 and sold by Heffel’s, Waddington’s, Kilshaw’s, Sotheby’s auction houses, and The Penticton International Auction of Fine Art, to name a few. 161. “Past Recalled in Collection by Portraitist,” Daily Colonist, 22 November 1959, and “Hamilton, Mary Riter (1873–1954),” Artist’s File, Amos, AGGV. See also “Memorial Exhibitions Compare Artists’ Work, Vancouver Province, 21 November 1959, and Moncrieff Williamson, “Memorial Exhibitions Compare Artists’ Work,” Victoria Daily Times, 21 November 1959. Hamilton’s work was compared to that of her Victoria contemporary Sophie Deane-Drummond (née Pemberton). 162. Mother and Child Exhibition, Winnipeg Art Gallery, ca. 1967; 150 Years of Art in Manitoba: Struggle for Visual Civilization. An Exhibition for the Manitoba Centennial, Legislative Building, Winnipeg, 1 May–31 August 1970; Selected Works from the Winnipeg Art Gallery Collection, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 1971. See also “Exhibition Review,” Vancouver Sun, 26 December 1972; Images of Women, Winnipeg Art Gallery, 14 November 1975– 4 January 1976. and “Exhibition Review,” Arts Victoria 3, no. 7 (November 1977). 163. Through Canadian Eyes: Trends and Influences in Canadian Art, 1815–1965, Glenbow-Alberta Institute, Calgary, 27 September–24 October 1976; David Wistow, Canadians in Paris, 1867–1914: An Educational Exhibition Using the Gallery’s Collection and Long-Term Loans, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 3 March–15 April 1979; Mary Riter Hamilton, 1873–1954, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 23 August–8 October 1978. See “Hamilton, Mary Riter (1873–1954),” Artist’s File, AGGV. See also Tuele, British Columbia Women Artists, 1885-1985: An Exhibition (this show was mounted in both Victoria and Vancouver); and Berry, Vistas of Promise. 164. See Preface. A year before the exhibition opened, a video was prepared by The War Amps and aired 11 November 1988: No Man’s Land (from the Never Again! Series). Of the exhibition: see Davis to Pat Bovey, Director of AGGV, 22 November 1989. Davis reported that the opening of the exhibition was “a great success.” “We had tea (as at the Victoria and Vancouver exhibitions of Hamilton’s art while she was living) complete with harpist, silver tea-sets . . . . ” 165. See also McKinnon to Young, 16 February 2017, personal communication. The No Man’s Land exhibitions were under the auspices of the National Archives travelling exhibitions program and received assistance from The War Amps. For archival information about the paintings that were exhibited, see “Exhibitions Note,” Mary Riter Hamilton fonds [graphic material], R5966-0-5-E, LAC and Mary Riter Hamilton fonds, Traces of War, LAC, http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/ discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/mary-riter-hamilton/Pages/introduction.aspx (accessed 16 February 2017).

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No t e s t o Pa g e s 1 4 4 – 1 47 166. Against Time: Armando and six Canadian artists, Armando Museum, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, 6 October 2002–16 March 2003. See McKinnon to Petra Halkes, 28 May to 26 June, 2002, personal communication, McKinnon private collection. Petra Halkes is an artist and independent curator and writer who contributed to this exhibition. Herstory: Art by Women in the University of Winnipeg Collection, Gallery 1C03, The University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, 2013 was designed and organized by Laura Smith. Smith was a graduate student in the University of Winnipeg’s Cultural Studies program under the mentorship of Jennifer Gibson, Director/Curator, Gallery 1C03.

Epilogue 1.

“Art Gallery for Winnipeg,” Manitoba Free Press, 15 May 1912.

2.

Anne Anderson Perry, “Artists and Their Doings: O Canada! What of Art! Noted Woman Painter and Patriot Speaks of our National Needs,” Western Women’s Weekly, 1 February 1919.

3.

“Her Collection Enriches Ottawa Archives,” Calgary Herald, 10 March 1934.

225

Bibliography PRIMARY SOURCES Archives: France Archives nationales de France, Paris  A.N., AJ/13/1205: dossier IX, le fonds de l’Opéra (Gala pour le comité du Panthéon aux morts de la Somme). A.N., F/17/40228: dossier des Palmes académiques. A.N., F/21/4733, 4875, 4895: dossier le fonds de l’administration des BeauxArts. Monument aux morts de la Somme à l’Exposition d’Amiens. A.N., F/21/4743: dossier l’Exposition à l’Opéra. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris L’Académie Julian, 1902–1914, J0 50038.

Archives: Canada Library and Archives Canada Anderson, Rudolph Martin, and Mae Bell Anderson (née Allstrand) fonds. In Mary Riter Hamilton fonds. Artist’s Files, 705–40. Artist Manuscript Records, MG 30. Canada Census: 1861 Census: Bruce County, Culross Township, Ward No. 5. 1871 Census: Ontario District 27. 1881 Census: Bruce County, Culross Township, Ward No. 5. 1901 Census: “1901 Census Records for Lisgar, Manitoba, Records with Surname Riter R360, Automated Genealogy. http://www.automated geneology.com/census/SurnameList.jsp?surname=Riter&districtld=78& desc=Search+province+of+Manitoba+in+the+1901+Census+of+ Canada+records+for+surname+Go=Go (accessed 12 February 2017).

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1906 Census: Manitoba, Brandon District 1. http://automated geneology. com/census06/DisplayPage06.jsp?id+10376 (accessed 20 August 2009). Hamilton fonds, Mary Riter, Archives Search, Library and Archives Canada (LAC). http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/results/arch?form=arch_simple&lang=en&FormName=MIKAN&simple+Search&PageNum=1&SortSpe (accessed 7 February 2017). Hamilton, Mary Riter fonds [graphic material] (R5966-0-5-E). Hamilton, Mary Riter fonds, Traces of War. http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/ discover/military-heritage/first-world-war/mary-riter-hamilton/Pages/ introduction.aspx (accessed 16 February 2017). Hamilton, Mrs. Mary Riter. Gift of War Paintings, RG 37, vols. 202 and 300.

Archives: Canada: Provinces Archives of British Columbia Application for an Order for the Admission of a Patient to a Public or Private Mental Hospital or to a Provincial Clinic of Psychological Medicine. Artist’s Files: Hamilton, Mary Riter. Autopsy Report, 9 April 1954. Certification of Examination of a Patient’s Clothing and Person on Admission, by the Attendants. Estate of Mary Riter Hamilton. In Probate: Supreme Court of British Columbia, Vancouver Registry, 31 August 1954. Island Arts and Crafts Club Pamphlet, Victoria, 1913. Island Arts and Crafts Society Exhibition Catalogues, 1910–1914. Island Arts and Crafts Society Minutes, 1909–1944. Island Arts and Crafts Society, Papers Relating to 1911–40. Propensity Slip, 2 April 1954. Province of British Columbia. Department of Health and Welfare – Division of Vital Statistics: Registration of Death, Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, BC, 2–5 April 1954. Social Service Report, 27 September 1939–9 August 1943. Telegraphs announcing death, 2–5 April 1954. Ward Notes, 16 September 1939–25 January 1943. Ward Notes, 2–5 April 1954.

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Archives of Manitoba Berry, Virginia, G. fonds. “Women Artists and Women’s Art, (1874–1919),” P5748, folders 35, 39; “China Painting,” P5736, folder 31; “Artists’ Files: Mary Riter Hamilton, (1873–1954),” P5738, folder 87. Hamilton, Mary Riter fonds, (1873–1954) P4896, folders 1–9. Archives of Ontario Bruce County Genealogical Society, Culross County. http://www.rootsweb. ancestry.com~onbcgs/bcgshist.htm (accessed 6 August 2009). Bruce Directory 1867, Part 2: Township of Culross. http://freepages.geneology. rootsweb.ancestry.com/~wjmartin/bruced2.htm (accessed 19 August 2009). Bruce County Marriage Register, 1858–1869. United Counties of Huron and Bruce. Britnell, W.E., ed. Marriage Registers of Ontario, Canada, 1858–1869, vol. 8, Bruce County. Agincourt, ON: Generation Press, 1982. Gazeteer and Directory of Bruce County. Township of Culross, 1880. www.ourroots.ca/e/page.aspx?id=3916075 (accessed 19 August 2009). Hamilton, Charles Watson, Husband of Mary Riter Hamilton. Estate file. Hamilton, Charles Watson. Will. Estate file of the Thunder Bay District Surrogate Court records 1885–1900. Township Records: Culross Township. Lot 16, Concession 10. Vital Statistics Records: Death registrations and indexes on microfilm, 1869–1942. Schedule C – Deaths: District of Thunder Bay, #1085: Infant son of C.W. Hamilton, 29 August 1892. Schedule C – Deaths: District of Thunder Bay, #1169: Charles Watson Hamilton, 14 December 1893. Marriage registrations and indexes on microfilm, 1869–1932. Schedule B – Marriages: Huron County, Clinton, #005309: Charles Watson Hamilton and Mary Matilda Riter, 17 July 1889.

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Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia Amos, Robert, files. Hamilton, Mary Riter, files. Pemberton, Sophie, files. City Archives of Vancouver Mary Riter Hamilton file. Matthews, Major James Skitt, fonds. Winnipeg Art Gallery, Clara Lander Library and Archives

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS Bishop, Judy. Davis, Angela E. McKinnon, Sarah M. Ostroff, Michael. Riter, R.T. Riter and the Estate of Frank R. Riter. Stevens, Lorna. Young, Kathryn A.

AUDIO-VISUAL No Man’s Land (from the Never Again! Series), Video, 27 min 30 sec. Scarborough, ON: The War Amps, Video Distribution Department, 1988.

NEWSPAPERS Calgary Herald Crag and Canyon (Banff ) Daily Colonist (Victoria) Daily Sentinel (Port Arthur) Echoes Edmonton Journal 230

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“Turner, Joseph Mallord William, J.M.W. (1775–1851) – The Complete Works.” http://www.william-turner.org (accessed 11 January 2013). “Valuable Painting Loaned to the Winnipeg Art Gallery.” Port Arthur News Chronicle, c. 1971. Vance, Jonathan. Death So Noble: Memory, Meaning, and the First World War. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997. Vauxcelles, Louis. Salons de 1906. Paris: Goupil et Cie., 1906. “Verein Berliner Künstler [Association of Berlin Artists].” Oxford Art Online: Grove Art Online. http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/ grove/art/TO88767?print=true (accessed 29 March 2010). Vervoort, Pat. “Painting Locked Away.” Lakehead Living, 13 May 1987. “Victoria Artist.” Daily Colonist, 24 February 1952. “The Victoria Sketch Club.” http://www.myartclub.com (accessed 25 September 2012), Voorhies, James. “Post-Impressionism.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/poim/hd_poim.htm (accessed 16 October 2013). “Walker, Sir Byron Edmund (1848–1924).” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/walker_byron_edmund_15E.html (accessed 20 February 2017). “War Has Developed New Style in Art of Painting: This is Exemplified in Exhibition of Mary Riter Hamilton’s Pictures Now Proceeding Under Auspices of IODE In Aid of Amputation Club of BC – Will Continue Until Thursday Next.” Vancouver Province, 10 April 1920. “War Paintings on Exhibition Here: Lieutenant-Governor Yesterday Opened Exhibit of Mrs. Mary Riter Hamilton’s Pictures.” Daily Colonist, 11 May 1920. Waterfield, Robin. Prophet: Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. “Williamson, Curtis (1867–1944).” The Canadian Encyclopedia. http://www. thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/Curtis-Albert-Williamson (accessed 28 July 2015). Williamson, Moncrieff. “Memorial Exhibitions Compare Artists’ Work.” Victoria Daily Times, 21 November 1959.

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———. Through Canadian Eyes: Trends and Influences in Canadian Art, 1815–1965. Glenbow-Alberta Institute, Calgary, 27 September–24 October 1976. Exhibition Catalogue. “Winnipeg Artist Mary Riter Hamilton Achieved Success in World Centres,” Manitoba Free Press, 6 November 1911. “Winnipeg Woman Wins Distinction: Returns with Laurels as an Artist.” Winnipeg Telegram, 9 May 1906. “Winnipeg Women Whose Work Shows Outstanding Features: A Woman Painter.” Western Home Monthly, February 1928. Winter, Jay, Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in European Cultural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Winter, Jay, and Emmanuel Sivan, eds. War and Remembrance in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Wistow, David. Canadians in Paris, 1867–1914: An Educational Exhibition Using the Gallery’s Collection and Long-Term Loans. Toronto: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1979. Exhibition Catalogue. “With the Artists.” New York Times (European edition), 17 September 1922. Witness: Women War Artists. Imperial War Museum North, Manchester, 2009. http://www.culture24.org.uk/history-and-heritage/military-history/ art64952 (accessed 1 March 2016). Witz, Anne. Professions and Patriarchy. London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Wolf, Peter M. Eugène Hénard and the beginning of urbanism in Paris, 1900– 1914. New York: Peter Wolf, 1968. “Woman Painter Tells of Work in War Zone: Mary Riter Hamilton Returns to Open Studio in Winnipeg.” Manitoba Free Press, 6 January 1926. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition.” Manitoba Free Press, 7 February 1895. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition.” Manitoba Free Press, 2–5 December 1895. “Women’s Art Association Exhibition.” Manitoba Free Press, 5 December 1896. “Women’s Art in the Modernist Tradition.” Jeri L. Weinstein Wolfson Collection. www.jlwcollection.com/jlwcollection.com/Adele.Watson (accessed 31 October 2012). “Wylde, Theresa Victoria (ca. 1870–1949).” Artist Files, Canadian Women Artists History Initiative. http://www.cwahi.concordia.ca/centre/all_artists.php (accessed 7 February 2017). 263

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“Wylde, Theresa Victoria (c. 1870–1949).” British Columbia Artists. http:// www.british-columbia-artists.ca/bcaart-w.pdf, p. 29 (accessed 6 February 2017). “Young, Henry Esson (1862–1939).” The History of Vancouver. http//www. vancouverhistory.ca/whoswho_Y.htm (accessed 24 September 2012). “Young, Mrs. Henry [Rosalind] Esson (1874–1962). In Audrey M. Thomas, Women of Influence: A Partial History of CFUW Victoria, 2014. Exhibition. http://cfuwvictoria.ca/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/CFUWVictoria-history-2014rev.pdf.Art (accessed 4 January 2017). Young, Kathryn A. “With Every Note Played”: A History of the Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, 1894–2014. Winnipeg: Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg, 2015. Young, Kathryn A., and Chris Dooley. “Housing a Prairie City: Winnipeg’s Residential Built Environment, 1870–1921.” A Report Submitted to the Planning, Property and Development Department of the City of Winnipeg, December 2007. “The Ypres Salient Battlefields, Belgium.” The Great War 1914–1918. http:// www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient (accessed 8 February 2017). “Ypres Salient.” http://www.ww1battlefields.co.uk/flandersypres.html and http:www.greatwar.co.uk/ypres-salient/iindex.htm (accessed 25 November 2013).

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Index A Ablain, Saint-Nazaire, 94, 98 Académie des Beaux-Arts, 45 Académie Julian, L’ (journal), 43 Acadia University. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Wolfville, NS) Affaire, L’, 45–46 Aitken, Max (Lord Beaverbrook), 26, 83, 196n9 Alexander Club (Victoria), 72 Alexander, Mrs. F.H., 119 Alloway, Mrs., 68 American Art News, 54 “American Colony of Artists in Paris, The” (Taylor), 56–57, 183n114 American Arts and Crafts movement, 21 American Student Hostel Club, 56 Amiens, 85 Amos, Robert, xiv, 77, 86, 115 Amputation Club of British Columbia, xiii, 4, 9, 72, 74, 77–78, 82, 84, 119 Anderson, May-Belle, 74 Anderson, Rudolphe, 74 Antwerp, Belgium, 35 Appleton, Colonel H., 83 Aquitania troop carrier, 94 Archibald, Lieutenant Colonel G. Grassie, 80 Armando Museum. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Amersfoort, Netherlands) Armington, Caroline Helena, 25–26, 55 Armington, Frank, 26 Armistice (11 November 1918), 3, 78, 85 Armstrong’s Point (Winnipeg), 20, 67 art academies (schools): Art Association of Montreal, 22 (Montreal); Art Students League, 22, 25, Lycett’s Art Studio, 24 (New York); Berlin Academy of Fine Arts, 33, Berlin Royal Academy, 39 (Berlin); Buffalo Art Students League, 25 (Buffalo, NY); École des Beaux-Arts, 41–43, 69, Colarossi, 25, 33, 42–44, Grande Chaumière, 26, 33, 42, 44, Julian, 26, 33, 42–43, 55, Vitti, 33, 42, 44 (Paris); Lambeth School of Art and Design, 21, The Royal School of Art Needlework, 21 (London); Vancouver School of Decorative and Applied Arts, 127 art associations: Art Association of Montreal (AAM), 59; Art, Historical, and Scientific Association of Vancouver, 135;

Association of Berlin Artists, 39; BC Society of Fine Art, 127; Canadian Art Club (CAC), 59; Canadian Handicrafts Guild, 5, 22; Cincinnati Pottery Club, 21; Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS), 7, 72–74, 79, 81, 190n71. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions, 98 (Victoria); Manitoba Society of Artists, 19; Ontario Society of Artists (OSA), 19, 23, 25; Royal Canadian Academy (RCA), 23–25, 56, 59, 61, 69; Society of Decorative Art (U.S.), 21; Vancouver Sketch Club, 127; Victoria Sketch Club, 72; Women’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC), 5, 7, 18–19, 22–23, 26–27, 63, 147; Women’s Art Club of Toronto, 18; Winnipeg Art Society, 24; Women’s International Art Club, 22 Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO). See Hamilton, art: exhibitions, 143 (Toronto) Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, xiv, 94 art instructors: Blanche, Jacques-Émile, 44, Castelucho, Claudio Diana, 44, Colarossi, Filippo, 43, Gervais, PaulJean, 26, 43, 46, Merson, Luc-Olivier, 44, Royer, Henri, 26, Schommer, E., 26, Tudor-Hart, Percyval, 44, 46 (Paris); Brymner, William, 45, Harris, Robert, 22, Raphael, William, 24, (Montreal); Grier, E. Wyly, 7, 28, 31, 54, Forster, J.W.L., 25, Reid, George Agnew, 7, 31, 45, 69, Reid, Mary Hiester, 7, 31 (Toronto); Hitchcock, Lucius, 25 (Buffalo); Skarbina, Franz, 33–34, 37–40 (Berlin) Artist Database, Canadian Women Artists History Initiative (CWAHI), 157n4

B Baines, Carol, 158n9 Banque nationale (Paris), 95–96 Barnard, Sir Frank (Francis), 77, 79 Barry, Mrs. L.E.F., 120 Bartlett, Captain, 75 Battle of Vimy Ridge, 85, 198n23 battlefields: Somme River Valley; Vimy; Arras; Ypres; Villers-au-Bois; Mont Saint-Eloi; Voormezelle; Minoterie, Dixmude, 84, 90 Beach, Sylvia, 89 Belgian consulate, 84, 104 Belle Époque, 41 Benedictsson, Margret, 21

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton Canadian Club, Comblain l’Abbé, 94–95 Canadian Corps, 97 Canadian Expeditionary Force (CEF), 78, 83 Canadian Handicrafts Guild, 5, 22 Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), 13, 95 Canadian Soldier Resettlement Board, 116 Canadian War Memorial Fund (CWMF), 83 Canadian War Memorials Collection (CWMC), 26 Carl, David L., xiv, 158n7 Carlyle, Florence, 23, 48, 52, 69, 74, 146 Carr, Emily, 43, 45, 56, 72, 135, 146, 182n110, 218n110 Carroll, Luscombe, 67–68 Cartes d’entrée personnelle pour les jours d’ étude, Musées nationaux, 45 Cartes d’Exposant, 45 Cassatt, Mary, 36, 59 Cassirer, Paul and Bruno, 40 cemeteries: British, Marne, Passchendaele, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, Somme, Verdun, 85, 88, 103, 106 Census Records (1861, 1871, 1881, 1901 and 1906), 13, 160n5–18 Chadwick, Whitney, 21–22, 168n78 Champs de Batailles de la Somme, Les, 105–8, 204–6n109–17. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Paris) Chaplin, Charlie, 67 Chapman, Evelyn, 7, 103, 203n92 Château Laurier Hotel, 80 Cherniavsky brothers, 75 china painting, 15, 18, 21–29 Chown, Mrs., 68 Chronique des Arts (Paris), 54 Civic Art Gallery and School (Winnipeg), 58 Clearwater (MB), 13–14, 16, 19 Collection of Glenbow Museum. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Calgary) Connaught, Duchess of, 63, 66–68, 81, 127, 134, 146 Connaught, Prince Arthur, Duke of, 66 Copse, Evening, A (Jackson), 94 Cornwall, C.F., 77 Coudurier de Chassaigne, M., 114–15, 208n150–3 Courrier du Soir (Paris), 54 Coyne, Meribeth, xiv, 172–73n136 Crease, Josephine, 72, 74 Crowe, S.J., 78 Cubists, 7 Cullen, Maurice, 45, 59, 94 Culross Township (ON), 12–14

Bennett, R.B., 132–33, 213n43 Benstock, Shari, 5, 89 Bérard, M. Léon, 105 Bernhardt, Sarah, 41, 67 Berry, Virginia, 18, 23 Beynon, Frances Marion, 21 Beyond the Battlefield (Speck), 7, 103, 122 Bilski, Emily D., 173n2 Bishop, Judy, xiv, 157n7 Bishop, Wally, 157n7 Blanchard, Jim, 64–66 Blanchard, Richard, 77 Bodington, Constance (Mrs. Lauchlan A. Hamilton), 19, 31 Bon Marché, 35 Borden, Robert L., 55, 62, 81, 83, 146 Bovey, Colonel, 94 Bracken, (John), Premier (MB), 123 Brandon, Laura, 83 British Arts and Crafts movement, 21 British Columbia Returned Soldier Commission, 113 British Columbia Women Artists (Tuele), 72 British Isles, 12, 64 Brown, Eric, 5, 60, 62, 83–84, 114, 118, 120–22 Brown, Mrs. Eric, 62 Brown, Vandyke, 61, 68 Bruce County (ON), 12–14, 141 Bruce, J.E.M., 55, 78, 97 Brymner, William, 45 Bulman, Mrs.W.J., 119 Bulman, W.J., 70 Butlin, Susan, 23, 167n74, 168n85, 220n144 By A Lady (Tippett), 33 Byng, Sir Julian, 85

C cabarets: Cabaret Mirliton; Décadant; Moulin Rouge; Olympia (Paris), 41 Café des Westens (Berlin), 38 Café du Parnasse (Paris), 41 Calgary Herald, 135–36 Camblain l’Abbé, 92 Camblain l’Abbé (Cullen), 94 Cameron, Douglas, 69, 127, 146 Cameron, Mrs. Douglas, 67, 146 Cameron, Norman, xv, 165n52 Campana, 15 Campbell, Mrs. Colin, 64–66 Canada, Le (Montreal), 63 Canadian and British War Graves regiments, 92

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F

Culver, Jean Isabel (Mrs. C.S. Riley), 19, 30, 32, 34, 37, 39, 60, 67, 70, 136, 145, 171–73n123, n136 Current River Falls (ON), 11, 15 Currie, Bertie, 104, 109, 116, 125 Currie, Lieutenant General Sir Arthur, 80, 85, 92, 195n125

D Daily Colonist (Victoria), 72–73, 80, 99, 139, 141 Daily Sentinel (Port Arthur), 15 D’Aneton, Baroness, 75 Davis, Angela E., xiii–viv, 143, 156n2, 188n60 Deacon, Florence, 47, 50, 55 Debussy, Claude, 41 Degas, Edgar, 36 Delius, Frederick, 41 Devon Court (Winnipeg), 125 Devonshire, Duke of, 81, 90 Dewdney, Edgar, 77 Dignam, Mary Ella, 18, 22 Dôme, Le (Paris), 41 Doughty, Arthur, 5, 83, 120, 122–25, 131–33 Douglas, Sir James, 77 Drewry, Mrs., 68 Drummond, George A., 59 Duncan, Isadora, 41 Dunsmuir, James, 77 Dupuy, Pierre, 116–17

E early settlement: crops; housing; land concessions; religion, 12–15 Eastlake, Mary, 33 Echo de Paris, 54 Echoes, 127 Edmonton Journal, 63 Eliot, T.S., 89 Ellis, Captain H.H., 79 Emerald Lake, Yoho National Park, 70 Emerson (MB), 11, 14, 19 Empire Hotel (Winnipeg), 51, 67 Empress Hotel (Victoria), 70, 72 en plein air, 9, 36, 41, 54, 94 English Art Club, 61 Entrance to Halifax Harbour, The (Jackson), 94 Ewart, Mary Clay, 74 Exposition des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Paris)

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Falconer, Adina, 32, 34, 37, 39, 125–26, 145 Falla, Frederick G., 82, 106–7 “Famous Artist Goes Right on ‘Painting in Her Mind’” (Lang), 140 Fauvists, 7 Federal Bank Building (Winnipeg), 24 Fehrer, Catherine, 176n37–38, 177n41–42 Fields, W.C., 67 Fisher, Mrs. William, 60 FitzGerald, Lionel LeMoine, 74, 126 Forsyth, John, 76 Fort Garry Hotel (Winnipeg). See Hamilton, art: exhibitions, 119, 122 Fort Rouge (Winnipeg), 20 Fort William, Thunder Bay (ON), 14–16 Fortune, Elizabeth, 131 Fortune, Reverend W.G.W., 131–32 Foster, W. Garland, 61, 135 Fowler, Mrs. William, 72 Foyer des soldats, 99 Free Press Evening Bulletin, 119 Freie Künstlervereinigung, 39 French-Flanders northern campaign, 90 Freyja, 21 Fuchs, Denise, xv

G Gagnon, Clarence, 59 Galeries Lafayette, 35 Gazette (Montreal), 118–19 Gibran, Kahlil, 45, 55, 138–39 Gibson, Charles Dana, 62–63, 67 Gibson, Lieutenant Colonel F., 90 Gide, André, 89 Gift of War Paintings, 9, 120–25, 217n106 Glenbow Museum, xiv Globe (Toronto), 61 Gold Stripe, 72, 78–80, 89, 92–93, 97–98 Grand and Victoria Beaches (MB), 20 Grand Palais, 45–46 Great Lakes water system, 13, 15 Great War (1914–1918), xiii, 3, 22, 26, 70, 74, 79–81, 112, 124 Green, Gertrude Huntly, 75 Grégory, Margaret, xv, 204n106 Group of Seven, 55, 83, 127, 139, 197n11 Gurney, Mary Irene (Mrs. W. Sanford Evans), 19

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton

H Hamilton, Charles Watson, 15–18 Hamilton, Mary (Matilda) Riter, art: training, millinery, 14–5, china painting, 15, 21, 26–29, watercolour, 29, oil and other media, 31, 198–99n28, portraits, 3, 7, 44; exhibitions, 144 (Amersfoort, Netherlands), 26 (Brandon, MB), 143, 188n64, 224n163 (Calgary), 22, 29 (Chicago, IL), 114–15, 117 (London), 62–63 (Montreal), 62–63, 67, 143 (Ottawa), 4, 24, 46–47, 104, 114–15 (Paris), 143–44 (Red Deer, AB), 26–27 (Regina, SK), 47, 74 (San Francisco, CA), 35, 53–54, 60–62, 143 (Toronto), 98–99, 127, 129, 135–39, 142–43 (Vancouver), 72–74, 98–99, 143 (Victoria), 6, 11, 26, 67, 74, 119, 126, 143–44, 51, 224n162 (Winnipeg), 143 (Wolfville, NS, Moose Jaw, SK, Thunder Bay, ON); anthologies and sales, 143, 223n160; paintings, A Dutch Interior, Laren, 46, 52, Devant la Fenêtre, 47, 61, 67, 108, 131, Impressions de Venise (or An Impression of Venice), 46, 54, 67, Interior of a Court, 54, Les Pauvres, 47–48, 67, 73– 74, 135, Les Panores, 47, Maternity, 16, 47–48, 63, 67, 73, 104, 108, 132, 138, 143, Easter Morning, La Petite Penitente, Brittany, 47–48, 52–53, 67, 94, 131, Panorama della Chiesa Salute, 40, The Castle Stair, Fontarabia, 55, The Pier at Dordrecht, Holland, 54, The Spanish Fishing Village, 55, Abazia di St. Gregorio, 40, 46, 67, The Storm, 73, The Gold Fish: Reflections, 48, 67, Untitled– Cathedral Interior, 48, 63, Dans la Neige de Décembre: Les Sacrifices (Goose Girl), 49–51, 109, 116, Market Scene, Giverney [sic], 50–51, Madame X, 52, Monsieur R, 52, Panthéon (interior), 60–61, Napoleon’s Tomb, 60, The Castle Pool, 61, A Street in Spain, 63, On the Seine, 63, Sunlight: Paris, 63, Corner of the Luxembourg Garden, 63, The Cow Barn in Spain, 63, A Spanish Cider Cellar, 63, The Artist’s Studio, 67, Emerald Lake Bridge, 70, The Farm Yard, Manitoba, 72, Wheat Stacks, Sunset, 72, Manitoba Farm House, 72, The Father Confessor, 72, The Poet, 73, Lake Louise, 73, The End of the Day, Stony Reserve, 73, Indian Chief, 73, Buffalo Bobtail, 73, The Entrance to Rappahannock, Victoria, B.C., 73, Camping at Banff, 74, The Orchard, B.C., 74, The Cedars, Goldstream, B.C., 74, The Boat House, 74, The Apple Tree, 74, Mrs.Young in Hat and Veil, 74, LieutenantGovernor Thomas Wilson Paterson, 77, Portrait of Dr. Henry Esson Young, 77, Empress of Asia, 79, Tragedy of War in Dear Old Battered France, 86, Mont Saint-Eloi, 93–94, 140, Villiers-au-Bois [sic], 93–94, Gun Locations, Farbus Wood, Vimy Ridge,

268

93–94, Market Among the Ruins of Ypres, 102, 104, 107, 121, The Sadness of the Somme, 102, 119, 140, Sanctuary Wood, Flanders, 102, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry Cemetery, Voormezelle, 103, 140, A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres, 106, 119, Evening on the Belgian Front, 106, Clearing the Battlefields in Flanders, 106, First Boat to arrive at Arras after the Armistice, 107, Minoterie, Dixmude (German Stronghold), 107, 121, Crater, Hooghe, 121, Military Kitchen, 121, Menin Road, British Cemetery,107, The Cloth Hall Ypres, 104, Le Plateau de Notre-Dame de Lorette en 1919, 104, Mother Superior, 108, Wine Cellar, 108, A Tank Cemetery at Zillebeeke, 119, 140, Peace in No Man’s Land, 119, Cathedral Gate, Ypres, 123, Trench on Vimy Ridge, 126, Sugar Refinery [reference to Interior of the Sugar Refinery, Courcelette], 140, Abandoned Tank [reference to Derelict Tank on Hill 70], 140, Peace Arch, Blaine, Washington, 143, Girl in the Window, 143, The Monk, 143, Breakfast Time, 143. See also Plates, ix–xii Hamilton, Mary (Matilda) Riter, biographical: photographs, 28, 30, 37, 39, 65–66, 69, 71, 87–88, 142; childhood, 12–15, 160n5; marriage, 15­–16; stillborn son, 3, 16, 143; widowed, 3, 16–18, 65–66, 165n52; Winnipeg, 18–21, 24–32, 51–55, 64–70; Berlin, 33–40, 174n14; Paris, 33, 40–51, 55–57, 88–89, 109, 206n130; battlefields, 84, 92, 97–98, 119–20, 202n71; Victoria, 70–81; Vancouver; illness, poverty, old age, 3, 137–39, 219n129, 220n136; death, 140–41; 221n146–150; estate, 141–43, 222n155; commemoration, 141, 222n152; view of art, 4, 58, 68–69, 82, 118, 135–36; civic art museum, 58, 68–9, 146 Hamilton, William (Willard), 17, 113 Hamilton-Hart correspondence, 90–104, 108–17, 127–31 Harris, Lawren, 55, 139, 220n134 Harrods, 35 Harron Brothers Chapel of Chimes (Vancouver), 141 Hart, Edward, 100, 127 Hart, Ellen, 81 Hart, Margaret, 3, 72, 80, 95–96, 128–131, 189n68 Hart, Ted (Jim), 81 Havergal College (School for Girls), 26, 55 Heeney, Reverend Canon, 123 Heffel: Canada’s National Fine Art Auction House, 158n6, 200n56

Inde x Lamb, W.M. Kaye, 143 Leistikow, Walter, 39 Lesson [Dis-Moi?], The (Lyall), 62 Library and Archives Canada (LAC), xiii-xiv, 3, 83, 156n3: Dominion Archives, 156n3; Public Archives, 9, 124; National Archives, 156n3. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions, 143 Liebermann, Max, 39 Lismer, Arthur, 83 Loring, Frances, 83 Louvre art museum, 7, 41, 45 Lugrin, Mrs., 75 Lugrin, N. de Bertrand, 74 Luxembourg Gardens (Paris), 89, 106 Lyall, Laura Muntz, 62

Helmers, Marguerite, 93, 157n2 Hemingway, Ernest, 89 Higgins, Mary W., xiv, 143 Holland, Clive, 43 Homer-Dixon, Capt. and Mrs., 68 Hooker, Frank, 25 Hooker, Marion Nelson, 25, 126 Howarth, Jean, 138–39 Hudson’s Bay Company Store, 126. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Winnipeg) Huntley, Fanny K., 11, 77, 139–40

I Imperial Order Daughters of the Empire (IODE), 5, 7, 66, 72, 98, 120, 147. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions, 98, 120, 138–39 Impressionism, 36, 59, 146 In Good Hands (McLeod), 22 Indigenous peoples, 9, 69–70, 73, 81 In Subordination (Kinnear), 5–7 International Society of Beaux-Arts (Paris), 51 Island Arts and Crafts Society (IACS), 7, 72–74, 79, 81, 98–99. See also art associations and Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Victoria)

M Macdonald, Hugh John, 115, 208n158 Macdonald, Lady, 115 MacDonald, Ramsay, 115 MacDonald, Senator William John, 77 Machray, Mrs., 68 Mackenzie King, William Lyon, 5, 131–34 MacMillan, Lady, 51, 60, 146 MacMillan, Lieutenant-Governor (MB), 51 Macquarrie, Donald, 70 Madden, Katherine (Mrs. N. Bawlf), 29 Mahlstick, 52–53, 175n27 Mail and Empire (Toronto), 61 Manet, Édouard, 36, 44, 59 Manitoba Free Press, 11, 20, 22, 26–27, 29, 31, 33, 47, 51–52, 54, 60–61, 67, 74, 119–20 Manitoba Historical Society, xiii Manitoba Weekly Free Press, 13 Maritimes, 12 “Mary Riter Hamilton: Traces of War,” 158n6 Mathers, Chief Justice and Mrs., 68 Matthews, Major J.S., 11, 140 May, Henrietta Mabel, 83 McArthur (MacArthur), Lucille C. Casey, 24–25 McClung, Nellie, 21 McIntosh, Terresa, 104–5 McKinnon, Sarah, xiii, 143 McNicoll, Helen, 33, 52, 59 McPhee, Mrs., 73 McTavish, Mrs. J.W., 97 Melba, Nellie, 19 “Memory of St. Julien, The” (Gammel), 84, 157n2 Mewburn, General, 79

J Jackson, A.Y., 83, 94 James, Grace, 133–34, 136 Johnston, John E., 17 Joly de Lotbinière, Sir Henri, 77 Joyce, James, 56, 88–89, 199n32

K Kaministiquia River (ON), 15 Kane, Paul, 136, 147 Kemp, Sir Edward, 81, 90 King, Dr. J.H., 120–22, 131–32 Kinnear, Mary, xv, 5, 7, 159n11 Kitto, Margaret, 72 Klotz, President of the General Council of the Somme, 105 Kober, A.H., 37–38 Kollwitz, Käthe, 39 Krohg, Christian, 43

L Lake of the Woods (ON), 20, 66 Lake Superior (ON), 14–15

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No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton Opinion Nationale (Paris), 54 Ordre des Palmes Académiques (Order of Public Instruction), 4, 83, 105, 126, 132, 140 Orpheum Theatre (Winnipeg), 19, 67 Ostroff, Michael, xv Ottawa Citizen, 57, 62 Ottawa Journal, 62 Overseas Military Forces of Canada (OMFC), 85, 90

Miami (MB), 51, 67, 70, 97 Milton, Florence Sarah (Mrs. W.A. McIntyre), 29 “Modernity and the Spaces of Femininity” (Pollock), 36 Monet, Claude, 36, 44, 50–51, 59, 106 Monitor (Boston), 62 Monteregian Club, 119, 209n5 Montreal Daily Star, 63 Montreal Daily Witness, 63 Montreal Standard, 63 Moose Jaw Art Museum. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Moose Jaw, SK) Morisot, Berthe, 36 Morning Journal (Ottawa), 106 Morrice, James Wilson, 59 Morris, William, 21 Morton, W.L., 13–14 Mudie-Cooke, Olive, 7, 103 Muir, Mrs. J.M.C., 120 Muldrew, Mrs., 116 Museum of Vancouver, xiv Musgrave, Sir Anthony, 77 Muskett, H.J.S., 79

P Pantages Theatre (Winnipeg), 19 Paris Dry Goods House, 15, 17 Pas-de-Calais, 90, 101 Paterson, Lieutenant-Governor T.W., 77 Paton, J.A., 72, 74, 78–80, 84, 98–99, 113, 116, 126, 128–29, 131 Pearson, George S., 134 Peck, Mary Alice Skelton, 22 Peek, Lieutenant Colonel C.W., 80 Pemberton, Fred, 73 Pemberton, Sophie, 45, 146 Pembina Mountain Valley (MB), 14 Pennsylvania Dutch, 12 pernicious anaemia, 128, 134, 136–37 Petite République (Paris), 54 Phillips, Mary Martha (May), 22 Phillips, W.J., 74 Pissarro, Camille, 36, 44, 59 Port Arthur (ON), 11, 14–17, 20, 116, 141, 143, 145 Post-Impressionism, 7, 46, 59, 94, 146 Potsdamer Platz (Berlin), 33, 36 Potsdamer Strasse (Berlin), 36, 38 Pound, Ezra, 89 Pringle, Padre John, 77 Private Self, The (Benstock), 5, 89 “Professionalism as a Critical Concept” (Huneault), 5–7 Province (Vancouver), 44, 98, 136, 138, 141 Provincial Mental Hospital, Essondale, British Columbia, 5, 9, 134, 136–38, 140: Social Services Report, 134, 136, 214n61, 217n102, n103, 218n116, n123; Ward Notes, 217n102; Registration of Death, 221n146; Autopsy Report, 160n16, 221n147

N National Gallery of Canada, 5, 26, 60, 83, 112–14, 118–19, 121–23, 132–33 Nelson, Hugh, 77 New York Times, 107 Nicholson, David, xv No Man’s Land - Never Again! Series, 156n4, 224n164 No Man’s Land (exhibition), xiii–xiv, 143, 156n4, 224n165 No Man’s Land (Young and McKinnon), xv, 3, 145, 147 No. 1 Marble Arch (London), 112, 114 North West Company, 15 North West Exhibition. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Regina, SK) Notman, Miss, 54

O Odlum, Brigadier General Victor, 98 Officier de l’Académie, 107 Old Age Pension, 134 Olympic troop carrier, 94 “One of our Last War Workers Comes Home” (McBeath), 119–20 Ontario Migration, 13 Opera House (Winnipeg), 67

Q Queen Victoria, 14, 35

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R Rabindranath, Tagore, 45 Ramsay, Lady Patricia (Princess), 46, 81, 107, 127, 134, 146 Ravel, Maurice, 41 Red and Assiniboine Rivers (Winnipeg), 20 Red Cross, 77, (Montreal), 99–100, (Victoria), 84, 222n153–56, 223n158–59 Red Deer and District Museum. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Red Deer, AB) Renoir, Pierre-Auguste, 36, 44 Returned Soldiers Associations of Canada, 89 Richards, A.N., 77 Rideau Hall, 62, 81 Riley, Deborah, xiv, 172–73n136 Riley, William Culver, 68 Riter, Clara, 13 Riter, Etta (Etty), 13, 66, 143 Riter, Frank R., xiii, 141–43, 221n149, 222n153–56, 223n158–59 Riter, John Paul, 13 Riter, John Saul, 12 Riter, Joseph, 13, 143 Riter, R.T., xiii Riverside Cemetery (Port Arthur), 17, 141 Robertson, Colonel F.A., 113 Robertson, Mrs. Hermann, 73 Rogers, Aurelia, 47, 62, 68, 120–26, 133, 146. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Winnipeg) Rogers, Robert, 47, 120, 146 Rolland, Mary S., 120 Rotunde, La (Paris), 41 Roy, M., 89–90 Royal Bank of Canada (Paris), 96, 101 Ryan, Dr. E.J., 134

S SS Minnekahda II, 117 Saint-Quentin, 85 Salon de la Sociéte des Artistes Français, 45–47 Salon des Indépendants de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, 45–47, 56, 104 salons, 23, 104. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Paris), 4, 46–47 Sanderson-Mongin, Mme., 75 Satie, Erik, 41 Saturday Night, 47 Scholefield, E.O.S., 75–76 Schreiber, Charlotte, 23 Schultz, John Christian, 60

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Schultz, Lady, 60, 68 Second World War (1939–1945), 136 Seymour, Frederick, 77 S.F. Panama-Pacific International Exhibition. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (San Francisco) Shakespeare and Company, 89 Shortt, Adam, 62 Shortt, Mrs. Adam, 62 Shuniah Masonic Lodge (Port Arthur), 17, 116, 137 Simonson Galleries (Paris), 107–8 Sites of Memory (Winter), 78, 85 Smith, David, xiv Smith, Margaret Jane (Mrs. George Galt), 19 Smith, Marjorie Bernice, née Hacking, xiv Smith, Heather Siska, xv Somme Memorial Fund, 114 Squire, E.T., 133 St. Paul’s Presbyterian Church (Port Arthur), 17 Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 74–75, 79, 109, 130–31 Stein, Gertrude, 89 Stevens, Dorothy, 33, 83 Stevens, Henry Herbert, 132–33 Stevens, Lorna, xiv Strand Magazine (London), 47 Studio, 33, 43–44, 56–57, 59, 67, 146 Sunken Road, Hangard, The (Cullen), 94 Surrogate Court of the District of Thunder Bay, 17 Sutherland, Mrs., 68

T Taylor, E.A., 56–57, 67 Taylor, Mr., 94 Teeswater News, 139 Teeswater village (ON), 12–13 Telfer, Dr. Douglas, 138–39 Terry, W.S., 79 Thomas, Lillian Beynon, 21 Thompson, C. Hay, 47 Thorburn Margaret A., xiii, 161n7, 162n14 Thunder Bay Museum. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Thunder Bay, ON) Thunder Bay Sentinel, 16 Tiergarten (Berlin), 38 Todd, Mai (Mrs. Hebden Gillespie), 77 Tolmie, Dr. S.F., 112 Toronto Daily Star, 60 Toronto Grey and Bruce railway (TG&B), 13

No Ma n’s L a nd | The Life and Art of Mar y R iter Hamilton Watson, Katharine, 109–12 Weber, Max, 37 Week, The, 73 Weekly Herald and Algoma Miner, 17 West Point Grey (Vancouver, BC), 138 Western Home Monthly, 126–27 Western Women’s Weekly, 98 White, Lady, 68 Williamson, Curtis, 45 Winks, Agnes Baxter (Mrs. W.H. Culver), 29, 171n123 Winnipeg Electric Street Railway, 20, 64 Winnipeg Industrial Bureau, 67, 69. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Winnipeg, MB) Winnipeg Saturday Post, 67 Winnipeg Telegram, 22, 31–32, 51–52, 67, 70 Winnipeg Tribune, 22, 27–29, 31, 51 Winnipeg’s elite, 29, 60, 66, 171n121 Winter, Judge and Mrs., 109, 116 Women Artists (Perry), 23, 42, 48, 176n35 Women’s Art Association of Canada (WAAC), 5–7, 11, 18–19, 22–23, 26–27, 63, 147. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Winnipeg) Women’s Canadian Club (WCC), 5, 70, 72–73, 147 Women’s Musical Club of Winnipeg (WMC), 19, 166n59 World’s Columbian Exposition (Chicago, IL), 21. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Chicago) Wright, Eleanor Kathleen (Mrs. R.J. Whitla), 29, 68 Wylde, Theresa, 72, 74 Wyle, Florence, 83

Toronto Star Weekly, 60, 119–20 Toronto World, 61 Town Topics (Winnipeg), 20, 22, 27, 29, 31, 51–52, 54, 66–68 Townsend Galleries (Toronto), 60 Traynor, Mrs., 14–15 Tyndall stone, 20, 167n69

U Ulysses (Joyce), 88–89 United Empire Loyalists, 12, 64, 66 United States, 12, 18, 23–24, 42, 45, 64 University of Manitoba, xiii–xv University of Winnipeg, xiii–iv. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions, 143–44 (Winnipeg) University Women’s Club, 119, 122, 146; Victoria, 72, 103, 112, 114–16 Unter den Linden (Berlin), 38 Uzanne, Octave, 36

V Valéry, Paul, 89 Van Horne, William, 59 Vance, Jonathan, 85 Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG), xiv, 127, 135–37. See also Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Vancouver), 139, 143 Vancouver City Museum, 135–36 Vancouver Daily World, 98 Vancouver Family Welfare Bureau (FWB), 128, 136–37 Vancouver General Hospital, 128 Vancouver Legion. See Hamilton, art: exhibitions (Vancouver), 129 Vancouver News Herald, 139 Vancouver Public Library, 136, 139 Vancouver Sketch Club, 127 Vancouver Sun, 139–41 Varley, F.H., 83, 127 Venice, Italy, 33, 39–40, 42, 54 Vertigo Years, The (Blom), 35 Vervoort, Patricia, 156n2 Vivanot, Mme., 75

Y Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA): Winnipeg, 51; Cambrai, France, 99, 111 Young, Henry Esson, 75–77, 93, 134, 143 Young, Rosalind, 72, 74–75, 90, 92, 112, 116, 126, 143, 189n69 Ypres (Menin Gate) photograph, 102 Ypres Salient, 102, 203n94–95

Z

W

Zeisler, Fanny Bloomfield, 19 Zimmerman, Charity, 12–13

Walker Theatre (Winnipeg), 67 Walker, Sir Edmund, 60–61, 83–84, 112, 114 Wallace, Richard, 56, 88–89 War Amputations of Canada (War Amps), xiv Watson, Adele, 109, 111, 207n132

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