She Is One of the Best: A Researcher's Notes on the Life and Times of Canadian Artist Florence McGillivray

She Is One Of The Best

Copyright © 2019 by W.C. Allen

The Florence McGillivray Project

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-0683-7 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-0682-0 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-0684-4 (eBook)

The title of this book comes from a statement made by Mark Robinson, Algonquin Park Ranger, and close friend of artist Tom Thomson to writer Blodwin Davies when she was researching her book on Thomson in 1930. Robinson said to Blodwin Davies that Tom said of McGillivray She was one of the best

Blodwin Davies Fonds, National Archives Canada.

Cover Photo

Painting by Florence McGillivray, Winter at Rosebank, Oil, 1917 from the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Hamilton donated by Kathleen Hillary.

For Margo

And her protégées

Sophia and Breanna

And the matriarchs I have known

Bessie, Lily, Sheila, Peggy, Lee, and Eleanor

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T o my dear wife Margo whose faith in the project never faltered.

To the scholars whose advice kept me on the right track.

The eminent Michael Pantazzi (former curator National Gallery) whose knowledge and insights helped me correct the facts at critical stages.

To my dearest friend Joan Murray (art historian and former curator Robert McLaughlin Gallery and McMichael Gallery) who mentored me and lifted my spirits at the most important moments and for her gracious introduction.

To John Sabean (historian and author) for his astute advice.

To Ian Hundey (former history professor, University of Toronto) for his early encouragement and editing.

To all the editors and designers who helped put the finishing touches on this book.

This book would never have come into being without the kindness and encouragement of Ian and Mary McGillivray and Andrew and Margaret Elizabeth Schell and the help from the extensive information supplied by the extended McGillivray family whose names are too numerous to mention.

Finally, to all the wonderful archivists in our national, regional and local archives, their skills and dedication are critical to the examination of our country's history.

And last but not least, to George Argo McGillivray who inspired me and started me on this path.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction by Joan Murray

Preface

Chapter One: The Early Years

Chapter Two: Inverlynn, The McGillivray Ancestral Home

Chapter Three: Onward to Art School

Chapter Four: An Artist Develops

Chapter Five: A New Century, A New Direction

Chapter Six: An Artist Reborn

Chapter Seven: Florence and the Woodsman: Fact or Myth?

Chapter Eight: An Artist Evolves

Chapter Nine: The Ottawa Years

Chapter Ten: Heading for Retirement

Chapter Eleven: Post Mortem

Afterword

Appendix A – The McGillivray Clan

Appendix B – She was remembered in the following Obituaries

– Newspapers wrote of her paintings in Exhibitions

Endnotes

Institutional Acknowledgements

Image Credit List

Bibliography

A portrait of Florence McGillivray by Marion Long c1934, donated to the Art Gallery of Ontario by Andrew and Margaret Elizabeth Schell.

INTRODUCTION

FLORENCE MCGILLIVRAY: A CANADIAN PAINTER

S he was like the rocky landscape behind her, enduring and strong, or so her friend Marion Long painted her, the composition of the painting on the wall behind her in the portrait echoing the pose of her body. Her face looked severe, yet kind.

Florence McGillivray was one of the important artists of the first half of the twentieth century in Canada. Along with Laura Muntz Lyall, Helen McNicoll and Florence Carlyle, she stormed the barricades of the male-dominated painting field. She painted her entire life, and a large body of oil paintings and watercolours is the result. Her great interest was landscape, and she sought it far and wide, from Whitby, Ontario, where she and her family had their home, to the Gaspé and Newfoundland, then to the scenic spots of Europe, places such as Venice, and further afield, to Jamaica and Barbados.

Besides landscape, she enjoyed painting still life and the figure, almost any subject that gave her pause for thought and paint.

She had been trained at the Central Ontario School of Art in New York, and in Paris at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. She showed her work at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1913.

By the time she reached Paris, she was almost fifty years old, but unlike many who do less with age, her best years, as far as making art, were ahead. Likely in response to the new authority in her work, as well as to her study in Paris, she was made a member of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1917. She was still receiving honours in the 1920s. She was elected an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1924 and made a charter member of the Canadian Water Colour Painters Society in 1926.

She died in 1938, recognized and valued not only for her painting but for her teaching. She had been art director of The Pickering College for approximately a decade and a half, then from 1906 to 1923, a resident art teacher of the Ontario Ladies College in Whitby, now known as Trafalgar Castle School.

In the paintings she made after her contact with Paris, she piled the pigments on, often applying them assertively, using the palette knife and massing her colour to create confident summaries of places and people. One of her great gifts was to delineate contours, especially those of the earth, tellingly.

McGillivray’s qualities as a painter evoke the term Post-Impressionism that, while it doesn’t play coherently over her work, still captures the energy of the mood she evokes.

She would have felt a natural affinity with Tom Thomson’s work, which she saw when she visited him in the Shack in Toronto in 1916. As an older woman and a teacher, she would have given him a tremendous boost of confidence. What she did for him is there in his words, She was the only one who understood immediately what I was trying to do, as he told a friend.

She not only meant a great deal to him, but he gave her food for thought. Within two years, she tried to do her own version of a thoroughly Canadian place such as Algonquin Park. Her choice fell on Gaspé and Percé Rock. She made these places her special painting places, conveying the scene at different times of day and from different views in a large series. She knew the message of Thomson’s work, having learned it by heart through long painting years, To be a Canadian painter, find a subject that is Canadian —and which thrills you.

Now this excellent biography by Bill Allen tells us about this outstanding woman, so tough, yet flexible and vital. He deserves our thanks for his painstaking research. Florence McGillivray has found her champion, at last.

Joan Murray

PREFACE

W ho was Florence Helena McGillivray? Was she merely a frustrated farm girl bored with rural life who turned to art and painting on china as was the fashion for women in that era? Or was she an intelligent, well-educated, courageous, entrepreneurial woman determined to make a place for herself in the Canadian art scene?

Would raising a family have been a more practical pursuit? It was certainly more socially acceptable in her day. Was she enriched by her experiences with her accomplished pioneer family that drove her to strive for her own achievements?

Did she teach art to make a living? A researcher who read about her teaching positions in an old newspaper might assume that she was teaching art simply to support herself.

Or did she mentor with a passion to give artistic enlightenment to her students? Was she a forerunner and contributor in bringing her view of Post-Impressionism and Fauvism as part of the modernist movement to North America? Or was she just a follower of the pipe-puffing, ale-quaffing intellectual males from the Algonquin School that had developed in the Arts and Letters Club in the early twentieth century. The Algonquin School was a reference developed by writers from that era to describe the artists who later formed the Group of Seven.

How is it that a talented prolific artist such as Florence McGillivray is not a household name in Canadian art history? Many scholars have not noticed her; young curators are unaware of who she was and how much she contributed.

In a time when the men of the art world were taken to be the arbiters of what was relevant and worthwhile, Florence cut a path out for herself. She, like contemporaries Emily Carr, Laura Muntz Lyall, Florence Carlyle, Henrietta Mable May, Prudence Heward, and Helen McNicoll, all accomplished artists in their own right, struggled to be represented in the art shows of the day.

Female artists were often outnumbered 10 to 1 by men in the exhibitions. Recognized, yes, but not as the leaders of movements, or as the purveyors of what was the latest in the art world; how could they be, for they were mere women born to subservience and domesticity.

Ross King, in his book Defiant Spirits, p. 306, expanded on this issue:

Women faced difficulties in the Canadian art world far more insuperable than those experienced by Harris and his friends in the Algonquin Park School. Although contributing from a quarter to a third of the paintings at Canadian exhibitions, women had no voting rights in societies such as the OSA or the Art Association of Montreal. They were denied membership in the Arts and Letters Club and its Montreal equivalent, the Pen and Pencil Club. The Canadian Art Club had been almost as exclusive: only one woman, Laura Muntz Lyall, ever had her work hung at its exhibitions … only a single woman, Charlotte Schreiber, elected in 1880, held full academician status. More than fifty years would pass before a second female artists, Marion Long, received the same honour in 1933 [ from the Academy].

In truth, there was much more to Florence, who over a long career mastered several media in art, and mentored many young artists. She sought out new influences in her painting, and she carved out a place for herself in an art world that was normally the domain of male artists.

Florence, like her counterparts, forged ahead with her studies in art. She sought out mentors who were accomplished and well-known in the field, the leaders in the art associations of the day, and decision-makers on the hanging committees of the prestigious shows of that time.

During the era when a woman’s independence was rare, she ventured out often on her own to distant locations to find the landscapes that captured her imagination. Florence offered her help in training others and in developing organizations to the benefit of all artists.

She explored many methods of expressing her artistic talents from drawing and painting in several media, arts and crafts, painting on china, pottery, and carving. She was prolific; her talents were considerable, and her painting styles were varied and effective.

Her friend Marion Long painted the last image of Florence as she neared the end of her days, in an effort to celebrate her life. As with her contemporaries of the day, Florence struggled for acceptance and relevance, and in the modern era, she has been forgotten and her paintings misplaced. Florence was a lover of nature, a student, a teacher, a mentor, a missionary, an innovator, and a prolific gifted artist, committed to the development of the arts and artists.

While pursuing her goals, she always remained devoted to her family. Her story cannot be told without giving some background on her Whitby, Ontario family (see appendix).

Florence lived with her parents, George and Caroline, at Inverlynn, the McGillivray homestead. After her father died