Mary Riter Hamilton

Mary Riter Hamilton
Born(1867-09-07)September 7, 1867
Culross, Ontario
DiedApril 5, 1954(1954-04-05) (aged 86)
Vancouver, British Columbia
SpouseCharles W. Hamilton
Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge (1919), France

Mary Riter Hamilton (7 September 1867 – 5 April 1954) was a Canadian painter, etcher, drawing artist, textile artist, and ceramics artist who spent much of her career painting abroad in countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and the United States.

She gained renown as Canada’s first female battlefield artist, pioneering an empathetic style of painting the trenches and ruined towns of Belgium and France in the immediate aftermath of the Great War.[1] Among her most famous works are her oil on cardboard Trenches on the Somme (1919), her oil on wove paper Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge (1919), and her oil on board Market Among the Ruins of Ypres,[2][3] a depiction of the survivors of the war and the ongoing reconstruction in the war-battered town of Ypres. She shaped an ethical portrayal of the war by drawing attention to the war’s destruction and by mourning the dead.

Mary Riter Hamilton’s work developed in three distinctive periods and styles. The first period (1901-1911) comprised over one hundred works painted and drawn in Europe that established her in Canada following her TransCanada exhibition tour from 1911 to 1912.[4] This early style is best represented by her oil painting Easter Morning, La Petite Penitente (c. 1906) and her watercolour Young Girl in Blue Dress (1911).[5][6] Hamilton’s second period (1912-1918) was inspired by her return to Canada in 1911, shifting her focus on Western Canada, as she painted the Rockies and the prairies, as well as scenery in the cities and forests of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. In this, she pursued a distinctive vision for rendering Canada’s West and honouring its Indigenous peoples.[7] Hamilton’s third period is focussed on her battlefield art as she depicted the destroyed landscapes of World War I, and drew the portraits of marginalized war workers and civilians returning to their destroyed villages.[8] Exceptionally prolific and inspired, her over 320 battlefield works constitute her “magnum opus.”[9] Painting en plein air, with impressionistic flair, her work increasingly eschewed studio finish.[10] In her work, Hamilton embraced the perspective of the underdog, showing sympathy for the socially underprivileged and the suffering, while being bold in transgressing constraining institutional boundaries. In this, she helped shape women's art and Canadian art, even though she was denied a place in the National Gallery of Canada.

  1. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  2. ^ Market Among the Ruins of Ypres
  3. ^ Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge
  4. ^ Amos, Robert (1978). Mary Riter Hamilton. Victoria: Art Galleries of Greater Victoria. p. 7.
  5. ^ Easter Morning, La Petite Penitente
  6. ^ Young Girl in Blue Dress
  7. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  8. ^ battlefield
  9. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  10. ^ Amos, Robert (1978). Mary Riter Hamilton. Victoria: Art Galleries of Greater Victoria.