MARY RITER HAMILTON
(Canadian 1873 - 1954)
 

AVAILABLE WORKS

Mary Riter Hamilton was born in 1867 and grew up in Bruce County near Teeswater, Ontario where her father was a farmer on a prosperous homestead and sawmill owner on the Teeswater River.  Shortly before Mary was born tragedy struck the family when a spark burned down the sawmill and farm, and the following spring a flood washed out the dam and destroyed the farm. The family was forced to sell the land and with five children aged seven and under her mother took charge and moved the family to a small plot of farmland near Culross. Mary attended a small one-room schoolhouse, where it is noted at the time that she was already ‘making pictures’. She would hang around the local paint shop and admire the signs and landscapes used for advertising, and any spare money was used to buy watercolours. At the age of 14, Hamilton’s family moved to a farm in Clearwater, Manitoba.  This was a fresh start for the family, who had followed many of her mother’s sisters who had already made the move to Manitoba.

 As she was unable to find any formal art training in this prairie region, Mary studied books and magazines.  The Art Amateur provided instruction on painting in oil, pastel, watercolour, drawing, engraving, and photography, along with china painting, ceramics, embroidery, and lacemaking; she attempted many of these media. She became very good at making doll hats and as her brother was currently employed in Emerson, her mother felt she too could go to the city to learn the art of hat making. In Emerson she found employment in a local hat shop and moved with them when the shop relocated to Port Arthur, ON.  It was there in the late 1880’s that she met her future husband Charles Watson Hamilton, a prosperous merchant who was often on the road on buying trips.  Accompanying her husband on trips east she took her first formal painting lessons with George Agnew Reid and Mary Hiester Reid.  This was the happiest of times for Mary, but it was not to last.  In the five years that followed she lost a sister, her father, her child, her husband, and her business.

Tragedy that could have broken her instead forced her into action.  What could be salvaged of her husband’s business was sold at auction, providing her with a comfortable amount from which to forge a new life.  She moved to Winnipeg, the largest city west of Toronto, to be close to her mother.  She became an art teacher, instructing in the art of ceramic painting, and also sold her watercolours and ceramics.  Mary became active in the arts community and became a member of the Women’s Art Association of Canada.  She expanded her professional art training to include engraving, working with wood or metal plates to make the prints. She travelled widely to continue her studies, including trips to Chicago and New York.  During portrait classes in Toronto with E. Wyly Grier she was encouraged to travel overseas to continue her studies. 

Mary was provided with the perfect opportunity to travel as the companion of two young ladies who planed to study music in Berlin. They left in 1901 and settled in Berlin that fall.  She began studies in art history and then painting under the Impressionist painter Franz Skarbina, a member of the German Secessionist movement. When her two companions returned home in 1903, she left for Paris. She studied portraiture at the Vitti Academy with Jacques-Emile Blanche, and painting with Paul-Jen Gervais and Luc-Oliver Merson. In 1905 she exhibited three works at the Salon and showed again the following year. She travelled through Europe regularly, including Italy, Holland, Germany, Austria, and Spain.  She continued to take instruction, working with the Spanish artist Claudio Castelucho who would later become a war artist, and Percyval Tudor-Hart who would later be recognised for his war camouflage art. In the spring of 1906, she returned to Winnipeg.

Now an artist of International reputation she exhibited sixty of her works at the Winnipeg YMCA.  This was followed by exhibitions in Toronto and London, Ontario.  By the following spring she was back in Paris where she continued to exhibit at the Salon over the next several years.  She began to travel to Giverny, where Claude Monet had his famed garden.  It was here she was at her most impressionistic in technique. She was content in Paris living in voluntary poverty, supporting herself by teaching.  But in 1911 she dutifully returned home to Miami, Manitoba, to care for her ailing mother.  With her she brought an impressive collection of 150 paintings and drawings. She intended to return to her international European life as soon as possible.  Instead of submitting her works to the National Gallery, she chose the avant garde route of independent exhibitions.  She took her paintings on a cross country exhibition starting in Toronto and moving on to Ottawa where one piece was purchased by Prime Minister Robert Borden and three by the Duke and Duchess of Connaught.  By the time the collection had reached Montreal and Winnipeg news of her patronage under the Duke and Duchess had brought her national attention. In 1913 her exhibition tour reached its conclusion at the Empress Hotel in Victoria, BC.  She enjoyed the city so much that she relocated to Victoria, opening a studio and teaching art classes.  She had decided to paint Canadian landscapes, intending to capture the Canadian experience and exhibiting these paintings in Winnipeg in the spring of 1914.  By the fall War was declared.

Over the first few years of the war, Mary Riter Hamilton continued to paint Canadian landscapes and exhibit in North America. By 1917 she was lobbying to become a war artist and enlisted the help of her friends and patrons in this pursuit. Her bold requests were continually rejected by the National Gallery advisory council who felt that as a woman she would not be suitable.  Finally, in the winter of 1918 she was able to gain permission to travel overseas with the support of The Gold Stripe magazine.  She did not have official government sponsorship and was not linked to any official war artist’s program, but this did not stop her.  She raised funds by exhibiting one hundred works in Vancouver and reached out to patrons to enlist their financial support.  By April 1919 She had reached the war zone.  The works she produced here would become what she was best recognised for but would scar her emotionally.  She captured not only the remnants of the battlefields but also the destruction of homes and the immense sense of loss.  She sent her paintings back to Gold Stripe in the fall of 1919 and exhibited the first of the war paintings in Canada at the New Westminster Fair between October 1919 and January 1920.  In April 1920 She exhibited 84 war paintings in Vancouver and held a private showing of 60 war paintings in the Provincial Library for the Premier and members of the provincial government. She continued to exhibit in France and Western Canada throughout the 1920’s. 

In 1921 the trauma of what she was capturing had finally caught up to her and she broke down.  References in her letters suggest shell shock, thinking that bombs were purposely being set to kill her and referencing grenades.  She was the prime candidate for trauma due to her sustained exposure to the sites of violence and being near the battlefields in the period following the war. She was in and out of hospital over the next few years.

In 1925 she returned to Canada and settled in Winnipeg in 1926.  That year she donated 226 paintings, sketches, and etchings to the Public Archives of Canada. While still receiving recognition, Mary Riter Hamilton was falling further into financial trouble.  This stress and the death of her last remaining sibling in 1928 brought her to the verge of a breakdown, by the fall she was in Victoria and in a private hospital.  Ill and destitute, she spent the next two and a half decades in Vancouver.  She managed to open a studio in Vancouver in Douglas Lodge where she would relaunch her career teaching and painting portraits.  However, she continued to lose friends and supporters either through personal confrontations or death.  In 1939 at the age of 71 she was admitted for paranoia to the Provincial Mental Hospital.  She received a diagnosis of senile dementia and suffered to a greater or lesser extent over the next decade.  She lived on a tiny pension, increasing paranoia, and suffering from tremors.  By 1948 she was losing her sight.  In 1952 at the age of 84 she began to put her legacy in order.  With the assistance of her friend Dr. Telfer, she catalogued her work by organisation and private collection. She was able to exhibit one last time at the Women’s Auxiliary to the Vancouver Art Gallery.  She died on April 2, 1954 at the age of eighty-six.