Toronto Globe

March 10, 1917

MANY FINE PAINTINGS AT O.S.A. EXHIBITION

More notable for the average of good and progressive work than for outstanding examples by anyone artist is the forty-fifth annual exhibition of the Ontario Society of Artists, which was opened in the Reference Library last evening. The President, Mr. C.W. Jeffreys, has an interesting series of illustrations, some in color and some in black and white. “An Election in the Forties,” “George Brown Addressing a Meeting of Farmers,” and other historic subjects are depicted.

J.W. Beatty has four canvases, one a portrait, but the most interesting of all being splendid wood scene, with the gray-green trunk of a great beech tree caught out of the forest dimness by a ray of light from the outer world. Some of its smaller neighbors are colored too, by the ray of sunshine.

Timely Subjects.

A tattoo at Camp Borden is the very timely subject of a night-time study, with flaming torches and white tent-cones, by F.M. Bell-Smith, who has also several London street scenes and a picture of Mount Temple. G.A. Reid also has crystallized the spirit of the day in a colorful indoor scene, with women at work on Red Cross supplies. Delicate and appealing too, is Mr. Reid’s “Spring” picturing the tender springtime haze in a grove of sapling birch and poplars. Mrs. Reid has three canvases, including two of her lovely flower pieces. “Little Sisters of the Sun,” a cluster of brown-eyed Susans are very happy in their copper bowl.

A glowingly lovely nude by Frederick S. Challenger is seated o a mossy rock, with a shell in her hand and her toes dipping into the blue swell of the sea. His studies of western life and of a misty woodland scene, with boys bathing in a “swimming hole,” are also very satisfying.

Harry Britton’s three canvases show consistently good work, and a new departure in the two portraits, both of which are very fine. The splendid orange and purple and green sails and the blue water of his “Harbor of St. Ives” provide a feast of colour. Mrs. Britton has a delightful small piece called “The Road to the Sugar Camp.”

Many Exhibitors.

There are many pictures worthy of attention and among them two colorful canvases by Miss L.O. Adams, “Across Country,” a dipping foreground and beyond a red-roofed farmhouse the tree-stunted fields of a distant slope; and “Spring’s Promise” a blossoming orchard.

“In the Evening Light,” by W.M. Cutts is an interesting canvas, and Mrs. Cutts has a large canvas showing a narrow, rocky bay with a bit of gray beach swept by the green tide of the ocean. Through a dip in the headland, threaded by a narrow path, one glimpses the blue sea beyond.

There are a number of very interesting winter scenes, among them being “Open Creek, Winter,” by W.A. Drake, full of light and color; a number of fine things by Manly MacDonald; “The Cedar Swamp,” by A.Y. Jackson who has also some very interesting studies, made abroad; and “Silent Valley,” by Francis H. Johnston. In the latter the snow falls away in blue and purpling shadow to make way for a clear-rimmed, brown-green stream to flow through. Mr. Johnston has a lot of very original and interesting work both in oils and among the decorative drawings shown in the room with black and white work, illustrations and the like.

Some Fine Portraits

E. Wyly Grier has an excellent portrait of the Speaker of the Legislature and also a charcoal study of Mr. Geo. Hilliard. Miss Marion Long has a number of portrait studies, one of the most string being “The Gold Fish Bowl,” showing a girl in a window seat, with the light falling on her white dress and green sweater, as she gazes into a bowl of goldfish.

Miss Kathleem Munn has a very fine nude, and a canvas with cows, called “Evening Glow.”

Robt. F. Gagen has a number of studies in both oil and water color, “White Head” being the most important. This shows a rocky headland and waves breaking against the rocks under a gray sky, with a dim sun.

A decorative landscape by Lawren Harris is very effective. Estelle M. Kerr has a number of sunlit canvases that are happily handled, one of these being “The Fortune Teller,” wherein a group of women on a lawn are shaded by a Japanese umbrella. Arthur Lismer’s “Georgian Bay, Spring,” shows an intensity of blue with a flowering shrub blowing out from the shore against this clear color.

Clouds and Sky

“Wild Ducks” is a very fine thing by J.E.H. MacDonald, large and open and very satisfying, as are a number of this artist’s other studies, particularly “In November,” with blue-black wintry clouds against a glowing sky, and beneath this long, purple-brown furrows and three pine trees against the sky.

“Gone,” a glowing little study in pastel is one of C. M. Manly’s best. Miss F. H. McGillivray has a couple of strong pieces of work. Herbert Palmer also has some fine things, notably “On the Hill Top,” showing a spotted Holstein cow cropping the deep and lusciously, goldenly green grass. “The Clu,” by J. Ernest Sampson, is full of firelight and familiar faces to the members of the Arts and Letters Club, and the likenesses are so very good that the faces are recognizable to many.

There are many fine things by Varley F. Horsman. Mary E. Wrinch has some beautiful things and Owen Staples one large fine water-color.

The room with works in black and white has perfectly delightful things by W.R. Stark, some of Dudley Ward’s famous “Dingbats,” some lovely charcoals by Marion Long and most interesting tone stude by Hubert J. Beynon, as well as etchings by Dorothy Stevens, including a fine portrait of Mrs. Jan Hambourg.

Other artists who show interesting work are Franklin Brownell, F.H. Brigden, Florence Carlyle, John W. Cotton, Geo. Chavignaud, Frank Carmichael, Alice and Berthe des Clayes, T.G. Green, Clara S. Hagarty, Andre Lapine, Thomas W. Mitchel, Maide Parlow, Percy J. Robinson, Matilda Samuel and others. Notably missing was artist, Tom Thomson, who, as we have been told, has made some fine canvases but has refused to exhibit.

There are also some fine sculptures by Frederick Coates, Emmanuel Hahn, Henri Herbert, Frances Loring, Marcel Olis and Margaret Scobie.