FAMOUS ARTIST BIRTHDAY - JOHN ARTHUR FRASER - MINI MASTER

I’m not sure, but with taking most of the year off in 2019, I don’t think I wrote a single blog on Art History. There are many famous artists to tackle and I’m getting back in the groove. So today the birthday boy is the energetic John Arthur Fraser. He was in born in London, England, 9 January, 1838 Little is known of his early years in London and he was largely known as an artist in Canada and the USA. If I could sum him up in two words it would be Ambitious and Restless.

Fraser was a resident of Montreal by 1860, tinting portrait photographs and managing a photography art department. Fraser’s surviving work from that period displays an unusual degree of sensitivity and skill. The earliest pieces are small head-and-shoulders studies using translucent colours that suggest just enough paint to give the portraits the appearance of delicate miniatures.

By 1864 he had moved on to full-length figurative images set in landscapes painted directly onto the photosensitive paper. He also exhibited landscapes in oil with strong, clear colour and simple mountains and lake compositions.

He became a charter member of the Society of Canadian Artists in 1867 and in 1868 he was elected member of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors, in New York. He then settled in Toronto and on 25 June 1872 Fraser was elected vice-president of the new Ontario Society of Artists. The first exhibition of the OSA opened 14 April 1873 with Fraser showing works “of vivid colour and striking clarity” created using the new coal-tar colours. The naturalism of Fraser’s canvases was praised, as was his skilful handling of paint.

In 1876 he became art superintendent of the Centennial Photographic Company which supplied the Philadelphia Centennial International Exhibition. The extensive art collection encouraged Fraser to submit his largest collection ever to the 1878 annual exhibition and he finally began to exhibit with the American Water Color Society.

In 1880 Fraser’s return to Toronto’s artistic circles assured both his selection as a charter member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and his involvement in the massive publishing project launched that year, Picturesque Canada. Fraser sketched along the entire length of the new CPR line through the Rockies. These mountain pictures are considered Fraser’s most characteristic work, highly naturalistic and relating more to photography than traditional landscape painting.

He later moved to Boston, but maintained connections with Canada and the officers of the CPR. He visited Britain in 1888 and a Scottish water-colour was accepted into the Royal Academy of Arts Exhibition in London that year. He continued to show in Canada and Boston, and in 1891 his water-colours were accepted in the Paris Salon, but his life was centred on the New York Salmagundi Sketch Club and local societies.

Fraser was a restless and ambitious man, perfectly suited to the growth and expansion of Canada. Painting rarely dominated his interests and was often abandoned entirely for other business pursuits, but it is as a painter he will be remembered. Fraser was engrossed by photography and caught up by the sense of nationhood fostered by the rise of the railways across Canada: It is this which gives his painting such memorable force. The largest public collection of his work is in the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa).