Is This Art Canadian? Brian Foss on Homer Watson

Despite having almost no artistic training, in his mid-twenties Homer Watson (1855-1936) achieved national renown after his painting The Pioneer Mill, 1880, was purchased as a gift for Queen Victoria. His fame increased further when Oscar Wilde likened him to the Barbizon artists in France and declared him to be “the Canadian Constable” (adding that he simply “must know that man”). The Kitchener, Ontario-based artist then built an international career that led to his presidency of both the modernist Canadian Art Club and the more traditional Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.
Brian Foss is a teacher, a freelance curator, and the director of Carleton University’s School for Studies in Art and Culture. His most recent project was the award-winning 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group, co-curated with Jacques Des Rochers for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2015). His publications include several exhibition catalogues as well as The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century (2010, with Anne Whitelaw and Sandra Paikowsky). He is currently chair of the advisory board of the Journal of Canadian Art History.
To read Homer Watson: Life & Work by Brian Foss, visit aci-iac.ca.

[@robertmather6152]

Very informative and you have done an important job of placing Watson in a historical perspective. Thank you

[@Mark-fv8vt]

Mr. Foss has written very well on this subject.