John Hammond (Canadian 1843-1939)
Morning Mist Bay of Fundy
oil on board, signed lower right "J Hammond", signed and titled on reverse "Morning Mist Bay of Fundy J Hammond"
John Hammond is one of Canada’s earliest celebrated historical artists. Born in Montreal, he travelled to England and then New Zealand before returning to Canada where he accompanied the Transcontinental Survey party who were making preliminary studies for the new Canadian Pacific Railway. He worked for William Notman Photographers in Montreal and then moved to Saint John, New Brunswick, where he became Principal of the Owens Art Institute. He painted across Canada as well as in Europe where he met James McNeill Whisler in Holland and Francois Millet in Barbizon. Sir William Van Horne was a great admirer of Hammond’s work, and he was commissioned to paint murals as part of the Railway Artists. Elected Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1890, then a full member in 1893, he exhibited regularly between 1891 and 1935. In 1920, he had a solo exhibition at the Jenkins Gallery, of which The Toronto Star Weekly noted, “There are pictures of Holland in winter, of coast farms, and tree bordered roads, but one feels that Mr. Hammond is essentially a painter of the sea and of the harbour, with its shipping, and that his greatest success are his atmospheric effects, when he fixes on canvas the prismatic beauty that comes from the sunlight struggling through the fog.”
Size: 6.75 h x 7.75 w (with frame 9.5 h x 10.5 w)
J21177
