Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon

Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon Chamberlin
Born	1833 Coburg, Ontario
Died	1913 Toronto

Agnes Dunbar Moodie Fitzgibbon Chamberlin (1833 — 1913) was a Canadian artist living in Ontario.

Watercolour painting for Studies of Plant Life in Canada, by Catherine Parr Traill

The daughter of John Wedderburn Dunbar Moodie and Susanna Strickland, she was born Agnes Dunbar Moodie on a farm near Coburg. Around five years later, the family moved to Belleville. She learned how to paint flowers from her mother. In 1868, she published Canadian Wild Flowers, viewed as one of the first serious botanical works published in Canada, which included text by Catharine Parr Traill, her aunt. The book, very expensive for its time, was sold by subscription, largely through Agnes's own efforts; as a an enterprising widow, she worked as an illustrator to earn what she needed the money to support herself and her children.

File:Winterberry - Aromatic wintergreen.png

Watercolour painting for an unpublished floral calendar: February, Winterberry, Aromatic_wintergreen

Fitzgibbon was married twice: first around 1850 to Charles Thomas FitzGibbon, a barrister, who died in 1865 and then in 1870 to Brown Chamberlin, later the Queen's Printer. She had eight children with her first husband and one with her second.

In 1863 Agnes began her paintings of Canadian flora to illustrate a book by her aunt Catherine Parr Traill. After the death of her husband in 1865 she began work on a book of Canadian wild flowers, with her water-coloured illustrations and Traill’s text. The book attracted 500 subscriptions, a significant number at the time.

Canadian Wild Flowers first edition was published in 1868. The second and third subscribed editions were published in 1869 (Montreal: J. Lovell); and a fourth edition in 1895 (Toronto: W. Briggs). Agnes’s paintings of Canadian plants and flowers were also published in other books on Canadian flora, with 9 full page colour lithographs in Catherine Traill’s Studies of Plant Life in Canada (Ottawa: A.S. Woodburn, 1885). In 1972, 11 of the watercolour paintings were reproduced in Eustella Langdon’s Pioneer Gardens (Toronto: Holt Rinehart and Winston).

She died in Toronto in 1913.

Agnes Chamberlin’s heirs presented her paintings and copies of Canadian Wild Flowers and Studies of Plant Life in Canada to the University of Toronto in 1934–5. They were housed in the University's Botany Department, then transferred to the Rare Books and Special Collections of the University of Toronto Library in 1966. The books and artwork are now available in the collection of the University of Toronto and digitized to view online.

Early Exhibitions

Agnes's paintings have been presented at exhibitions in Canada, USA, and England since 1886.<https://fishercollections.library.utoronto.ca/chamberlin_chrono>
1886 - Exhibition of paintings by Agnes Chamberlin and her daughter, Geraldine Moodie, at the Colonial Exhibition, London, England.
1875 - Agnes Chamberlin's artwork was also shown by the “Dominion Government” at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition.
ca.1907 - Exhibition of Chamberlin’s watercolours at the Women’s Canadian Historical Society of Toronto in the East Hall of University College, University of Toronto.
1937 - Exhibition of Chamberlin’s paintings at the Botany Building for the Biological Club’s Conversazione.
1967 - Exhibition of Chamberlin’s watercolours at the Sigmund Samuel Library.
1976 - Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, July–August
1977 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
The exhibition held at the ROM's Canadiana Gallery, “Two Gentlewomen of Upper Canada”, June 15 to September 18, 1977, featured watercolours and drawings by Agnes Chamberlin and Anne Langton.

References

https://fishercollections.library.utoronto.ca/chamberlin_chrono

External links

• "The Agnes Chamberlin Digital Collection". University of Toronto.
• The Moodie Family Tree, Library and Archives Canada