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Mary Riter Hamilton

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Mary Riter Hamilton
Born(1867-09-07)September 7, 1867
Culross, Ontario
DiedApril 5, 1954(1954-04-05) (aged 86)
Vancouver, British Columbia
SpouseCharles W. Hamilton
Mary Riter Hamilton. “Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge,” May 20, 1919

Mary Riter Hamilton (7 September 1867 – 5 April 1954) was a Canadian painter, etcher, drawing artist, textile artist, and ceramics artist who spent much of her career painting abroad in countries including Belgium, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and the United States.

She gained renown as Canada’s first female battlefield artist, pioneering an empathetic style of painting the trenches and ruined towns of Belgium and France in the immediate aftermath of the Great War.[1] Among her most famous works are her oil on cardboard Trenches on the Somme (1919), her oil on wove paper Isolated Grave and Camouflage, Vimy Ridge (1919), and her oil on board Market Among the Ruins of Ypres, a depiction of the survivors of the war and the ongoing reconstruction in the war-battered town of Ypres. She shaped an ethical portrayal of the war by drawing attention to war’s destruction and by mourning the dead.

Mary Riter Hamilton’s work developed in three distinctive periods and styles. The first period (1901-1911) comprised over one hundred works painted and drawn in Europe that established her in Canada following her TransCanada exhibition tour in 1911 to 1912.[2] This early style is best represented by her oil painting Easter Morning, La Petite Penitente (c. 1906) and her watercolour Young Girl in Blue Dress (1911). Hamilton’s second period (1912-1918) was inspired by her return to Canada in 1911, shifting her focus on Western Canada, as she painted the Rockies and the prairies, as well as scenery in the cities and forests of Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan. In this, she pursued a distinctive vision for rendering Canada’s West and honouring its Indigenous peoples.[3] Hamilton’s third period is focussed on her battlefield art as she depicted the destroyed landscapes of World War I, and drew the portraits of marginalised war workers and civilians returning to their destroyed villages. Exceptionally prolific and inspired, her over 320 battlefield works constitute her “magnum opus.”[4] Painting en plein air, with impressionistic flair, her work increasingly eschewed studio finish.[5] In her work, Hamilton embraced the perspective of the underdog, showing sympathy for the socially underprivileged and the suffering, while being bold in transgressing constraining institutional boundaries. In this, she helped shape women’s art and Canadian art, even though she was denied a place in Canada’s National Gallery.  

Life and Career

Mary Riter was born in Culross, Ontario (now part of South Bruce, ON), on 7 September 1867. While there has been confusion regarding the year of her birth with scholars, curators, and archivists speculating that she was born in 1874, 1868, or 1867, Irene Gammel’s 2020 book I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton uses Census data to document that the accurate birth year is 1867. The Census data corroborates a consistent birth year of 1867 until her mid-twenties, when it first changes after the death of her husband.[6] The subsequent census data testifies to the age deflation stemming from her own efforts to align her reported age with her new public identity and new life circumstances after the death of her husband. She projected a youthful image to escape the ageism and sexism of society.

As the youngest of five siblings, Mary was born to homesteading parents. Her mother, Charity Riter, and one of her brothers, Joseph, supported her striving for artistic expression from early on. Suffering setbacks when the farm burnt down, the Riter family showed collective resilience, eventually building a new life as homesteaders in Manitoba, where Mary lived for a few years as a teenager.[7] Still in her teens, she returned to live in Port Arthur, now Thunder Bay, striking out on her own at an early age. Here she met Charles W. Hamilton, a dry goods merchant, with whom she partnered in running the Paris Dry Goods House. The pair married in July 1889, though the marriage was short-lived, as Charles Watson died suddenly in 1893 following an infection when Mary was in her mid-twenties. She also lost her baby son who was still born. These losses had a deep impact, prompting her new career. 

While she had been taking sporadic painting lessons during her marriage, now she turned to building a professional artistic career. She began painting, exhibiting, and selling ceramics, what was then called china painting, and watercolours in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She studied in Toronto, Ontario, taking lessons from Mary Hiester Reid, as well as studying in the United States.[8]

European Period (1901-1911)

In 1901, she sailed overseas to study in Berlin, Germany, taking private lessons from renowned Secession painter Franz Skarbina, as well as in Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and France.[9] In Paris, at the Académie Vitti, she took a portraiture class with Jacques-Émile Blanche, and studied with Luc-Olivier Merson and Paul Gervais, while taking private lessons from Claudio Castelucho. Settling in Paris, she lived and worked in studios on the Rue de la Grande Chaumière and later on Rue Notre Dame des Champs.[10]

From 1905 on, she exhibited her work at the French Salon, the official art exhibition of the Académie des Beaux-Arts. During this time, she was extremely prolific, producing some 150 paintings and drawings including many scenes from Holland, Italy, Spain, and Brittany, France. She was inspired by themes like motherhood, as seen in her oil painting Maternity, as well as poverty, and experimented with self-portraiture. In 1911, after a decade in Europe, she returned her collection to Canada, marking her homecoming with a gallery show in Toronto with 150 paintings. This was followed by a highly successful exhibition tour of her work in Ottawa, Montreal, Winnipeg, Calgary, and Victoria, where she settled to paint, supporting herself by taking on portrait commissions.[11]

Canadian Period (1911-1918)

Upon returning to Canada in 1911, Mary Riter Hamilton’s new vision was to paint the country by focussing on the west. As she saw it, the West was still neglected in Canada’s art, the focus of the emerging National Gallery of Canada being on Central Canadian art and artists. Like the Group of Seven painters, who returned to Canada around the same time, to focus their eye on Northern Ontario, Hamilton had a patriotic vision for Canadian art. From 1911-1918, she painted and exhibited scenes of the Canadian West. Library and Archives Canada acquired one of these paintings entitled Canadian Rockies Sketch (1912). Hamilton’s paintings depicted Indigenous peoples. She also made portraits of strong-minded women, a focus she would continue in her battlefield paintings and her late work. When Hamilton left Victoria in 1918, she was at the zenith of her career, surpassing the painter Emily Carr in recognition during that period.[12]

Battlefield Period (1919-1921)

During the First World War, Mary Riter Hamilton actively campaigned to return to Europe as a war artist to document Canada’s military contribution. It wasn't until 1919, where H.F. Paton, a Vancouver publisher, began to compile a work entitled 'The Gold Stripe' which collected stories, photographs and memorabilia about the Great War, with proceeds sent to 'The Amputation Club of British Columbia', that commissioned Hamilton to produce paintings of the French battlefields. For three years, she lived in a tin hut, at first with a Canadian army contingent but later with Chinese workers hired to clear the Western Front of the debris of war despite gangs of criminals and deserters.[13][14] She painted on canvases as various as plywood, paper, canvas and cardboard.[15] The makeshift shelters, poor food and hostile weather left her emotionally and physically drained, never being able to paint with the same intensity again. Between 1919 and 1922, Hamilton painted with whatever materials came to hand, recording the destruction left by the war, the commemorations of those lost and the celebrations of the return to normal life. She painted more than 300 images in the uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous conditions of the former Western Front.[16][17] The War Amps would later produce an award-winning documentary called 'No Man's Land', re-telling Mary Riter Hamilton's story.[15]

It is fortunate that I arrived before it was too late to get a real impression. The first day I went over Vimy [Ridge], snow and sleet were falling, and I was able to realize what the soldiers had suffered. If as you and others tell me, there is something of the suffering and heroism of the war in my pictures it is because at that moment the spirit of those who fought and died seemed to linger in the air. Every splintered tree and scarred clod spoke of their sacrifice. Since then, nature has been busy covering up the wounds, and in a few years the last sign of war will have disappeared. To have been able to preserve some memory of what this consecrated corner of the world looked like after the storm is a great privilege and all the reward an artist could hope for.[18]

Mary Riter Hamilton, in an interview with Frederick G. Falla, The McClure Newspaper Syndicate for release September 10, 1922

Exhibitions of the earlier paintings took place in Vancouver and Victoria in 1920. Further exhibitions were held at the Palais Garnier in Paris in 1922; and in Amiens and then in London at Surrey House.

In 1926, she donated 227 of her battlefield works to the Dominion Archives, wanting the works for the "benefit of war veterans, their families and future generations."[19]

She retired, partially blind, to Vancouver, British Columbia in the 1930s, eventually dying there on January 22, 1954.[19] Her body was transported to Port Arthur, Ontario and was buried beside her husband.[20]

  • c. 1919-1920, Mt. St. Eloi
    c. 1919-1920, Mt. St. Eloi
  • 1920, Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day
    1920, Cloth Hall, Ypres – Market Day
  • 1920, The Sadness of the Somme
    1920, The Sadness of the Somme

Honors

Legacy

In 1988, War Amputations of Canada released No Man's Land a documentary short focusing on Mary Riter Hamilton and the collection of her war paintings in the care of Library and Archives Canada.[21]

  • Silver Award (Historical Programming) - 1989 Houston International Film & Video Festival (Texas)
  • Certificate for Creative Excellence (History) - 1989 U.S. Industrial Film & Video Festival (Illinois)
  • Achievement Award - 1989 Society for Technical Communication's Audio/Visual Competition (California
  • Honourable Mention - 1989 National Educational Film & Video Festival (California)
  • Honourable Mention - 1989 Columbus International Film Festival (Ohio)
  • 1919, Dug Out on the Somme
    1919, Dug Out on the Somme
  • 1920, Market Among the Ruins of Ypres
    1920, Market Among the Ruins of Ypres
  • 1920, The Kemmel Road, Flanders
    1920, The Kemmel Road, Flanders
  • 1921, A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres
    1921, A Misty Morning, the Ramparts of Ypres

References

  1. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 24. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  2. ^ Amos, Robert (1978). Mary Riter Hamilton. Victoria: Art Galleries of Greater Victoria. p. 7.
  3. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. p. 49. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  4. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. p. 9. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  5. ^ Amos, Robert (1978). Mary Riter Hamilton. Victoria: Art Galleries of Greater Victoria.
  6. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint. McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 11. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  7. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. pp. 12–13. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  8. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. p. 22. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  9. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020). I Can Only Paint: The Story of Battlefield Artist Mary Riter Hamilton. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press. p. 29. ISBN 978-0-2280-1371-6.
  10. ^ Amos, Robert (1978). Mary Riter Hamilton. Victoria: Art Galleries of Greater Victoria. pp. 5–6.
  11. ^ Amos, Robert (1978). Mary Riter Hamilton. Victoria: Art Galleries of Greater Victoria. p. 9.
  12. ^ Gammel, Irene (2020-11-08). "Remembrance Day: How a Canadian painter broke boundaries on the First World War battlefields". The Conversation. Retrieved 2023-10-23.
  13. ^ "Trenches on the Web - Special: The Battlefield Art of Mary Riter Hamilton". Trenches on the Web. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  14. ^ Baker, Alan R. H; Black, Iain3; Butlin, Robin Alan (2001). Place, Culture, and Identity: Essays in Historical Geography in Honour of Alan R.H. Baker. p. 332. ISBN 9782763778075.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ a b "No Man's Land: The Battlefield Paintings of Mary Riter Hamilton 1919-1922". War Amputations of Canada. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
  16. ^ "HAMILTON, Mary Riter". Canadian Women Artists History Initiative Artist Database. Concordia University. 23 May 2013. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
  17. ^ "ARCHIVED - NA - Traces of War - Mary Riter Hamilton". Library and Archive Canada. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  18. ^ "Traces of War, Mary Riter Hamilton". Library and Archive Canada. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  19. ^ a b "Manitoba History: Mary Riter Hamilton: Manitoba Artist 1873-1954". Manitoba Historical Society. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  20. ^ "Archives Search". Library and Archives Canada. 19 March 2008. Retrieved 31 August 2013.
  21. ^ "No Man's Land". War Amputations of Canada. Retrieved 14 August 2013.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Mary Riter Hamilton.

Further reading

Young, Kathryn; McKinnon, Sarah (2017). No Man's Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton. Winnipeg, Manitoba: University of Manitoba Press. OCLC 1019805160.

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