| Curtis Williamson | |
| Birth Name: | Curtis Albert Williamson |
| Birth Date: | 2 January 1867 |
| Birth Place: | Brampton, Ontario |
| Death Place: | Toronto, Ontario |
| Training: | studio of J.W.L. Forster, Toronto (1885-1887); Académie Julian, Paris (1889-1892); France, Holland (c. 1894-1904) |
| Elected: | member in 1907, Royal Canadian Academy; founding member of the Canadian Art Club (1907) and its secretary (1908-1909) and member of its executive council (1910-1915) |
| Known For: | Painter |
Curtis Williamson (January2, 1867 April18, 1944) was a Canadian visual artist known for his portraits and figure painting; also genre and landscape.[1] He was nicknamed "the Canadian Rembrandt" because of his dark, tonal style.[2] Williamson was one of the founders of the Canadian Art Club, showed his work at its inaugural exhibition in 1907, and, like some of the other members, his work had a Hague school or Barbizon sensibility.[3]
Williamson was born in Brampton, Ontario. He studied in Toronto under John Wycliffe Lowes Foster for two years.[4] In 1889, his father paid for him to study at the Académie Julian in Paris - where he began exhibiting in the Paris Salon in 1891 - and then in Holland. When he returned to Toronto from Holland in 1892, he brought back a style that was low in tone.[5] In 1893, he was elected to the Ontario Society of Artists and exhibited there extensively (1893-1922).[5] He returned to Europe in 1895 and painted in rural Holland, then travelled to France and painted with James Wilson Morrice at Fontainebeau.[5] He also painted at Barbizon.
In 1904, he returned to Toronto and won a silver medal for his painting Klaasje (1902) at the Canadian exhibition at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1906, he travelled to Newfoundland and painted fishing villages.[5]
In 1907, with Edmund Morris, he helped found the Canadian Art Club, and served as its secretary (1908-1909) and then, as a member of its executive council (1910-1915). He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1907 and exhibited there from 1894 to 1930.[6] In 1908, the understated manner he used in his paintings as in Fish Sheds, Newfoundland, was seen as startling.[7]
He was a founding member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto with Lawren Harris and in 1913, Harris praised his work, calling it full of “half-subdued fire” in the Yearbook of Canadian Art. In 1914, he established a studio in the Studio Building. Later, his painting style was freer and less subdued.[5]
Among his portraits, he painted Portrait of Dr J. M. MacCallum ('A Cynic') (1917), Sir Frederick Banting (1924), his friend George Locke (1933), and G. Blair Laing (1936-1937).[8] [5] He died in Toronto at age 77.[5]