Artist: Thomas Mower Martin

Title: Country Road

Signed

Image Size: 10 ¼ x 14 ¾ 

Medium: Watercolour on Paper

This beautiful painting is framed in a very high-end intricate frame and mat. It is in perfect condition. Also, we have placed conservation glass over the painting to protect the vibrant colour for years to come. 

Biography:

Thomas Mower Martin was an English-born Canadian landscape painter often dubbed "the father of Canadian art”.

Martin was born in England. He attended military school in Enfield, England. He was mostly self-taught studying only briefly at the South Kensington Galleries in London. Orphaned at a young age, his aunt supported his need to draw and paint. 

In 1862 Martin immigrated, with his wife, to Canada to become a farmer. After attempting to run an unsuccessful farm in rural Ontario he moved to Toronto and opened a studio. With Toronto as a base and after buying a home and a studio Martin went on painting excursions across  Canada, America and Europe. He painted mostly landscapes, animals in action, still lifes and some portraits. In 1887 he made his first trip to Western Canada under the sponsorship of the Canadian Pacific Railway and returned approximately ten times. He and his group were called “the Railway Painters”. Also included in these trips were Lucius O’Brien, Marmaduke Matthews, and Frederic Bell-Smith. A collection of articles entitled "Canada from an Artist's Point of View" (1895) details some of his experiences in the west.

Martin was the first director of the Ontario Government Art School in Toronto where he taught John C Forbes and Lucius O’Brien. He was a founding member of the Ontario Society of Artists in 1872 and a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Art in 1880. In 1907 Martin produced an important Canadian book called, Canada, with text by Wilfred Campbell. In 1909 Martin became a member of the Royal British Colonial Society of Artists. 

Thomas Mower Martin died in 1934 at the ripe old age of 96. The Grandfather of Canadian Art. 

Note:For buyers outside Canada and the US please contact us for shipping price