Mary Evelyn Wrinch
“…I have always been a person with one idea. I had no other ambition than to become an artist. It was the only thing I ever wanted to do...”
Mary E. Wrinch A.R.C.A.
Mary Evelyn Wrinch, an English-born Canadian, was born in 1877 in the Northeast Essex village of Kirby-le-Soken. Her parents were Leonard and Elizabeth Cooper Wrinch. When Mary was eight years old her father died and she and her mother emigrated to Bronte, Ontario, and after a return trip to England, in 1889, they relocated permanently to Canada and went to live in Toronto.
Blossom Time by Mary E Wrinch
Whilst living in Toronto, Mary attended Bishop Strachan School, a private school in the Forest Hill area and Canada’s oldest independent day and boarding school. In 1889, Mary Wrinch enrolled at the Central Ontario School of Art where she studied with George Agnew Reid along with Impressionist painter, Laura Adeline Muntz and naturalist painter, Robert Holmes. It was a four-year course during which she studied both printmaking and painting.
Wakefield Garden by Mary E Wrinch (1917)
After achieving a number of awards, she began graduate studies at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London and remained there until 1899 under the direction of Walter Donne. After this, Mary Wrinch returned to Toronto where she again studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design with Lyall, Holmes and Reid. She later enrolled for two private art classes, one in London, England with Alyn Williams, a Welsh artist born in Wrexham, who later became president of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. The other private classes she attended was in New York, run by Alice Beckington, an American artist who was a founder member of the American Society of Miniature Painters, an organization she served as president for a number of years, from 1905 to 1916. She also taught miniature painting at the Art Students League.
Poppies by Mary E Wrinch (1917)
When Mary was in her early twenties she opened her own studio in the Arcade Building on Toronto’s Yonge Street. Her former tutors, George Agnew Reid and Laura Muntz also had studios in the building. Around this time Mary began to concentrate her art with specialized miniature portraits. In 1906, she travelled to France and was strongly influenced by the works of Monet, Pissarro and Sisley and when she returned to Canada, she brought back a large number of small, beautifully crafted Impressionist sketches. Her time in France also converted her to plein air landscape painting and she recalled that time saying:
“… It was such a revelation being in France at that time. Coming into contact with Impressionism was like being let loose with a box of coloured candy…”
Falling Leaves by Mary E Winch
In 1912 she returned to Europe for a second time and travelled around France and Italy, continuously sketching and painting. Although pleased with her work there were many detractors in the press who claimed her northern Ontario landscape paintings were too modernist. She was undeterred and carried on painting until 1928 when she stopped and concentrated on colour woodcuts.
Class at Bishop Strachan School, Toronto (1915)
Mary Wrinch, apart from dedicating her life to her art, was still a single woman and had also to support herself financially and so taught art at the Bishop Strachan School, Toronto, her alma mater, and Canada’s oldest independent day and boarding school for girls. She worked there from 1901 until 1936 as Art Director.
Abitibi Canyon, Ontario by Mary E Winch
Mary owned a summer residence in a two-storey cottage at Kingwood, Lake of Bays, a township municipality within the District Municipality of Muskoka, Ontario, Canada, situated 193 kilometres (120 miies) north of Toronto. Mary spent hours sketching and painting and for relaxation and exercise would canoe on the lake. It was, whilst living in the beautiful Ontario landscape, that she changed her method of painting. She now painted directly from nature on canvases over a metre high and wide.
Sawmill, Muskoka by Mary Wrinch (1907)
In 1907 she exhibited her large (84 x 86cms) painting entitled Sawmill, Muskoka at the Ontario Society of Artists. It was subsequently purchased by the Government of Ontario. Six years later she was interviewed about this work and its size and she justified it saying:
“…Somehow our Canadian landscapes call for a big canvas and for direct, out of door painting. When you do it small, you lose much of its very essence…”
Funchal Madeira by Mary E Winch
Although spending summers at Lake of Bays, during the Winter months she stayed and worked in her studio in Wychwood Park, an arts and crafts community, founded in the late nineteenth century, as a private project by painter Marmaduke Matthews and businessman Alexander Jardine. Between 1900 and 1922 she worked closely with and studied under George Agnew Reid, a well known Toronto painter and former tutor.
Mortgaging the Homestead by G A Reid
After briefly apprenticing with an architect, Reid was trained at the Ontario School of Art, Toronto in 1879, where he studied with Robert Harris. From there, he attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1882 to 1885 where he was a protégé of Thomas Eakins who appointed him a demonstrator in anatomy classes. He also studied at the Académie Julian, with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid. George Agnew Reid, who signed his name as G. A. Reid, was a Canadian artist, painter, influential educator and administrator. He is best known for his genre paintings, but his work also included historical, portrait and landscape subjects.
Portrait of George Agnew Reid by Mary Hiester Reid, (1895)
Reid met his first wife artist Mary Hiester Reid at the Pennsylvania Academy, and the couple married in 1885. Mary, also a talented artist, became financially successful and received significant reviews in the Toronto press. In 1893, she was elected an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, one of the first women elected. He and his wife also made a number of study trips to Europe later, during which they visited France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. George Agnew Reid remained with his wife until her death in 1921.
Ponte Vecchio Florence by Mary E Wrinch (1914)
Mary Wrinch had known Reid since being his student and also was part of Reid and his wife’s circle of artistic friends in Wychwood Park. The Park was an ideal painting site for its beauty which was then still a rural region on the edge of the city. The park which was named by Marmaduke Matthews after Wychwood forest in Oxfordshire, England. Reid had built himself and his wife an Elizabethan-styled grand manor house with a walled garden and a pool known as Upland Cottage. In 1910 Reid built Mary Wrinch an independent home-studio on Alcina Avenue which was just one block away from where he and his wife Mary lived.
Cineraria by Mary E Winch (1924)
A year later in 1922, following the death of his wife, Reid married forty-five-year-old Mary Evelyn Wrinch his former student at the Central Ontario School of Art in Toronto. Once married, Mary moved into Upland Cottage and was delighted to take charge of the large garden. Later the couple went off exploring and painting the beauty of Northern Canada, visiting Northern Ontario, Quebec and Nova Scotia. Despite marrying Reid, Mary Winch persisted in using her maiden name, Mary E. Winch when signing her paintings. For her it was important to maintain her professional identity.
Scarboro’ Linocut by May E Wrinch (c.1938)
In 1928, when Mary Wrinch was fifty-one, she decided on a complete change of artistic style. She then embraced the art of lino-cut printing and copied her original landscape paintings to achieve intricate highly colourful prints with strong outlines. She also completed floral prints using flowers from her own garden. Mary was influenced by the Japanese woodcut masters such as Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro and from their works she developed techniques in block printmaking. By 1944 Mary Wrinch had completely given up painting to concentrate on her printmaking.
After 25 years of marriage to Wrinch, her husband, George Agnew Reid died at the age of 87 in 1947. Mary Wrinch died in Toronto in 1969 at age 90.
Apart from Wikipedia, most of the information for this blog came from these excellent websites:
Moynahan Studio: FemArt Friday: Mary Evelyn Wrinch
Female self-Representation and the Public Trust
