Mary riter hamilton biography
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In a 1926 article in the Toronto Star Weekly, she felt she performed a service of incalculable value not only for the soldiers but for the Dominion of Canada, and to sell any of them would have been a betrayal of sacred trust. 1906) and her watercolour Young Girl in Blue Dress (1911). In 1906, she returned to Winnipeg to see family and exhibit works.
Her work was exhibited in Paris in 1922 and in London in 1923. In 2018, to mark the 100th anniversary of The War Amps — which commissioned Hamilton to paint battlefront scenes following the war — the Canadian War Museum launched Resilience – The Battlefield Art of Mary Riter Hamilton, 1919–1922. She opened a china-painting studio, where she taught and produced works to support herself.
Art Training in Europe
Mary Riter Hamilton’s art teachers in Toronto encouraged her to travel to Europe to continue her studies.
Mary and Charles are interred in Riverside Cemetery in Thunder Bay.
Everyone has made important life decisions, some for better or worse. It is a reminder of an independent woman who persevered to create the work she felt was important to do and preserve for the veterans and citizens of Canada.
Submitted by: David Nicholson
Mary Riter Hamilton
Early Life and Career
Mary Matilda Riter was born on 7 September in either 1867 or 1868 in Teeswater, Ontario.
In 1903, Hamilton moved to Paris to continue her studies. She faced harsh conditions, living in inadequate shelters, often with little to eat. In a 1922 interview, Hamilton explained why she worked in these conditions: “I made up my mind that where our men went under so much more dreadful conditions I could go, and I am very proud to have been able even in a small way to commemorate the deeds of my countrymen.”
Hamilton painted on site, setting up her easel on the battlefields.
Although Hamilton’s paintings had been successful in Europe, they did not receive the same reception in Canada. Charles was a dry goods merchant, and Mary co-owned the Paris Dry Goods House with him.
In 1892, Mary gave birth to a stillborn infant, and Charles died the following year. Her battlefield painting project had taken a toll on her health.
Hamilton put on exhibits in Western Canada and reports from this time refer to Hamilton as a well-known, celebrated, and distinguished artist.
She donated her war paintings to the National Archives of Canada (now part of Library and Archives Canada).
Hamilton moved to Winnipeg in 1926, before settling in Vancouver to teach and exhibit. In this, she helped shape women’s art and Canadian art, even though she was denied a place in the National Gallery of Canada.
Memorable Manitobans: Mary Riter Hamilton (1869-1954)
Artist.
Born at Walkerton, Ontario on 7 September 1869, daughter of Charity Zimmerman (1837-1915) and John Riter (?-?), she came to Clearwater with her family at an early age.
She was the youngest of five children. After the First World War she obtained a publisher’s commission to “reproduce the battlefields in paint,” and she remained abroad until 1922, producing over 300 paintings and innumerable sketches. She left to study art in Berlin in August 1901. In the years following, Hamilton was hospitalized in France and the United Kingdom.
In 1889, after she married Charles Wallace Hamilton (?-1893), they moved to Port Arthur [now Thunder Bay], Ontario, where her husband was a leading merchant.