Table of Content
The renowned developer converted the building into elite condos, after purchasing the property in 2011. Homer Watson in the new gallery addition to his home, Doon, 1906, photographer unknown, Homer Watson House & Gallery, Kitchener. Homer Watson, Nut Gatherers in the Forest, 1900, oil on canvas, 121.9 x 86.5 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.Randolph Hewton, Baie-Saint-Paul, c.1927, oil on canvas, 43.5 x 48.5 cm, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston. Homer Watson, A Coming Storm in the Adirondacks, 1879, oil on canvas, 85.7 x 118.3 cm, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Homer Watson, Down in the Laurentides, 1882, oil on canvas, 65.8 x 107 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.
Like Homer Watson, George Inness was influenced by the rich landscapes of the Hudson River School.Homer Watson, Susquehanna Valley, c.1877, oil on canvas, 22.4 x 32.5 cm, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. In 1918, when Watson was feeling especially low, he reportedly said his late wife appeared to him in his studio as an amber light and slowly transformed into the lifelike shape of his sweetheart, reminding him to not despair. Watson designed and built a large gallery at the front of the house just off the small reception room. This beautiful room with its windowed monitor and fine proportions was a fitting showcase for Watson's work and became an attraction for art lovers from near and far.
Homer Watson House
Many of Watson's works are still on display at his old house, which he and his sister had transformed into a small art gallery. Homer Watson's letters, his unpublished manuscripts, and his paintings, drawings, and prints document the issues that most interested him as an artist. Of his concerns, the commemoration of southern Ontario's pioneers and early settlers and the visual expression of Canadian regional and national identities locate Watson firmly within the milieu of many of his fellow artists of the time. In addition to these priorities, his dedication to safeguarding the natural environment was exceptional and far-sighted.
Clerestory windows allowed natural light to enter the gallery while providing ample wall space to hang his paintings. Today the Homer Watson House & Gallery aims to preserve and celebrate the legacy of Homer Watson’s creative spirit through appreciation, enjoyment and practice of the visual arts. Through exhibitions, events, programs and a museum space of the late artist’s studio, the Homer Watson House & Gallery has something for everyone. In Toronto held a hearteningly successful show and sale of Watson’s work, paintings from the previous approximately thirteen years that, until then, Watson had reserved in his private Doon gallery.
Life and career
Watson, a committed environmentalist, was the key organizer and president of the Waterloo County Grand River Park Limited, which saved Cressman’s Woods near the artist’s home. His environmental interests paralleled his certainty that artists who lacked a sense of living connection to the landscapes around them risked falling back on impersonal formulas. He explored this belief in a series of half-autobiographical and half-fictional drafts for manuscripts that elucidated his philosophy of landscape painting but that went unpublished until well after his death. (1825–1894), one of the most ambitious, influential, and successful American landscape artists of the second half of the nineteenth century, although in later life Watson stated that they had not in fact met. Homer Ransford Watson was born on 14 January 1855, in Doon, Ontario, the second of Ransford and Susan Mohr Watson's five children.
Homer Watson, On the River at Doon, 1885, oil on canvas, 61 x 91.6 cm, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. In early 1882, the twenty-seven-year-old Wilde undertook what developed into a year-long lecture tour of the United States and Canada. He addressed audiences on the subjects of Aestheticism and the importance of beauty in daily life. Wilde had yet to establish a reputation as an author, and his mannerisms and exotic clothing provoked ridicule, but the tour was a commercial success.
14" Gallery Art Canvas: Bold And Brash Framed Painting Squidward Spongebob
As a gift for Queen Victoria, Watson was able to purchase the home and its land in 1883. By 1893 he had added a studio, featuring a frieze displaying the names and small paintings inspired by European artists he admired. The year 1906 saw more changes to the house, when a gallery was added to display Watson’s art.
Homer Watson, The Last of the Drouth , 1881, oil on canvas, 92.1 x 138.5 cm, Royal Collection Trust, Windsor Castle, Berkshire. Homer Watson, On the Mohawk River, 1878, oil on canvas, 64.8 x 86.4 cm, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto. Two stamps of denominations 50 and 85 cents were issued depicting two of his works, Dawn in the Laurentides and The Flood Gates. An arterial road in Kitchener, which connects the Doon area to the main parts of the city, is named Homer Watson Boulevard.
Watson moved to England in 1887 for three years (1887–1890), and further established his reputation. Over the next few years, his works became increasingly popular among collectors and received prizes at expositions across North America. In 1904, he won a bronze medal at the Canadian exhibition at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, Missouri.
During that time he had moved from landscapes characterized by dark, chromatically restricted hues to views in which lighter but often puzzling reddish tonalities were increasingly present. Some one hundred paintings were shown at The Jenkins Art Gallery, and half of them found purchasers. In 1855 Homer Watson, one of Canada's first internationally recognized artists, was born in the village of Upper Doon, in a small house still standing at the corner of Tilt Drive and Doon Village Road. Though there was no art instruction in the village the young Watson developed his skills in drawing and painting at an early age, encouraged by an aunt who gave him a set of paints.
Without ever having seen Barbizon,” referring to the French artists who had worked in and around the village of that name. Constable and the Barbizon painters were highly popular with North American and European audiences, and Wilde’s comments gave Watson’s career another boost. The two men did not meet in person until Watson’s first sojourn in Britain a few years later. In the meantime, however, spurred by his admiration of Flitting Shadows, Wilde commissioned Watson to make paintings for himself and for two American acquaintances. Homer Ransford Watson (1855–1936) has been characterized as someone who, in the nineteenth century, first portrayed the surrounding landscape as specifically Canadian, rather than as a pastiche of European influences. His art documents the centrality of the pioneer legacy to Ontario’s sense of historical identity and crucially emphasizes the importance of environmentalist approaches to the landscape.
Using illustrations in the books of his father's library as teaching examples he learned how to describe the world around him in sketches and in finished oils. In 1981, the City of Kitchener purchased the historic house from Ruthe Cayley to ensure its long-term survival. The Homer Watson house continues to this day as a place for the enjoyment and practice of the arts, showcasing historic and contemporary exhibitions and artistic programming for all ages.
Revealing what looked like a modernized child’s arts and craft daycare centre. “Phoebe” visits so often that employees have settled on using her first name. They believe she just wants to be a part of the daily upkeep of the gallery. A psychic soiree of sorts was set to begin at the purportedly haunted Homer Watson House.
A small village founded in the 1830s at the junction of Schneider's Creek and the Grand River, Doon's earliest documented population was 150 in the 1871 census. Watson descended from German Mennonite settlers who arrived in Ontario in the early 19th century. His father, a mill and factory owner, died in 1861 when Watson was six years old. Following Ransford's death, the family's only source of income was Susan's work as a seamstress. Ransford left behind a library of books that Watson studied from and influenced his early drawings. He sought the advice of Thomas Mower Martin in Toronto, and moved there in 1874.
No comments:
Post a Comment