William Armstrong (artist)
| William Armstrong | |
|---|---|
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| A watercolour by William Armstrong, from the Thunder Bay Museum collection | |
| Born | 1822-07-28 Dublin, Ireland |
| Died | 1914-06 Toronto, Ontario |
| Occupation | Civil engineer, watercolourist, photographer, drawing teacher |
William Armstrong (28 July 1822 – June 1914) was an Irish-born Canadian civil engineer, watercolourist and early photographer. His paintings of Lake Superior and the Thunder Bay area, made from the 1860s, are among the earliest images of the region. He is not the William Armstrong who died in Fort William in 1945 (see William Armstrong).[1][2]
Life and career
Armstrong was born in Dublin, studied art in Ireland and trained in England as a railway engineer with the Midland Railway.[3] He emigrated to Toronto in 1851 and worked on early Canadian railways, which gave him chances to paint parts of the country not yet settled.[2] His watercolours of local events were reproduced as engravings in illustrated newspapers.[3]
In 1855 he started a photography and engineering business with his nephew Daniel Manders Beere, and Humphrey Lloyd Hime joined in 1857, forming Armstrong, Beere and Hime, which made a 360-degree panorama of Toronto in 1856–57; the firm closed in 1861.[3] Armstrong was one of the earliest users of the wet-plate collodion process in Canada, though few of his photographs survive.[2] He began teaching drawing at the Toronto Normal School in 1864, taught at the University of Toronto from 1872 to 1877, and continued teaching privately after retiring in 1897.[3] He was an associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts at its founding.[2] He died in Toronto in June 1914; sources give 8 or 9 June.[2][3]
Lake Superior and Thunder Bay
The Thunder Bay Museum's essay on Armstrong, by Thorold J. Tronrud, says that a trip to Lake Superior about 1859 changed his life. His partner Hime had visited a year earlier with the Hind expedition, and the rugged lake shore gave Armstrong material for a lifetime of work.[1] He also had practical reasons: in April 1860 he applied to the Canadian Department of Public Works for work placing marks and buoys on the route between Collingwood and Fort William, and he sought government work again in 1863 and 1871, offering drawings of the northwest route for a Pacific railway. In 1877 he offered his collection of original Lake Superior watercolours to the Department of Agriculture for the Paris Exhibition, and was turned down for lack of funds.[1]
He was also interested in minerals. He claimed to hold 120 acres with copper on the Kaministiquia River near Fort William, and both of his former partners had mining claims in the Thunder Bay District. He painted mine sites such as Herrick's Camp at Amethyst Harbour, the Shuniah Mine at Port Arthur and Mandelbaum's Camp.[1]
The museum's account of his travels is as follows:[1]
- He almost certainly first visited Fort William about 1859; sketches from that trip were later worked up as watercolours and presented to the Prince of Wales (they remain in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle).
- He visited again briefly in spring 1870, probably as one of the artists and onlookers who went with Wolseley's troops on the first leg of the Red River expedition. The museum says there is no evidence he took part directly in the expedition, as some have claimed; Wikipedia says he accompanied it.[3]
- The many Lake Superior, Nipigon and Thunder Bay paintings dated 1867 suggest a third visit about then.
- There is no evidence he went farther west than the Lakehead, or that he returned to Lake Superior after the early 1870s. The copies he made and sold until his death show the region as it was before industrialization, with no railways, towns or busy harbours.
Among his better-known works are The Arrival of the Prince of Wales at Toronto (1860), now in the National Gallery of Canada, and the watercolour Thunder Cape, Lake Superior (1867) in the national archives.[3] The Thunder Bay Museum holds original paintings by him; two are shown here.
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Further reading
- Janet E. Clark, Thorold J. Tronrud and Michael Bell, William Armstrong, 1822–1914: Watercolour Drawings of New Ontario, from Georgian Bay to Rat Portage (Thunder Bay: Thunder Bay Art Gallery, 1996).[1][3]
In Papers and Records (1967)
The 1967 article calls him a wandering artist whose works are in the local museum, father of the wife of Robert A. Ruttan.[4]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 Thunder Bay Museum, "William Armstrong (1822–1914)", by Thorold J. Tronrud, Historical Figures virtual exhibit. Original page; archived: datum.locker.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Marsh, James H., "William Armstrong", The Canadian Encyclopedia (Historica Canada). Original page; archived: datum.locker.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 "William Armstrong (Canadian artist)", Wikipedia. Original page; archived: datum.locker.
- ↑ Helen I. Strickland, "Art in Thunder Bay", Papers to 1967, Centennial issue (Thunder Bay Historical Society, 1967), p. 29. Archived: datum.locker.