Emanuel Otto Hahn
(1881 - 1957)

E.O. Hahn Biography
(1881 - 1957)

Born in Reutlingen, Wurtenburg, Germany, his father was Dr. Otto Hahn, Lawyer and scientist who worked for many years in encouraging German immigrants to settle in Canada. Interested himself in the Canadian North country, Dr. Hahn, a geologist, moved with his family to Toronto in 1888. Emmanuel Hahn attended the Central Ontario School of Art and Design where he studied design under Gustave Hahm his elder brother. In 1903 his father returned to Germany to see his relatives and took him along and he was able to study at the Kunstgewerbeschule and the Kunstakademie-und-Polytechnikum at Stuttgart where he won three scholarships. He travelled in Europe and then returned to Canada. He taught at the Central Technical School and in 1910 was also appointed instructor at the Ontario College of Art. In 1922 he became Head of the Department of Sculpture at the Ontario College of Art.

When he married Elizabeth Wyn Wood in 1926 they spent their honeymoon on a canoe trip in a northern lake. Hahn’s love of the north country was reflected in his art, his subjects being of northern animals, Indians, canoes and glimpses of northern landscapes especially to be seen in his Canadian coins. A small clipping from the ’Toronto Telegram’ in 1932 told of his visit to the Jack Miner Bird Sanctuary at Kingsville when he gathered some clay out of the pond where the geese congregated, took it to Toronto and modelled into a series of small geese, put them into the kiln at the College of Art and created a group of statuettes unique by their close association with their subjects.

Hahn was one of the three sculptors behind the formation of the Sculptor’s Society of Canada in 1928. Hahn became the society’s first president that year. He was successful in the competition for the design of the Edward Hanlan memorial held by the City of Toronto. His next large commission was received again from the City of Toronto for the Sir Adam Beck memorial. Hahn’s many commissions included his designs for a number of Canadian coins and medals.

In sculpture he did one of the most beautiful of his creations, the head and shoulders of his wife entitled “Head of Elizabeth Wyn Wood”. This work, done in marble, was acquired by the National Gallery of Canada in 1928, and a replica of it was acquired by the Art Gallery of Toronto in 1929. Also his head of Vilhjalmur Stefansson was acquired by the National Gallery in 1920, a powerful and sympathetic work of this Canadian anthropologist and explorer. Hahn is also represented in the Gallery by several other works and in Toronto at the Royal Ontario Museum by the head of an Indian.

One of his private commissions was for Mr. Lionel F. Vutten in memory of his wife Annie Rowena Cutten and her sister Mrs. Helen Gertrude Moneur. This monument, in the Mount Pleasant Cemetery, Toronto, depicts both women seated facing one another. Hahn took part in one of the largest sculptural projects in Toronto for the Bank of Montreal at the corner of King and Bay Streets. Each artist did two panels symbolic of the regions of Canada. Hahn did a panel on the Northwest Territories and a panel on the Arctic.

Emanual Hahn made a great contribution to Canadian sculpture both in his work and his teaching. He died in Toronto at the age of 76. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy (A.R.C.A. 1927, R.C.A. 1930) and the Ontario Society of Artists (1925). His wife died in 1966.

Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1979