Maria Olivia Hewson Guest
(1880 - 1996)

Maria Guest Biography
(1880 - 1996)

Born in Oxham, Nova Scotia in 1880, she attended Mount Allison College and studied art in Boston and New York. She later attended the Yellow Door School in London, England, and from 1917 to 1919 taught painting and crafts at Mount Allison College. She married journalist Henry Benson Guest (1878-1954), moved to Winnipeg in 1919, and had two children: Henry Hewson “Harry” Guest and Muriel Elizabeth Guest (1923-2012). She began exhibiting again in 1927, becoming one of Winnipeg’s major female painters until the 1940s, noted for her Manitoba landscapes. She was a member of Young United Church, Manitoba Society of Artists, and Women’s Canadian Club of Winnipeg. She died at the Princess Elizabeth Hospital on 28 June 1966 and was buried in the Brookside Cemetery. A retrospective exhibition of her art was held in 1991. See the exhibition catalogue, “A Winnipeg History: The Art of Marie Guest, 1880-1966”.

Source: Manitoba Historical Society Website