In her painting “Girl in a Dutch Bonnet”, Laura Muntz Lyall celebrated a charming young subject, absorbed in thought, who wears traditional Dutch headgear from the picturesque village of Rijsoord in the southern Netherlands. Here, during the summers of 1894 to 1899, Laura Muntz Lyall (then Laura Muntz) and her fellow painter, the American Wilhelmina Hawley (1860-1958), enjoyed painting. Rijsoord was, to their eyes, almost unbelievably, a centre with a “living past”, visible in the distinctive costume of the inhabitants.
Muntz and Hawley had met at the Académie Colarossi in Paris which both attended, Muntz as a student, Hawley as a teacher. They had become fast friends and in the summer of 1893, they travelled to Moret-sur-Loing, the popular artists’ colony near Barbizon, to paint. There, at their garden studio, a nearby neighbor, the famous artist James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), frequently visited them. Muntz and Hawley would have soaked up what he told them about colour and light and the importance of painting detail in costume – so different from the teaching at their school. Likely due to his influence, Muntz began to pay more attention to items of apparel in her work, especially bonnets, hats or caps as in “Child with Green Bowl” (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1893). They discovered Rijsoord later that year.
In “Girl in a Dutch Bonnet” of 1899, Muntz painted headgear she had used before both in a drawing and her important canvas “Dis-moi? (The Lesson)” (1895), shown at the Société des Artistes Français in Paris and reproduced in the French periodical “L`Illustration”. But the difference between “Dis-moi?” and this work is instructive. Now, her confident handling of paint and the effect of light on both head covering and face, gives her creation a sense of freshness and immediacy. It comes as no surprise that “Girl in a Dutch Bonnet” was done two years after what is arguably the best work in her oeuvre, the highly praised “The Pink Dress”.
By 1899, Muntz was a professional artist, painting and giving classes on art in Toronto. She had returned to Canada in 1898, accompanied by her friend Hawley, because of a disappointment in love. Instead of dwelling on her unhappiness, she sublimated her feelings in theme - childhood. It inspired her, as it had other artists in Canada such as Paul Peel and William Brymner. But in her special interpretation of the subject, she fused the handling of light and broken tone characteristic of Impressionism with a delighted response to the children themselves.
In the summer of 1899, the pair went back to Rijsoord, the scene of some of their happiest memories, to paint. They would have stopped off in Paris and painted afterwards. Perhaps Muntz took leave of Hawley there because she came back to Canada alone. Her return was reported in “Saturday Night” magazine at the end of September. In December, she exhibited works titled “Dutch Studies” in the Women`s Art Exhibition in Saint John, New Brunswick. Muntz does not seem to have exhibited “Girl in a Dutch Bonnet”. Her Dutch subjects of children of that date were described by a reviewer in “Saturday Night” as “vivid, pronounced, and living”, words which seem to describe the painting although it was not among the paintings the reviewer saw in the exhibition she reviewed. Perhaps Muntz already had sold it or she kept it for herself. Sometime later, she signed it a second time at upper left, but she remembered that she painted it when she was unmarried (she married in 1915), and signed it not “Lyall” but “Muntz”.
Laura Muntz Lyall was an artist who looked to the past and reframed it to fit the present. Rijsoord in the Netherlands was a village that seemed - in costume and customs - to live in the past but lived a vibrant life in the present. Muntz gloried in children everywhere and their half-dreaming adventures, translating their moods with a reverence for craftsmanship. She combined the two in this striking portrait. Ultimately, with her unique ability, she became the foremost among painters of childhood of her day in Canada.
We extend our thanks to Joan Murray, Canadian art historian, for contributing the preceding essay.
