Kaspar Gallery, Toronto
Acquired by the present Private Collection, October 1985
Exhibited
“Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; travelling to Musée du Québec, Quebec City; Vancouver Art Gallery; Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon, 14 May 1988‒7 May 1989, no. 41
“Home Truths”, The Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; travelling to Mississauga Living Arts Centre; Rodman Hall, St. Catharines, 4 September 1997‒22 February 1998
“North By South: The Art of Peleg Franklin Brownell”, The Ottawa Art Gallery, 16 July‒13 September 1998
“Franklin Brownell Retrospective Exhibition”, Galerie Walter Klinkhoff, Montreal, 29 September‒13 October, 2007
“Canadian Art: A Child’s World”, Annual Loan Exhibition, Galerie Eric Klinkhoff, Montreal, 28 October‒11 November 2017, no. 7
“Our Children: Reflections of Childhood in Historical Canadian Art”, Varley Art Gallery, Markham, 13 April‒23 June 2019
Literature
Dennis Reid, “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Toronto, 1988, no. 41, reproduced page 48
Joan Murray, “Home Truths: A Celebration of Family Life by Canada’s Best‒Loved Painters”, Toronto, 1997, reproduced page 74 (plate 49)
Jim Burant and Robert Stacey, “North by South: The Art of Peleg Franklin Brownell (1857 – 1946)”, Ottawa, 1998, listed page 146
Franklin Brownell married Louise Nickerson on January 7th, 1889 in New Bedford, Massachusetts. She was ten years younger than Brownell, and had, like Brownell, been born and raised there. Their only child, a daughter named Lois, was born in December 1889. Brownell and his family appear to have remained in New Bedford until after 1891, as the family was not included in the 1891 Canada census. By 1892, they had moved permanently to Ottawa. Throughout his career, Brownell demonstrated his love for his wife and daughter through a series of paintings of domestic scenes and portraits, many of which remained in the family’s hands until after the death of his daughter in 1984. The National Gallery of Canada owns several of these works, including “Lamplight” (1893), “An Interesting Story” (1905), and “A Little Puritan” (1909).
The art historian William Gerdts has noted that Brownell’s figural works echo those produced by Boston School artists Frank Benson and Edmund Tarbell both in subject matter and in terms of colour and brushwork. Brownell’s skill lies in making such compositions both artistically complex while remaining wholly matter‒of‒fact in capturing the spirit of everyday life. In this work, the two figures, although not identified as such, include his adored daughter Lois as the central figure of a scene of domestic calm and tranquility, while his wife looks on, book in hand, directing her eyes towards the unseen viewer. The painting itself is extremely complex in its structure, and includes a wealth of detail, from the lively patterns in the side table cloth, the carpeted floor, and the flowers in Lois’s lap and in the vase itself. As a painting, this work is a masterpiece in terms of both its subject matter and execution, including two of the major artistic classifications, acting as both a genre painting and a still life.
We extend our thanks to Jim Burant, art historian and curator, for contributing the preceding essay. He spent four decades with the art and photo holdings of Library and Archives Canada. He has organized or co‒organized many exhibitions and has written and lectured widely about aspects of Canada’s visual heritage, his most recent publication being about the History of Art in Ottawa, published by the Art Canada Institute. He was awarded the Queen’s Golden Jubilee Medal for services to Canada in 2002, and is a member of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation.
