“Our Children: Reflections of Childhood in Historical Canadian Art”, Varley Art Gallery, Markham, 13 April-23 June 2019
William Cutts was largely a self‒taught painter, born of British parents in Allahabad, India. He moved to England and studied painting for a short period. Here he was greatly influenced by European artistic techniques, copying the Old Masters and their traditional painting conventions. In 1870 Cutts emigrated to Canada, residing in Stratford, Ontario with his mother and stepfather before settling in Toronto. Executed in 1888, “Portrait of Winnifred” depicts his daughter from his first marriage, Winnifred Ella Louise. Positioned in front of a staged, pastoral background and holding fruit as a prop, Winnifred appears angelic and innocent. A wide brimmed hat frames her delicate facial features and long golden hair. This work demonstrates Cutts’ artistic skill, while exemplifying his daughter’s patience and good humour to pose in this staged stance. Portraiture was a highly popular painting form in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from staged commissions to leisure portraits. Cutts both recorded his young child’s sweetness in this composition and practiced technically capturing the likeness of a sitter in portrait form. Cutts continued to grow as a professional painter in Canadian artistic circles and would soon join the newly founded Royal Canadian Academy and the Ontario Society of Artists‒marked signs of his development as an important player in the emerging circle of professional Canadian artists.
