The Little Red Head (1903), 1903

Hon. A.G. Blair, 1903 Hundred Antiques, Toronto Acquired by the present Private Collection, circa 1964

“Twenty-Fourth Annual Exhibition of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts”, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, April 1903, no. 173 “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. 45

Dennis Reid, “Collector’s Canada: Selections from a Toronto Private Collection”, Toronto, 1988, no. 45, reproduced page 52 Joan Murray, “Laura Muntz Lyall: Impressions of Women and Childhood”, Montreal/Kingston, 2012, page 31, reproduced page 28

“The Little Red Head” is a dazzling portrayal of a young red-headed girl, lost in thought. She is depicted close-up and from an unusual angle that suggests individuality and even intimacy, with her hair hanging loose, creating a soft frame for her face. Absorbed, she seems lost in thought. In the first decade of the twentieth century, Laura Muntz Lyall, who had been painting since the 1890s, was recognized by a sizable audience among collectors and the public as the premier Canadian portraitist of childhood. From the first, her portraits of children were equalled by few other painters among the Canadians for their sympathy and warmth. But this young girl is shown by the artist with what seems to be unusual feeling. The image certainly preoccupied Muntz. She used a three-quarter length pose of the girl with her head looking directly at the viewer in a portrait of a young musician titled “Inspiration” (1902), a half-length pose from the opposite direction in “Portrait of a Red-Headed Girl” (1902) and she repeated the composition of The Little Red Head, though with dark hair, in “Study of a Head” (1904). There are echoes of the subject and sketch even in later years in such works as the head of the spell-binding girl in her tour-de-force “Oriental Poppies” (c. 1915, Art Gallery of Ontario). We know from the subject herself who it was that posed for the girl “with the Titian-colored hair”: it was Lyall`s niece Elizabeth Muntz (1894-1977). Elizabeth became an artist herself, a distinguished painter and sculptor, and later wrote about her aunt from her home, Apple Tree Cottage, near Dorchester, Dorset, England, saying: “…Yes I posed (after a fashion) …. I say “after a fashion” because so often she would show me a picture & say “you didn`t know I was painting you that day? I painted you in my head & put it out of my head onto the canvas after you had gone.” Elizabeth recalled posing for her aunt from the time she was eight years old. Yet even the most adoring of relations does not get the kind of loving treatment Lyall gave Elizabeth. If we compare the sketch from life of Elizabeth with “The Little Red Head”, we can see that Lyall made a gawky school girl into a dreamy princess. She must have seen in the child the future person, the artist, perhaps idealized but nonetheless beautiful. Lyall found in her niece, even at a young age, a soul-mate. She was a very lonely person, as her niece knew. Lyall only married late in life in 1915 and she married a man her niece felt was unsuitable and the marriage “disastrous.” But all of this was way ahead of 1902 when she painted her favorite niece in her painting Inspiration, looking truly inspired as Lyall was herself – and Lyall was happy. She was working in the same building as her friends and former teachers G. A. Reid and his wife, Mary Hiester Reid, the Yonge St. Arcade. She was praised by critics for the works she showed in the exhibitions of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, the Ontario Society of Artists and the Art Association of Montreal. It was said of the musician in “Inspiration” (critics thought it was a young man), “love speaks in his eyes”. In a sure signal of her success, the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts exhibition of 1903 sold “The Little Red Head” to the Hon. A. G. Blair from, as reported the Ottawa Citizen on April 25 of that year. Andrew George Blair PC KC (1844 –1907) was a Canadian politician in New Brunswick, Canada and served as the seventh premier of New Brunswick for 13 years and 136 days, the second-longest tenure in the province's history. Lyall must have been pleased. The sale to such a famous man must have made her feel as though her life was all coming together, as people say now when they feel confident of success. The use of her young niece as a model in her many poses was Lyall`s good luck charm. Re-using the image affected her attitude and made her do better, more imaginative work as we can see from “The Little Red Head”. Lyall`s brush reveals her subject`s beauty and gives her dignity in the often-overlooked story of women`s lives of the early twentieth century. We extend our thanks to Joan Murray, Canadian art historian, for contributing the preceding essay.