Young Girl with Flowers (Elaine), 1927

The Carroll Gallery, Toronto The Framing Gallery, Toronto Acquired by the present Private Collection, circa 1966

“From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada”, Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, 12 December 1975‒1 February 1976, no. 25 as “Elaine” “Home Truths”, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; travelling to Mississauga Library Arts Centre; Rodman Hall, Saint Catharines, 4 September 1997–22 February 1998 “Our Children: Reflections of Childhood in Historical Canadian Art”, Varley Art Gallery, Markham, Ontario, 13 April–23 June 2019

Nathalie Luckyj and Dorothy Farr, “From Women’s Eyes: Women Painters in Canada”, Kingston, 1975, no. 25, reproduced page 28 Joan Murray, “Home Truths”, Toronto, 1997, plate 51, reproduced page 76 “MagazinArt”, vol. 14 (Winter 2001), plate 51, reproduced page 124 A.K. Prakash, “Independent Spirits: Early Canadian Women Artists”, Toronto, 2008, pages 46 and 48 Joan Murray, “Laura Muntz Lyall: Impressions of Women and Childhood,” Montreal/Kingston, 2012, pages 28 and 139, reproduced page 112 A.K. Prakash, “Impressionism in Canada: A Journey of Rediscovery”, Stuttgart, 2015, plate 12.15, reproduced page 436

Laura Muntz shines as a portraitist with the creative and technical prowess to unveil the subject's inner nature. There is a dreamlike quality to her work, exemplified by her focus on light and colour and methodical dismissal of unnecessary detail. “[Muntz] has the sense of the motions and instinctive graces of childhood. She translates them with an insight and a touch unspoiled by sentimental preciosity, relieved by the freshest of colouring, the freest, the most ethereal, and the most supple technique.” In Elaine, Muntz has employed a simplified colour palette of repeating greens and earth tones, applied in sheer, layered strokes, creating a delicate portrait of a young girl. Laura Muntz was first exposed to the tenets of Impressionism while undertaking artistic training in Paris from 1891-1898. She then adopted the use of light and open, fluid brushwork in her own compositions, as exemplified in “Elaine”. Muntz was genuinely interested in the aesthetic representation of children and had a kinship with her young subjects. As Joan Murray remarks, “With children, she was always at ease. Meeting them, she immediately won their affection or adoration… She calmed some of those who sat for painting sessions by letting them join in the process.” Although childless herself, Muntz lived a life surrounded by children. She was a school teacher upon moving to Canada and, later, the caregiver of her deceased sister's eleven children. Muntz painted portraits of women and children many years prior to her responsibilities to her sister's children, however, this dramatic turn of events must have further thrust Muntz into the study of her most cherished subjects. Her preoccupation with domestic scenes is also of historical significance as an entry point to the female experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Canada.