Ernest Caven Atkins was born in London, Ontario in 1907. He studied in Chicago at Meyer Both Commercial Art School in 1924. From 1925 to 1928 he studied under Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald at the Winnipeg School of Art. He taught painting at Queen’s University in 1943 and at the Ontario College of Art in 1945. An authority on painting media he wrote an article for Canadian Art magazine on the cautions to be exercised when using wax, distemper, fresco, egg tempera, oil and watercolours.
He exhibited with the Canadian Group of Painters and was a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour of which he was a former president. He worked with the commercial art firm of Brigden’s with other local artists including Bertram Brooker and Charles Comfort. Atkins later taught at the Winnipeg School of Art. At the end of World War II he settled in Michigan, where he died in 2000. The National Gallery of Canada has in their collection some of his war industry paintings of the Second World War.
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume I: A-F", compiled by Colin S. MacDonald, Canadian Paperbacks Publishing Ltd, Ottawa, 1977
