About this artist
Frederick W. Hutchison, RCA (1871 - 1953)
Frederick William Hutchison was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1871. He studied at the Art Association School of Montreal under William Brymner, the Chase School in New York City under William Chase and in Paris at the Julian Academy under Jean-Paul Laurens and Benjamin Constant. In 1905, he moved to New York City where he taught at the College of the City of New York, first as a tutor for the department of art in 1906, then as an instructor of art in 1908. By 1920 he was Art Supervisor of the Townsend Harris Hall School where he remained until his retirement in 1939. In the 1920’s he toured Europe with Clarence Gagnon.
Although Hutchison did some portraits, he preferred to paint colourful Canadian landscapes, especially the Hudson area and the Charlevoix County. While he was living and teaching in New York, he often returned to the family residence in Hudson Heights, where he settled permanently after he retired. During his lifetime he was represented in Montreal by three important commercial art galleries: W. Scott & Sons, the Stevens Art Gallery and Watson Art Galleries. He had several one-man exhibitions with each of them as well as at The Arts Club and the Art Association of Montreal. Hutchison received further public recognition with his election to the prestigious National Academy of Design in New York in 1935 and to the Royal Canadian Academy in 1937. Robert Pilot, R.C.A. wrote the introduction to the exhibition catalogue in which he noted. “The name F.W. Hutchinson evokes a picture of the colourful landscape of the Lower St. Lawrence, for this district was for many years the theme of most of his pictures. He belongs to that fine group of Canadian painters: Morrice, Cullen, Gagnon and Jackson, who so beautifully interpreted the French-Canadian countryside. He worked, as they did, amongst the smiling villages or beyond into the austere hinterland.”
He is represented in the following collections: National Academy of Design (Diploma work - "Mill on the Remy"), NYC; New York Athletic Club, NYC; Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; The Art Gallery of Ontario; the Provincial Museum of Quebec; The Engineer's Club, Montreal; the National Gallery of Canada (R.C.A. Diploma Collection); the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, N.B.; the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba; the Mount Royal Club, Montreal; and the McGill University, Montreal.
Source: "A Dictionary of Canadian Artists, Volume II”, compiled by Colin S. MacDonald.
Hutchison executed the canvas for this work at a pivotal time in his career. In 1906, the year Hutchison painted this work, he had just moved to New York, where he rose to prominence as a painter. Hutchison taught in New York during the fall and winter, and returned to Quebec each summer to paint. With its exuberant brushwork in brilliant colors, a highly distinctive depiction of the French Canadian countryside demonstrates Hutchison's proficiency as a painter. His affinity for the countryside is combined with a poet's romantic sense of nature: a harmonious vitality that transformed the canvas into visual poetry.