Artist, Designer, Educator, and Arts Advocate, George Agnew Reid Helped Create the Art World Canadians Enjoy Today

George Agnew Reid: Life & Work, a free, open-access online art book now available in English and French, celebrates the creative career of pioneering Ontario artist George Agnew Reid (1860–1947). A painter known primarily for his unflinching depictions of rural life, Reid was also a designer, an architect, a teacher, and a strong supporter of Canadian art and artists. He left a permanent stamp on the nation’s art scene––in many ways he helped to create it. Today, in the face of a tariff war with the United States, the political undertones of his paintings, notably Mortgaging the Homestead, 1890, have taken on a new relevance.

Written by Brian Foss, a distinguished educator and specialist in the visual arts in Canada from the nineteenth century to the present, George Agnew Reid: Life & Work is a comprehensive look at an amazingly versatile artist and arts advocate, one that will introduce him to new audiences. “Few figures of his generation,” says Foss, “made a more profound and wide-ranging impact on Canadian art, artists, and art institutions.”

An Artist in an Emerging Country
Born on a farm near Wingham, Ontario, in 1860, Reid wanted to be an artist from an early age, despite growing up in a family, and a country, that had little time for such refinements. Undaunted, he made his way to Toronto, where in 1878, he enrolled in the newly founded Ontario School of Art (today OCAD University). Eager to refine his skills, he went on to study at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts in 1882 under the renowned artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916). Later, Reid’s educational pursuits took him to Paris, where he was exposed first-hand to how art could be used in service to civic life.

Capturing a Vanishing Canada
By the late 1880s and early 1890s, working in Toronto alongside his wife, artist Mary Hiester Reid (1854–1921), George Agnew Reid was making his critical and commercial mark as a technically accomplished painter of rural genre scenes. Depicting a way of life that by this time was already disappearing, his works offered viewers a simplicity and wholesomeness that urban life seemed to lack.

But Reid was no sentimentalist. In paintings such as Mortgaging the Homestead, for example, he captured the hardships of rural life, and the mood of despondency that comes with the end of dreams—feelings he knew first-hand from childhood. So powerful was the painting’s message that both Liberals and Conservatives used it in political advertisements for the 1891 federal election, during which the question of free trade with the United States was a hot-button issue.

A Champion of All the Arts
Reid’s artistic practice extended far beyond easel painting. A fierce champion of public art, he was an enthusiastic advocate for mural work, inspired by what he had seen in his student days in Paris. Murals were, he believed, a way that the beauty of visual art could be enjoyed by a larger audience. Some of his own civic works can still be seen today, for instance in the entrance hallway of Toronto’s Municipal Buildings (Old City Hall). Influenced by William Morris (1834–1896) and the British Arts and Crafts movement, Reid turned his hand to design and architecture.

A Lasting Legacy
Reid can also claim credit for his work in helping develop much of the institutional infrastructure that created a scene for art in Canada, and indeed still underpins it today. He served as president of the Ontario Society of Artists and later as head of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. A long-time art teacher, Reid became president of the Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in 1912, guiding its development well into the late 1920s, and even designing its new building. At his death in 1947, the Canadian art world had matured greatly from the days of his youth—in no small part thanks to him. “As well as creating a lasting body of work,” says Sara Angel, Founder and Executive Director of the Art Canada Institute, “George Agnew Reid gave us the gift of his passion and enthusiasm for Canada and Canadian art that we so need today.”

George Agnew Reid: Life & Work forwards ACI’s mission to create a central digital resource to share Canada’s most important artists, and works of art, with the world. To date, ACI has published sixty-nine expert-authored digital books that are available free of charge. As well, the Art Canada Institute develops Canada’s only comprehensive art education guides for teachers and students from kindergarten to grade 12—content that is also free and available online and serves over 700,000 educators.

To explore the Art Canada Institute’s open-access digital book George Agnew Reid: Life & Work by Brian Foss, please visit: https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/george-agnew-reid/

For media requests or for interviews with:

• Brian Foss, author of George Agnew Reid: Life & Work
• Sara Angel, Executive Director, Art Canada Institute

please contact: media@aci-iac.ca

For images cleared for copyright and image credits, please see the gallery at the end of the release.

About Brian Foss
Brian Foss is Chancellor’s Professor Emeritus, and Distinguished Research Professor, Art and Architectural History at Carleton University in Ottawa. A specialist in the visual arts in Canada from the last decades of the nineteenth century to the present, he co-edited The Visual Arts in Canada: The Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2010) and has curated or co-curated such exhibitions as Quiet Harmony: The Art of Mary Hiester Reid (Art Gallery of Ontario, 2000), Edwin Holgate (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2005), and 1920s Modernism in Montreal: The Beaver Hall Group (MMFA, 2016). His previous online art book for the Art Canada Institute is Homer Watson: Life & Work (2019). Foss is currently co-curating with Jacques Des Rochers and Elisabeth Otto an exhibition of the 1930s and 1940s work of Louis Muhlstock for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (2027).

About the Art Canada Institute
The Art Canada Institute is the only national institution whose mandate is to promote the study of an inclusive, multi-vocal Canadian art history to as broad an audience as possible, on a digital platform, and free of charge in both English and French, across Canada and internationally. To accomplish this, ACI works with Canada’s leading cultural institutions, art historians, curators, and visual culture experts, and is dedicated to the creation of authoritative original content on the people, themes, and topics that have defined Canadian art history.

To learn more about ACI and to access our free digital library, please visit us!
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IMAGES
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IMAGE CAPTIONS & CREDITS

The images below are available for media use only and may be reproduced only in content pertaining to George Agnew Reid: Life & Work.
 

1. George Agnew Reid, The Call to Dinner, 1886–87, oil on canvas, 121.6 x 179.8 cm. Collection of McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, gift of Moulton College, 1954. Courtesy of McMaster Museum of Art. Photo credit: John Tamblyn.
   
2. George Agnew Reid, Mortgaging the Homestead, 1890, oil on canvas, 130.1 x 213.3 cm. Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Royal Canadian Academy of Arts diploma work, deposited by the artist, Toronto, 1890 (86). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada. Photo credit: NGC.
   
3. George Agnew Reid, Mary Hiester Reid, 1898, oil on canvas, 76.8 x 64.1 cm. Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, gift of Mary Wrinch Reid, Toronto, 1954 (53/36). Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Canada. Photo © AGO.
   
4. George Agnew Reid, Hail to the Pioneers, Their Names and Deeds Remembered and Forgotten We Honour Here, 1898–99, restored in 1929, oil on canvas mounted on stone wall, consisting of The Arrival of the Pioneers, 213.4 x 426.7 cm; Staking a Pioneer Farm, 213.4 x 518.2 cm; and four allegorical figures, Municipal Buildings (Old City Hall), Toronto. This image depicts a component of Hail to the Pioneers entitled Staking a Pioneer Farm. Photo credit: Toni Hafkenscheid.
   
5. George Agnew Reid, Logging, 1888, oil on canvas, 107.4 x 194 x 2.3 cm. Collection of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, transfer from Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada, 2011, gift of Brig. Gen. W.F. Sweny, CMG, DSO, in memory of his father Col. George A. Sweny, 1938 (45392). Courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada. Photo credit: NGC.
   
6. George Agnew Reid, Upland Cottage, 1906–8, Wychwood Park, Toronto. Courtesy of Chung Po Bau. Photo credit: Chung Po Bau.
   
7. George Agnew Reid, Women Operators, 1919, oil on canvas, 122.8 x 168.2 cm. Collection of the Canadian War Museum, Ottawa (19710261-0551). Courtesy of the Canadian War Museum.
   
8. George Agnew Reid, The Valley of the Agawa, 1932, oil on canvas, 101.6 x 127 cm. Government of Ontario Art Collection (619839). Courtesy of the Government of Ontario Art Collection.
   
9. George Agnew Reid, Drawing Lots, 1888–1902, oil on canvas, overall (framed triptych): 118.2 x 319.8 cm. Collection of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, gift of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, Toronto, 1995 (95/357). Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo © AGO.
   
10. George Agnew Reid, Toronto Bay, 1886–87, oil on painting, 55.6 x 138.5 cm. Baldwin Collection of Canadiana, Toronto Public Library, gift of J. Ross Robertson (JRR4694). Courtesy of the Toronto Public Library.
    
11. George Agnew Reid, Page 274 of Scrapbook Volume 1 (detail): Sketch for Parliament Buildings murals, c.1907. George Reid fonds, Edward P. Taylor Library and Archives, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, gift of Mary Wrinch Reid, 1957. Courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ontario. Photo © AGO.
    
12. George Agnew Reid, RCA, OSA, 1907. Photograph by William James. City of Toronto Archives, Toronto. Courtesy of the City of Toronto Archives.
    
13. Brian Foss, author of George Agnew Reid: Life & Work.
    
14. Cover of George Agnew Reid: Life & Work, by Brian Foss.
    

Contact Information

Sara Angel

Founder and Executive Director

Art Canada Institute

Contact via E-mail