"Peter Clapham Sheppard was a retiring, elusive artist whose skill and vision, untouched by the noisy nationalism of some of his peers, can now finally be properly celebrated in the remarkable artistic rediscovery that is unveiled in the pages of this book." -- Ross King 
 This book is a celebration of the rediscovery of the masterworks of Toronto-born Peter Clapham Sheppard (1879-1965), an artist who played a leading role in the founding of Canada's national school of art. A contemporary and colleague of the Group of Seven, he was one of the finest artists of his generation and his work is among the best in Canadian art. 
 The book is full of beautiful color reproduction of Sheppard's paintings, and his work shows a wide range of sources and influences. In the early years of the 20th century he was a Realist who captured the life and times of the city and people of Toronto. Later, he was inspired by the French Impressionists to capture with paint the effects of light and weather, particularly in winter, in urban settings, especially New York City. 
 Termed a "radical" in his early career, rather than being inspired by his friends and contemporaries in the Group of Seven, Sheppard looked to New York painters of the urban and industrial scenes for inspiration. He was a forceful painter of urban development which he interpreted as a metaphor of national growth and resilience during World War I. 
 He was skilled at drawing and painting the city, capturing the dynamism of urban life, but he also traveled into the woods and wilderness of Ontario, much like the Group of Seven, to paint scenes of woods and waterfalls. 
 Although he was widely exhibited in national and important international exhibitions of Canadian art in his early career, over the course of the last century Sheppard has fallen into the shadow cast by the Group of Seven. From occupying a place among a generation of artists who established a national school, he died in relative obscurity. 
 This book casts light on a unique talent, an artist of his times, whose art matched the quality of the Group, but found inspiration beyond the sources that inspired his more famous contemporaries. This book is the culmination of a 30-year effort to bring Sheppard's name and art to its rightful place in this country's art history.

Peter Clapham Sheppard: His Life and Work

Biographies & Memoirs

Smart, Tom

Arts & Literature

Firefly Books

An in-depth look at the life and work of one of Atlantic Canada's most respected artists.

Art of Fred Ross -OS

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Goose Lane Editions

Hardcover: 167 pagesPublisher: Goose Lane Editions; First Edition edition (June 1995)Language: EnglishISBN-10: 086492173XISBN-13: 978-0864921734

Art of Mary Pratt the Substance of Light

Mary Pratt told a Maclean's reporter that only concrete, real images are truly worth painting. Perhaps this is one reason why she has become an icon of mainstream contemporary art, with paintings reproduced in magazines such as Saturday Night, Chatelaine, Arts Atlantic and Canadian Art, and featured on billboards, in cookbooks, and on the covers of books and magazines. The Art of Mary Pratt: The Substance of Light is stunningly beautiful, informative, and a joy to read. Tom Smart relates Pratt's work to her life, tracing the history of her painting from her Fredericton childhood through her training at Mount Allison University, her marriage to Christopher Pratt, and the setbacks and breakthroughs of her career. Pratt cooperated enthusiastically in this venture, even allowing Smart to quote from her journals. The Art of Mary Pratt contains over 70 colour reproductions. These cover the full range of Pratt's works: from early impressionistic pieces to the eviscerated chickens and fish of the 1970s; and from figure studies of Donna, to sensuous paintings of fruit, to her latest watercolour and pastel interpretations of fire, blown snow, and waves crashing over a ship's deck.

The Art of Mary Pratt: The Substance of Light

Individual Artists

In 1945, Alex Colville, a young Canadian war artist from Amherst, Nova Scotia, was one of three painters admitted to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as it was being liberated. He would later become one of Canada&#146s most celebrated artists. In Alex Colville: Return, curator and writer Tom Smart suggests that, metaphorically and artistically, Colville has never stopped going back to the horrors that he witnessed in Germany. Designed to accompany a major exhibition of Colville&#146s recent paintings, prints, and drawings organized by the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Alex Colville: Return places Colville&#146s recent work in the broader context of the artist&#146s oeuvre. Beginning with his formation as an artist, Tom Smart suggests that the exacting naturalism and underlying sense of foreboding in Colville&#146s renderings of everyday life result, in part, from his experience of the Holocaust. Using recent paintings such as Embarkation &#401994) and Dressing Room &#402002&#41, Smart traces the evolution of Colvilleâ€™s contemporary work back to his earlier pieces, including the now famous Horse and Train &#401954) and Ocean Limited &#401962&#41. In this insightful and provocative book, featuring over 40 colour reproductions, Smart demonstrates that Colville&#146s images are more than superbly crafted depictions of a somewhat mythical world. These complexly coded works command the disorder and chaos of trauma into order, coherence, and closure. Today, the world is disrupted once again by the atrocities of war, and Smart&#146s assessment of the wounds behind Colville&#146s unique works of art resonates with special potency. In a subliminal way, art lovers have always understood that Colville&#146s images are not benign, comforting representations of the real world. For the first time, in Alex Colville: Return, Tom Smart gets to the bottom of this understanding, revealing the pentimento of Colville&#146s astonishing and gripping vision.

Alex Colville: Return

Miller Gore Brittain (1912-1968) had an unerring sense of structure and composition. In the early 1930s, at the Art Students' League in New York, he experienced the pivotal moment in American art: the shift from tradition to abstract expressionism. When he returned to Canada, the Group of Seven still defined Canadian art, and he burst upon the scene with emotion-filled drawings and paintings of the human form. Later, combining figuration and abstraction, he explored the limits of the body and the borderlands of sanity to express the depths of despair and the heights of ecstasy. World War II interrupted Brittain's career and on his bombing missions he carried William Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience with him. Blake's poetry, particularly "The Tyger," inspired the pervasive motif of Brittain's later career. At first a description of searchlights and shot-down aircraft, the star and spear motif later developed into iconic flowers and stems, heads and necks, sunbursts and smoke. In this illuminating and provocative book, Tom Smart examines the sweep of Brittain's work, his progression from social realism to abstraction and surrealism, while Allen Bentley shows the profound influence of Blake's thought in Brittain's painting and drawings.

Miller Brittain: When the Stars Threw Down Their Spears

Dans Miller Brittain : Quand les étoiles jetèrent leurs lances, Tom Smart démontre pour la première fois la cohésion de l'imagerie de Brittain et les liens entre le réalisme social de ses premières œuvres ultérieures, des abstractions figuratives et des compositions d'inspiration surréaliste. Miller Brittain a fait irruption sur la scène artistique canadienne à la fin des années 1930, avec ses dessins et ses peintures du corps humain temples d'émotion et admirablement exécutés. Pendant ses études à l'Art Students League, à New York, il avait intériorisé un point tournant de l'art américain, alors que les modes réalistes traditionnels étaient remis en question par une nouvelle génération d'artistes radicaux selon qui l'art se devait de refléter la vie de l'artiste et les conditions de vie des sujets représentés. À une époque où les paysages du Groupe des Sept dominaient la peinture canadienne, Brittain défia l'establishment avec son sens infallible de la ligne et de la composition, et ses récits humains attrayants. Plus tard, alliant l'art figurative et l'art abstrait, il explora les limites du corps et les confines de la raison afin d'exprimer les profondeurs du désespoir et les sommets de l'extase. Au cours de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Brittain s'enrôla dans l'Aviation royale du Canada, fut décoré de la Croix du service distingué dans l'Aviation et devint un artiste de guerre canadien. Quand il partait en mission de bombardement, il emportait avec lui un exemplaire des Chants d'expérience, de William Blake. Dans Miller Brittain : Quand les étoiles jetèrent leurs lances, Smart fait voir comment le célèbre poéme « Le tigre », de Blake, inspira le motif omniprésent dans les œuvres de Brittain après la guerre, c'est-à-dire la cominaison de l'étoile et de la lance. Ce qui au départ représentait des faisceaux de projecteurs et des avions abattus devint au fil des années des représentationsiconiques de fleurs et de tiges, de têtes et de cous, de rayons de soleil et de fumée. Allen Bentley appuie les observations de Smart en montrant la profonde influence exercée par les théories de Blake sur l'œuvre de Brittain dans l'après-guerre.

Miller Brittain: Quand les étoiles jetèrent leurs lances (French Edition)

For more than forty years, George McLean has lived in a stone farmhouse on 100 acres of land in Grey County, Ontario. On his daily walks, he looks for a moment that will inspire him — the first step in a process that can take up to a year to yield a single painting. McLean's densely layered depictions of the natural world emerge directly from his intense interest in wildlife. In this sumptuous book, Virginia Eichhorn, Adam Duncan Harris, and Tom Smart examine the development of McLean's art and trace his varied influences, from early 20th-century wildlife artists Carl Rungius and Bruno Liljefors to Andrew Wyeth. Connecting with past traditions while resonating with contemporary audiences, McLean's work, along with that of many realists before him, reflects a shared sense of what it means to be North American. Illustrated with more than 60 colour reproductions, the publication of George McLean: The Living Landscape coincides with the opening of an accompanying international touring exhibition of McLean's work at the Tom Thomson Gallery in Owen Sound.

George McLean: The Living Landscape

Harris, Adam Duncan

Eichhorn, Virginia

Winner, Redgees Legacy Award
Throughout photographer Freeman Patterson's remarkable decades-long career, his ambition has been to expose the spiritual, religious, and even mystical dimensions that lie beyond the literalness of the image itself. Patterson has continually strived to have viewers appreciate the compositional grammar and unique syntax of this visual art, pushing to transcend the picturesque qualities of the image and expand the viewing moment to a longer and more profound level of experience. For Patterson, life, the mind, and nature are fully a part of each other. Through images that both inspire and provoke, Freeman Patterson: Embracing Creation shows us that such inter-connectivity is the mechanism by which all things are affected; this is the fundamental concept that Patterson lives, believes, and expresses as art.

Freeman Patterson: Embracing Creation

Patterson, Freeman

What is the purpose of life? The purpose of art? What is the purpose of the artist? Jack Chambers probes these fundamental questions in his final piece of work – an unpublishable manuscript – 'Red and Green', now decrypted by author and curator Tom Smart.

Jack Chambers' Red and Green: Decrypted by Tom Smart

Porcupine's Quill

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Books by Smart, Tom