This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| British army officers of the 18th century performed with pen as well as sword. Cadets were instructed in sketching, not to encourage fine art, but so they could draw readable picture of details of military operations. Davies was a British officer whose American and Canadian watercolors have established him as the father of Canadian landscape painting. As an officer, Davies had a distinguished career, but as an artist, Davies was almost unknown until 1953.
In his later watercolors, done after the American Revolution, Davies was obviously painting for pure delight. Often naive, he included at time vegetation and animals more at home in the Amazon (Davies also served in the tropics) than along the St. Lawrence River. At his best, he caught the primitive pioneer settlements, magnificant waterfalls, foaming rivers, the awesome virgin forests touched with the full richness of Canadian autumn, and recorded them with "a freshness and charm that extends deft draftsmanship into the realm of art".
Compiled and submitted August 2004 by Jean Ershler Schatz, artist and researcher from Laguna Woods, California.
Source:
Time Magazine, September 19, 1955 |
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