The Beaverbrook Art Gallery Figures...

 Female Nudes
in the Collection of
The Beaverbrook Art Gallery,
Musee des Beaux Arts Beaverton,
the provincial art gallery of New Brunswick,
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada

The Beaverbrook Art Gallery and a significant art collection were given to the people of New Brunswick by Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Max Aitken, at the opening on September 16, 1959. The son of a Presbyterian minister in Miramichi, New Brunswick, Max Aitken enjoyed early success in Canadian business. In 1910, he left Canada for England, where he was knighted and elected a Member of Parliament, eventually serving as Minister of Aircraft Production in Churchill's wartime government. In 1916, Sir Max established the Canadian War Memorials Fund to commission official war artists to paint the Canadian war effort. These artists included three future members of the Group of Seven: A.Y. Jackson, Frederick Varley, and Arthur Lismer.

In creating a world-class collection for the gallery, Sir Max consulted with international art experts to advise him on key acquisitions and encouraged colleagues and acquaintances to donate paintings. The original collection included works by J.M.W. Turner, John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Edwin Henry Landseer, and works by modern artists such as Augustus John, William Orpen, Graham Sutherland, and Lucian Freud. Famous Canadian artists such as Cornelius Krieghoff, Emily Carr, and members of the Group of Seven were among the collection, as were works by Salvador Dali. In 1994, the Beaverbrook was officially designated the provincial art gallery of New Brunswick.

The Museum's website is HERE.

1
Reclining Female Nude #1
Matthew Arnold Bracy Smith (1879-1959), British
Oil on canvas, 29" x 20" (w x h), circa 1925
Gift of The Beaverbrook Foundation

Sir Matthew Smith, CBE (1879-1959) was a British painter of nudes, still-lifes and landscapes. He studied design at the Manchester School of Art and art at the Slade School of Art. Smith studied under Henri Matisse in Paris and acquired an interest in Fauvism. Smith met fellow artist Gwen Salmond in 1907 in Whitby and she became his "greatest mentor". They married and had two sons together. The marriage was short. Smith left his wife and sons because he felt that they were "stifling his career." It was Gwen Salmond who raised the boys, Frederic Mark Smith and Dermott Smith, born in 1915 and 1916 respectively. They both would die while serving in the Royal Air Force during World War II.

During World War I, Smith was wounded at the Battle of Passchendaele. Early in the twenties the normal shortcomings of his health allied plus the sense of something unfulfilled in his personal life produced a serious breakdown. It wasn't until he found Vera Cuningham, the ideal model for his art, that he recovered and redoubled his ability to work. His first one-person show was at Tooth's Gallery, London, in 1926. His work reflects use of color in a bold manner echoing the Fauves. He had shows at London Group, the Carnegie International Exhibition, Lefevre Gallery, and Mayor Gallery. His works were bought by Roger Fry and the Tate Gallery. In 1944, The Penguin Modern Painters paperback series printed an illustrated biography written by Philip Hendy which included his works. In 1949, Smith was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was knighted in 1954. Smith lived, worked, and exhibited in England and France.

2
Model at Rest
Moe Reinblatt (1917-1979), Canadian
Oil on canvas, 27" x 36" (w x h), 1957
Gift of Lillian Reinblatt

Moses "Moe" Reinblatt (1917-1979) was a Canadian painter, printmaker, sculptor, and art teacher. Besides figurative and still life works, Reinblatt painted landscapes. He was associated with the Jewish Painters of Montreal. In August 1944 he was appointed an official war artist, and was sent to document the Canadian war effort in England. After the War, he studied at Art Association of Montreal's School of Fine Arts and Design and two years later he began teaching drawing and printmaking at the School alongside Arthur Lismer, member of the noted Group of Seven. It was a position Moe Reinblatt held for over twenty years. He also organized art classes at the YM-YWHA between 1946 and 1957, and taught at the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts from 1967.

A retrospective of Reinblatt's work was exhibited at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal Gallery in 1990. His paintings are represented in numerous museums across Canada, including the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian War Museum, the Musee National des beaux-arts du Quebec, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the McCord Museum, and the New Brunswick Museum, as well as the Bezalel Museum in Israel. Reinblatt won the Rolph-Clarke-Stone Award for the most distinguished print in the 1947 Canadian Society of Graphic Art Annual Exhibition, for his drypoint The Drinker. He won the Adrian Seguin Memorial Award for his work Girl's Head with Bow in 1958, and the C. W. Jefferys Award for his work Acrobats in 1962. He received the Canadian Centennial Medal in 1968.

3
Fisher's Maid
Christopher Pratt (1935-2022), Canadian
Serigraph on paper, 15" x 12" (w x h), 1978
Gift of Jim Coutts in memory of Peter McCain

John Christopher Pratt CC ONL RCA (1935-2022) was one of Canada's most prominent painters and printmakers. In addition to a body of highly acclaimed paintings, prints, drawings and writing, he designed the flag of Newfoundland and Labrador. He was a student of Alexander Colville (#6 below), proponent of realism, at Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick.

4
Night Nude: At Shediac
(Parlee Beach in the town of Shediac, New Brunswick)
Christopher Pratt (1935-2022), Canadian
Oil on board, 17" x 16" (w x h), circa 1970-2010
Gift of the Artist

Christopher Pratt became an associate of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts (ARCA) and a member of the Canadian Society of Graphic Art in 1965, at the age of 30. Eight years later, he was appointed an officer of the Order of Canada, before becoming a companion of the Order in 1983. He was awarded the Order of Newfoundland and Labrador in 2018. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Memorial University of Newfoundland in 1972. In 2018, Pratt was the subject of Kenneth J. Harvey's documentary film Immaculate Memories: The Uncluttered Worlds of Christopher Pratt.

5
Seated Nude on Beach
Jack Humphrey (1901-1967), Canadian
Oil on paper, 40" x 33" (w x h), circa 1965-1966
The Leslie B. Marcus Collection

Jack Weldon Humphrey (1901-1967) was a highly prominent Canadian painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He was a Canadian landscape and figure painter, mainly in watercolor. "His works are included in most exhibitions that examine 20th Century Canadian art and Canadian modern art. Dozens of examples are also in the permanent collections of Canadian museums. Born in St. John, New Brunswick, where he lived most of his life, he died suddenly at 66 years-old of a heart attack at the height of his career. Art historian J. Russell Harper called Humphrey the "most significant eastern Canadian painter of his generation."

6
Nudes on Shore
Alex Colville (1920-2013), Canadian
Tempera on Masonite, 38" x 24" (w x h), 1950
Gift of Lord Beaverbrook

David Alexander Colville, PC, CC, ONS, LL. D. (1920-2013) was a Canadian painter and printmaker. He graduated with his BFA from Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick, in 1942, He served in the second ward and in 1944 was made an Official Second World War artist. He was tasked with depicting the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Colville's painting Bodies in a Grave (1946), a scene of emaciated corpses in a Bergen-Belsen burial pit, is based on images he captured with his army-issue camera at the concentration camp. He taught art at his alma mater Mount Allison University from 1946 to 1963, influencing a generation of artists in realism during the ascendancy of abstraction including Christopher Pratt (class of 1961) #3 and #4 above.

He left teaching to devote himself to painting and print-making full-time from a studio in his home in Sackville, New Brunswick on York Street; this building is now named Colville House. The house was donated to Mount Allison by the Colville family. It now serves as a museum and gallery dedicated to Alex Colville's life and work under the auspice of the Owens Art Gallery. A 1965 acrylic on Masonite painting To Prince Edward Island is one of his most well-known paintings, now held at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. See if HERE.

In 1963 his painting Man on Verandah sold at auction for $1,287,000 setting a record for a work by a living Canadian artist at that time. See it HERE.