George Agnew Reid
George Agnew Reid was a Canadian artist and painter. He is best known as a genre painter.
Reid was trained at the Central Ontario School of Art, Toronto in 1879, where he studied with Robert Harris, and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy from 1882 to 1885 where he was a protégé of Thomas Eakins.
He met his first wife artist Mary Hiester Reid at the Pennsylvania Academy and remained with her until her death in 1921. He also studied at the Académie Julian, with Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, and at the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and the Prado in Madrid.
He made a number of study trips to Europe, during which he visited France, Italy, Spain and Portugal. It was during this time that Reid turned from portraiture to genre, as in The Foreclosure of the Mortgage, making his name with narrative pictures to which he applied his training in Paris. Later in his distinguished career as a painter and teacher, he painted or coloured in pastel scenes of Canadian nature, espousing a modified form of Impressionism.
He was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1889, was President of the Royal Canadian Academy from 1906 to 1909, and was principal of the Central Ontario School of Art and Design from 1912 to 1918. He also created murals and private and public commissions, including one for Toronto's Old City Hall. In 1922, he married fellow artist Mary E. Wrinch..
George Agnew Reid died in 1947, leaving behind a body of work that often depicts scenes from nature, with much of his work now found in public and private collections.
