William Cruikshank (painter)


William Cruikshank was a British painter and the grand-nephew of George Cruikshank. He studied art at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh, at the Royal Academy in London, and in Paris. His last studies were interrupted by the Franco-Prussian War.

Career

In 1871, Cruikshank settled in Canada, opened a studio in Toronto and for twenty-five years was an instructor in the Central Ontario School of Art, later the Ontario College of Art, teaching how to draw from the antique and from life. He claimed to have been responsible for bring the pen-and-ink technique of Europe to North America. As a major member of the Toronto Art Students' League, he encourage his students to follow the motto Nulla Dies Sine Linea. Eventual Group of Seven founder, J. E. H. MacDonald, would later say that the northern movement and search for a new Canadian art began with the work of Cruikshank and George Agnew Reid.
In 1894 he was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and acquired a considerable reputation as a portrait and figure painter, and as a painter of Canadian scenes. Some of his paintings are in the National Gallery of Canada.

Tom Thomson

It has been suggested that around 1906 or 1907, Tom Thomson took private lessons from Cruikshank at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Only two sources corroborate this however. The first is a single undated note from Cruikshank to professor James Mavor, arranging to bring a "Tomson" to meet him. Further complicating the matter is that the original class list no longer survives. The second is a letter from H. B. Jackson to Blodwen Davies, writing, "Tom studied from life & the antique in art school. If I remember right Cruikshank was the instructor." Cruikshank was likely Thomson's only art instructor.

Gallery

Citations

Literature

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