Barbara Howard, RCA

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Barbara Howard, RCA (March 10, 1926 - December 7, 2002) was a Canadian artist and wood engraver.

Barbara Howard, the Canadian artist and wood-engraver, in 1984
Barbara Howard, the Canadian artist and wood-engraver, in 1984

Contents

[edit] Biography

Born in Long Branch, Ontario in 1926, Helen Barbara Howard was a professional artist who produced work consistently throughout her life, from her graduation in 1951 as an honours silver medallist from the Ontario College of Art, where she was a pupil of Will Ogilvie and Jock Macdonald, until her unexpected death in 2002. In the early 1950s she lived in London, England, studying at the St Martins School of Art and immersing herself in the English landscape. She also travelled to Europe, visiting galleries in Rome, Venice, Florence, Paris and Madrid. Returning to Canada, in the late 1950s and early sixties she was showing regularly at the Picture Loan Society, established by Douglas Duncan in 1936 to exhibit, sell and lend out the works of contemporary Canadian artists. Several Canadian public collections possess Howard drawings and paintings acquired via the Douglas Duncan estate, as Duncan was a great collector of her work.[1] In 1975 she was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts.

Wood engraving by Barbara Howard for the Gauntlet Press, 1977
Wood engraving by Barbara Howard for the Gauntlet Press, 1977

Howard was part of a circle of artists, writers and designers that included, most notably, her husband the poet Richard Outram, with whom she operated The Gauntlet Press[2], producing hand-bound letterpress volumes of Outram's poetry and Howard's wood engravings. These books are prized by collectors and can be found in many public collections such as the National Library of Canada[3], the Library of Congress, the British Library and the University of Toronto Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library. Rosemary Kilbourn, the noted Canadian wood engraver and a close friend since art college, taught Howard the skills she needed to make engraved images for The Gauntlet Press. Another close associate was the graphic designer Allan Fleming, whose Martlet Press published Twenty-Eight Drawings by Barbara Howard in 1970, a period when she was drawing the figure. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the Gauntlet Press also issued a series of letterpress broadsheets of Outram's poems, all of them designed (and many frequently illustrated) by Howard. In the early 1990s The Gauntlet Press switched from letterpress to digitally based production on the computer, renamed the Gauntlet Press Redivivus Electronicus.

Standing male nude, 25" x 19", by Barbara Howard, c.1965
Standing male nude, 25" x 19", by Barbara Howard, c.1965

Howard's interests as an artist were always entwined with her passion for the natural world and with her search to express the experience of being human as part of a greater whole.[4] In her sixties she devoted a decade of work to an extensive series of cetacean studies, Encounters with Whales. These enormous canvases, some as large as 18 feet across, have never been publicly exhibited.

In the late 1990s until her death in 2002, Barbara Howard returned to her lifelong fascination with light, night skies, the reflective surface of water. In these last paintings, the recurrence of circular elements, an abstraction of natural forms and a balancing of darkness and light all suggest the artist's deep feeling for the natural world and a celebration of its unity. Her paintings can be seen on the website Barbara Howard's Unfolding Visual World.[5]

Engraving, book design and binding by Barbara Howard for the Gauntlet Press, 1974
Engraving, book design and binding by Barbara Howard for the Gauntlet Press, 1974
Humpback whale: breaching, 7.5 ft x 13.5 ft by Barbara Howard, 1991
Humpback whale: breaching, 7.5 ft x 13.5 ft by Barbara Howard, 1991
Sun Pillar, 25" x 36", by Barbara Howard, 1993
Sun Pillar, 25" x 36", by Barbara Howard, 1993
White Sun & Evening Shore , 40" x 48", by Barbara Howard, 2000
White Sun & Evening Shore , 40" x 48", by Barbara Howard, 2000













[edit] Collections

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

  • National Gallery of Canada
  • Art Gallery of Ontario
  • Art Gallery of Hamilton
  • Windsor Art Gallery
  • Art Gallery of Northumberland, Cobourg, ON
  • Museum London
  • Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, B.C.
  • Glenhyrst Art Gallery of Brant
  • Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, ON
  • Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
  • Rodman Hall, St. Catharines
  • Province of Ontario Collection

CORPORATE COLLECTIONS

  • Mingan Island Cetacean Study (M.I.C.S.), Longue-Pointe-de-Mingan, Quèbec
  • Esso Resources
  • Pan-Canadian Petroleum
  • Northern Telecom
  • Citibank Canada
  • Canadian Tire Corporation
  • Mary Kay Cosmetics

[edit] Public Collections of the Gauntlet Press

  • The National Library of Canada, Ottawa
  • The Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, University of Toronto
  • Memorial University of Newfoundland Libraries, Rare Books Collection
  • The Bruce Peel Special Collections Library, University of Alberta
  • The University of British Columbia Library
  • University of Western Ontario, London, ON
  • The MILLS Research Collections, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON
  • The University of Calgary, Alberta, Special Collections
  • The Berg Collection, New York Public Library
  • The Harris Collection of Poetry and Plays, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
  • The Library of Congress, Washington, DC
  • University at Buffalo, New York, Special Collections
  • The Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass
  • The Bodleian Library, Oxford, England
  • The British Library, London, England

[edit] Exhibitions

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

  • Picture Loan Society, Toronto 1957, 1958, 1960, 1965
  • Wells Gallery, Ottawa, 1966, 1982, 1984
  • Fleet Gallery, Winnipeg, 1966
  • Victoria College, Toronto, 1966
  • Sisler Gallery, Toronto, 1974, 1976
  • Hart House, University of Toronto, 1975
  • The Event in the Mind, Prince Arthur Galleries, Toronto, 1980; catalogue
  • Yaneff Gallery, Toronto, 1983
  • Massey College, Toronto, 1984
  • Latcham Gallery, Stouffville, 1985
  • O'Keefe Centre, Toronto, 1986
  • National Library of Canada, 1986
  • University College, Toronto, 1987
  • Georgetown Library & Cultural Centre, 1988
  • The Arts and Letters Club of Toronto, 1993
  • Victoria Library, University of Toronto, 1995
  • Robarts Library, University of Toronto, 1999
  • The Upstairs Gallery, Art Gallery of Northumberland, 2003
  • Seeking Light: Last Paintings & Selected Drawings, Art Gallery of Northumberland, Cobourg, 2006; catalogue

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

  • Ontario Society of Artists, 1958, 1959
  • Women's Committee, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1958, 1969
  • Douglas Duncan Collection, Victoria College, Toronto, 1962
  • Toronto Collects, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1961
  • Women Artists, Canadian National Exhibition, Toronto, 1961
  • Canadian Artists, Eaton's College Street, 1961
  • Canadian Society of Graphic Arts, 1958, 1959, 1960, 1963
  • National Home Show, 1960, 1961, 1962
  • C.U.S.A.C. Travelling Show, Hart House, 1958-9
  • Women's Committee, London Art Gallery, 1962
  • Canadian Watercolours, Drawings & Prints, National Gallery of Canada, 1966
  • Douglas Duncan Collection, Windsor, London, Hamilton, 1967
  • Drawings and Sculpture, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1976
  • The Living Image, Macdonald Gallery, Toronto (3 artists); catalogue
  • R.C.A. Centennial Contemporary Exhibition, Toronto, 1980
  • Inaugural Exhibition, Academy House, R.C.A., Toronto, 1987-88
  • Art Under Fire, Academy House, R.C.A., Toronto, 1988
  • Fine Printing: The Private Press in Canada. Travelling exhibition: Toronto, Fredricton, Calgary, Grimsby, Saskatoon, Brandon, Pointe Claire, Halifax, Saint John, 1995-1997; catalogue
  • Toronto in Print, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, 1998; catalogue

[edit] Bibliography

  • Twenty-Eight Drawings by Barbara Howard, The Martlet Press, Toronto, 1970
  • Pictures From The Douglas M. Duncan Collection, University of Toronto Press, 1975
  • Passionate Spirits: A History of The Royal Canadian Academy of Arts 1880-1980, Rebecca Sisler, Clarke Irwin, Toronto 1980
  • The Invisible Woman, Hubert de Santana, Today magazine, The Toronto Star, Nov 8, 1980, p.10-11
  • Barbara Howard, Hubert de Santana, City & Country Home, Vol.3/ No.2, April 1984, p.132-141
  • A Sacred Trust: The Hidden Worlds of Barbara Howard, Hubert de Santana, Equinox No. 34, July/ August 1987, p.68-75
  • The White Line: Wood Engraving in Canada Since 1945, Porcupine's Quill, 1990. ISBN 0-88984-117-9
  • End Grain: Contemporary Wood Engraving in North America, Barberian Press Mission B.C., 1995
  • Fine Printing: The Private Press in Canada, The Canadian Bookbinders and Book Artists Guild, 1995. ISBN 0-7727-6015-2
  • DA: A Journal of the Printing Arts, Number 44. Special Issue on the Gauntlet Press Spring/Summer 1999, Porcupine’s Quill, Erin, ON
  • The Sounding Light: Richard Outram and Barbara Howard, The New Quarterly, Vol.21 No.4, 2001/2002
  • Canadian Notes & Queries, Number 63, 2003, John Metcalf, ed. Special issue devoted to the Gauntlet Press and the work of Barbara Howard and Richard Outram.
  • Transfiguring the World: Barbara Howard 1926–2002, Martha Fleming and Rosemary Kilbourn, SKETCH, Fall 2005, Ontario College of Art & Design Alumni Association.
  • Barbara Howard's Ecologies, Martha Fleming, Canadian Art, Summer 2006.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Pictures From The Douglas M. Duncan Collection, University of Toronto Press, 1975
  2. ^ A Brief History of Time at The Gauntlet Press (Or, Some Days the Earth Moved) [1]
  3. ^ Gauntlet Press fonds [2]
  4. ^ Barbara Howard's Ecologies, Martha Fleming, Canadian Art, Summer 2006
  5. ^ Barbara Howard's Unfolding Visual World [3]