A. Curtis Williamson

Curtis Williamson (January2, 1867 April18, 1944) was a Canadian visual artist known for his portraits and figure painting; also genre and landscape. He was nicknamed "the Canadian Rembrandt" because of his dark, tonal style. Williamson was one of the founders of the Canadian Art Club, showed his work at its inaugural exhibition in 1907, and, like some of the other members, his work had a Hague school or Barbizon sensibility.

Career Williamson was born in Brampton, Ontario. In 1889, his father paid for him to study at the Académie Julian in Paris - where he began exhibiting in the Paris Salon in 1891 - and then in Holland. In 1893, he was elected to the Ontario Society of Artists and exhibited there almost extensively (1893–1922). In 1908, the understated manner he used in his paintings as in Fish Sheds, Newfoundland, was seen as startling.

He was a founding member of the Arts and Letters Club of Toronto with Lawren Harris and in 1913, Harris praised his work, calling it full of "half-subdued fire" in the Yearbook of Canadian Art. He died in Toronto at age 77.