Florence Helena McGillivray

Florence Helena McGillivray (March1, 1864 – May 7, 1938), also known as F H. McGillivray, was a Canadian landscape painter known for her Post-Impressionist style. Her family home was in Whitby, Ontario. She lived in Ottawa from 1914 to 1928. She was also a teacher. In 1916, on a visit to his studio, she encouraged Tom Thomson.

Early life, education and career

Florence McGillivray was born in Pickering Township in Canada West on March 1, 1864. She was the eleventh of thirteen children, and the youngest female of the Scottish immigrant farmer, George McGillivray (1813–1894) and his wife, Caroline Amelia Fothergill McGillivray (1828–1909).

In 1870, the family moved to Inverlynn, a house located at 1300 Gifford Street in Whitby, Ontario. To this day, the property has remained in the possession of George McGillivray's descendants. The children attended a grammar school in Whitby, and since McGillivray had shown artistic talent in her early years, she attended the Central Ontario School of Art (now the Ontario College of Art) in Toronto, where she studied with William Cruikshank. McGillivray then began taking private lessons from teachers such as Farquhar McGillivray Knowles and Lucius Richard O'Brien.

In the 1890s, McGillivray was renowned for painting on china. she began to work in a style that reflected his influence, involving the use of the palette knife and with a heavier application of paint. That year, she showed her new work at the Salon des Beaux Arts. This technique was sympathetic to Tom Thomson, who admired her and said of her, "she is one of the best". She was part of the group of artists that linked the romantic-realist view of the railway artists in the 1880s and 1890s and the view of the landscape that characterized the work of the Group of Seven and their adherents following the World War I.

Contentment, c. 1913. Florence H. McGillivray Canadian, 1864 - 1938 oil on cardboard 41 x 32.7 cm Art Gallery of Ontario Midwinter, Dunbarton, Ontario, 1918 Florence H. McGillivray Canadian, 1864 - 1938, Watercolour over graphite on illustration board 40.2 x 50.6 cm, Purchased 1918 National Gallery of Canada (no. 1490)

Exhibitions 1913 Salon des Beaux Arts, Paris, exhibited Contentment 1914 - 1935 exhibited with the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts 1917 - 1938 exhibited with the Ontario Society of Artists 1920 - 1930 exhibition venues included Malloney's in Toronto, Continental Galleries in Montreal; and artist's own Frank Street Studio in Ottawa 1924 British Empire Exhibition, Canadian Section of Fine Arts, Wembley, England 1927 Exposition d'art canadien, Musee du Jeu de Paume, Paris 1928 Exhibition of Paintings of At Home and Abroad by F.H. McGillivray, A.R.C.A., O.S.A., Art Association of Montreal 1970 retrospective exhibition, Whitby Arts, Whitby, Ontario 2002 The Birth of the Modern: Post-Impressionism in Canadian Art, c.1900-1920, Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; travelled to Montreal, London (Ontario), Fredericton, and Winnipeg 2017 Finding Florence, retrospective exhibition, Station Gallery, Whitby, Ontario

Selected public collections Three of her paintings are part of the National Gallery of Canada collection, Midwinter, Dunbarton, Ontario (1918), Afterglow (1914), and St. Anthony Harbour, Newfoundland, (1926). the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre and galleries in Oshawa, Whitby, Kitchener, London, and Windsor also have her work in their collections.

Affiliations Florence Helena McGillivray was affiliated with a number of associations and groups during her lifetime. She joined the Women's Art Association of Canada where she studied painting on china with Mary Dignam, its founding president. Shown at the Royal Canadian Academy show that year, it was pronounced "capital" by a reviewer in the Montreal Gazette, November 19, 1937. McGillivray never married and had no children. She died at age 74 in Toronto, on May 7, 1938, and is buried in Oshawa's Union Cemetery.