John Wentworth Russell

John Wentworth Russell (1879–1959) was a Canadian painter with a wide range of subjects and media – portraits (child subjects were a specialty of his), landscapes, still life, and the nude as well as illustrations for magazines, such as Vogue. Russell’s large (243.8 x 218.4 cm) painting A Modern Fantasy, of a reclining female nude echoing Titian but realistically depicted and wearing a hat, caused a sensation when shown at the Canadian National Exhibition (C.N.E.) in Toronto in 1927. Although many adverse comments were published, Prime Minister Mackenzie King stated of the work: "1 saw the painting at the Ex and thought it a marvelous work.

Career John Wentworth Russell was born in Binbrook, Ontario and raised in southern Ontario. He showed an aptitude for drawing at a young age. After studying at the Hamilton Art School and Art Students League, New York (1898–1904), he moved to Paris, France to study and work and lived there intermittently, In 1906, he exhibited in the Paris Société des Artistes Français for the first time two paintings titled Portrait and L'enfant au Coq. He was said to be a disciple of the School of John Sargent and joined and exhibited at the Canadian Art Club in 1909, one of his paintings Mother and Son being purchased by the National Gallery of Canada that year. The Globe called the tactile or tangible quality of his work "exceptionally fine". In the same year, he left for New York, then went back to Toronto before moving to Paris for the next twenty years, exhibiting regularly at the Paris Société des Artistes Français. the House of Commons; the Government of Ontario collection; the Art Gallery of Hamilton; the Reading Museum & Town Hall, England, and elsewhere.

Controversy In 1927, the C.N.E. exhibition’s art gallery nearly tripled its attendance over the previous year, in part because of a series of reviews and letters in the Toronto newspapers concerned with several paintings depicting nude subjects. Russell's A Modern Fantasy was the chief work under discussion, praised by critics and art professionals and denigrated by individuals and various women’s organizations of Toronto.

Legacy In 2010, a show titled The Group of One -- The Works of John Wentworth Russell, was exhibited at the Renaissance Gallery, Pender Island, British Columbia.