Mary E. Wrinch

Mary Evelyn Wrinch who signed her name M. E. Wrinch (1877–1969), was a Canadian artist who created miniature paintings, oil paintings, and block prints, sometimes inspired by the Northern Ontario landscape. Emulated by the Group of Seven , she pioneered the 'Canadian style', painting landscapes with bold colours of the Algoma, Muskoka and Lake Superior regions, in situ. In her miniature paintings on ivory, she depicted her sitters with freshness and vitality. Her colour block prints are virtuoso examples of the medium. Upon her father's death, she emigrated at the age of eight with her mother to Bronte, Ontario, and after a trip back to England, in 1889, relocated to Toronto, Ontario. In the 1890s, Wrinch studied with George Agnew Reid (whom she married in 1922) along with artists Laura Muntz and Robert Holmes at the Central Ontario School of Art. Wrinch later returned to Toronto where she again studied at the Ontario College of Art & Design with Lyall, Holmes and Reid. and another in New York under Alice Beckington, before joining the Art Students’ League in New York. She continued painting landscape, but turned to the colour linoleum print, around 1928. She served as the Art Director at Bishop Strachan School (BSS) from 1901 to 1936. While holding this position, she designed the school's chapel interior, including a large stained-glass window.

Throughout her career in education and art, Wrinch was a member of many artist organizations. She was made an Associate member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts, and actively worked with the Ontario Society of Artists, a professional artists association advocating for visual arts in Ontario through exhibitions and special projects. Wrinch also was a member of the Heliconian Club and the Women's Art Association of Canada, which are two non-profit associations that connect and promote women's participation in the arts. Besides these groups, Wrinch was a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour, American Society of Miniature Painters, Canadian Handicrafts Guild and Canadian Society of Graphic Art. Her first commercial exhibition was at The Art Metropole (241 Yonge Street) in 1966.

Muriel Miller originally wrote on the artist's life and career in 1940.

Artwork

Scarboro'

c. 1935–1938

Print colour linocut on wove paper

31.5 x 28.6 cm; block: 25.6 x 26 cm Wrinch worked in many artistic mediums including oil paint, watercolour, drawing and printmaking. She is best known for her linoleum block style prints. (1931–1932) and Scarboro (1935–1938).

Her paintings are in the collections of the Art Gallery of Ontario, Museum London in Ontario, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the National Gallery of Canada and the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, among others.

Personal life In 1922, Wrinch married George Agnew Reid, a Toronto-based painter and architect who was her teacher at the Central Ontario School of Art. Wrinch was friends with Mary Hiester Reid (1854–1921), George Agnew Reid's first wife.