Robert Holmes

Robert Holmes (1861 – May 1930), was a Canadian naturalist painter and artist-illustrator.

Biography Robert Holmes, born in Cannington, Ontario developed his skill in drawing as a youngster but his father, a blacksmith with six children, wanted him to become a doctor or teacher with a more secure means of a livelihood. Even without his father's support, he became a student at the Toronto Art School, studying with William Cruikshank and received certificates from the school in 1883 and 1884. in South Kensington in London, England with A.B. Piet, W.R. Lethalay and Gerald Moira. On his return to North America, he was a student at New York University. In 1904, with William Walker Alexander, he sketched in Algonquin Park in a canoe, being among the first Toronto artists to discover and sketch in the Park.

Holmes meticulously painted in watercolour over a hundred varieties of wild flowers and did intimate studies of the same flower in each of the four seasons. He always painted them in their natural surroundings. He also did illustrations, such as the ones he contributed to the Toronto Art Students' League Calendars or the six coloured illustrations he supplied for S.T. Wood's Rambles of a Canadian Naturalist (1916). He was the oldest faculty member at the Ontario College of Art when he died suddenly of a heart attack while addressing the students of the College at the Arts and Letters Club, Toronto. His watercolour paintings (more than 30 in number) Among his books was The Art of Gerald Moira, one of his teachers in England, by Harold Watkins.

A stone plaque to his memory is today located in the Guild Park in Scarborough, Ontario. A historical plaque was also placed in MacLeod Park, Cannington, 1967, in memory of Holmes.