- October 30, 2017
Please join us for the launch of No Man’s Land: The Life and Art of Mary Riter Hamilton.
When: Monday, October 30, 7:00 p.m.
Where: McNally Robinson Booksellers (1120 Grant Avenue), Winnipeg.
Cost: FREE
Featuring special guest Patricia Bovey. Light refreshments will be served.
About the Book
What force of will and circumstance drove a woman with a burgeoning art career following years of study in European art schools from a comfortable life to one of hardship and loneliness in the battle zones of France and Belgium following the Great War?
For western Canadian artist Mary Riter Hamilton (1868–1954), art was her life’s passion. Her tale is one of tragedy and adventure, from homestead beginnings, to genteel drawing rooms in Winnipeg, Victoria, and Vancouver, to Berlin and Parisian art schools, to Vimy and Ypres, and finally to illness and poverty in old age. No Man’s Land is the first biographical study of Hamilton, whose work can be found in galleries and art museums throughout Canada.
Young and McKinnon’s meticulous research in unpublished private collections brings to light new correspondence between Hamilton and her friends, revealing the importance of female networks to an artist’s well-being. Her letters from abroad, in particular, bring a woman’s perspective into the immediate post-war period and give voice to trying conditions. Hamilton’s career is situated within the context of her peers Florence Carlyle, Emily Carr, and Sophie Pemberton, with whom she shared a Canadian and European experience.
Before being appointed to the Senate on November 10th, 2016, the Honourable Patricia Bovey was a Winnipeg-based gallery director and curator, art historian, writer, professor and, for many years, a management consultant in the arts and not-for-profit sector. Formerly Director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery (1999-2004) and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1980-1999), she was appointed Director Emerita of the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 2014. She was a founder of the Buhler Gallery at St Boniface Hospital. In 2015, she was the recipient of the Winnipeg Arts Council Investor’s Group Making a Difference Award.
Kathryn A. Young is a retired assistant professor of History at the University of Manitoba.
Sarah M. McKinnon is a former Vice-President, Academic at OCAD University, a former Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and a former faculty member and Curator at the University of Winnipeg. Currently, she is a consultant in higher education.
