Harold Mortimer-Lamb | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 21 May 1872 Leatherhead, England |
| Died | 25 October 1970 (aged 98) Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada |
| Occupation | Mining Engineer |
| Children | Molly Lamb Bobak, Oliver Mortimer-Lamb |
Harold Mortimer-Lamb (1872 - 1970) was an Anglo-Canadian mining engineer, journalist, photographer, and artist perhaps best known for championing the Group of Seven in the 1920s. He was the father of New Brunswick artist Molly Lamb Bobak.
Harold Mortimer-Lamb was born in Leatherhead, Surrey, England on 21 May 1872. He immigrated to Canada in 1889, settling in British Columbia. He began his career as a farmhand, then became a layreader for an Anglican Church. He met and married Katherine Mary Lindsay in 1896, and had six children with her - one which was stillborn and one which died in infancy. Four sons lived to adulthood: Oliver, J. Haliburton (who became a soldier in the First World War), Willoughby, and Lawrence. [1]
The family moved to Montreal and hired a housekeeper named Mary Williams (formerly Alice Price). [2] Harold's wife Kate had begun to take ill and is described as "sickly" from now until the end of her life. [2] At some point in their stay in Montreal, Harold experienced a mental-health crisis of some kind and resigned his position with the Canadian Mining Institute, wishing to return to BC; they instead instituted a transfer to the West Coast with a leave of absence. [2]
In 1920, the family moved back to British Columbia, taking Mary Williams with them. [2] At this time, Mary was pregnant with Harold's child; Molly Lamb was born in February 1920, just after the move. [1] Mary Williams stayed with the Mortimer-Lamb family for 22 years. [1] Kate died after 45 years of marriage to Harold. [3] Mary and Harold never married. In 1942, Harold Mortimer-Lamb married Vera Weatherbie, a muse of Frederick Varley's and a school friend of Molly's. [1] [4] Harold was 70 and Vera 33 at the time; this marriage lasted 28 years, until Harold's death at the age of 99. [3]
Most of his professional life was in the mining industry of Canada. He did, however, become interested in photography early on, specializing in soft focus romantic portraits.
He worked for the Bureau of Information for the B.C. Government. He became Secretary-Treasurer of the Provincial Mining Association of B.C.; Secretary of the Canadian Mining Institute and served on the staff of the Department of Mines in Ottawa. He was the founding editor of the British Columbia Mining Record. [5]
Mortimer-Lamb was appointed Secretary of the Canadian Mining Institute in the early 1900s which required him to relocate to Montreal.
While living in Montreal, he had the opportunity to meet, and become acquainted with, many of the leading artists of the day including Homer Watson, William Brymner, Maurice Cullen, Laura Muntz Lyall and later, members of the Group of Seven, in particular A.Y. Jackson. During this time, he also acted as the Montreal correspondent for the leading English art journal, The Studio. As an art critic he wrote in defence of the Group of Seven at a time when most other critics were attacking their work.
Around 1920, he left his position at the Mining Institute in Montreal to take up the post of Secretary-Treasurer of the BC Division in Vancouver. In 1926, he opened a gallery on Robson Street with fellow photographer John Vanderpant. Although their association was short-lived, the gallery continued and was a centre for music, poetry, and painting. Among the artists showcased were members of the Group of Seven. After his retirement from the mining industry in 1941, he himself began to paint, his works being exhibited in Montreal and Vancouver. [6]
As a photographer, Mortimer-Lamb's work was widely exhibited and he was considered a prominent member of the Pictorialist movement. [7] He organized the first major Canadian exhibition of Pictorialist photography in 1907 with Sidney Carter. [7] Mortimer-Lamb was eventually elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society and a member of The Linked Ring. For many years, he also fostered a keen interest in the arts, helping to found a small art club in Victoria and frequently contributing articles on the Canadian art scene to the Canadian Magazine and other periodicals. [6] Additionally, he wrote art criticism as well as about his experiments with photographic technique for international photography journals and for the Pictorialist publications Photograms of the Year and the Studio. [7]
In 1942, he married painter and model Vera (Olivia) Weatherbie. [8] His daughter was Molly Lamb Bobak, a well-known Canadian artist, and Canada's first woman war artist.
Harold Mortimer-Lamb died in Burnaby, BC on 25 October 1970.
Media related to Harold Mortimer-Lamb at Wikimedia Commons
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
Emily Carr University of Art + Design is a public art and design university located on Great Northern Way, in the False Creek Flats neighbourhood of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Roy Kenzie Kiyooka was a Canadian painter, poet, photographer, arts teacher.
William James Topley was a Canadian photographer based in Ottawa, Ontario. He was the best known of Ottawa’s nineteenth-century photographers and the most socially prominent one. Topley was noted for his portraiture of Canadian politicians and was a business partner of William Notman, having taken over Notman's Ottawa studio in 1872. A large number of photographs by Topley are now in the collection of Library and Archives Canada, including approximately 150,000 glass plates negatives and a set of 66 index albums covering the entire history of his Ottawa studios from 1868 until 1923.
Ian Wallace is a British-born Canadian artist, living and working in Vancouver, British Columbia. Wallace has been an influential figure in the development of an internationally acknowledged photographic and conceptual art practice in Vancouver called the Vancouver School since 1965.
N.E. Thing Co. was a Canadian art collective created by married artists Iain and Ingrid Baxter to operate in a commercial-like format for producing work from 1967 to 1978. It was based in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Canadian official war artists create an artistic rendering of war through the media of visual, digital installations, film, poetry, choreography, music, etc., by showing its impact as men and women are shown waiting, preparing, fighting, suffering, celebrating. These traditionally were a select group of artists who were employed on contract, or commissioned to produce specific works during the First World War, the Second World War and select military actions in the post-war period. The four Canadian official war art programs are: the First World War Canadian War Memorials Fund (CWMF), the Second World War Canadian War Records (CWR), the Cold War Canadian Armed Forces Civilian Artists Program (CAFCAP), and the current Canadian Forces Artists Program (CFAP).
Suzy Lake is an American-Canadian artist based in Toronto, Canada, who is known for her work as a photographer, performance artist and video producer. Using a range of media, Lake explores topics including identity, beauty, gender and aging. She is regarded as a pioneering feminist artist and a staunch political activist.
Thaddeus Holownia is a British-born Canadian artist and professor. He taught photography at Mount Allison University and served as the head of the Fine Arts Department, retiring in 2018.
Molly Lamb Bobak was a Canadian teacher, writer, printmaker and painter working in oils and watercolours. During World War II, she was the first Canadian woman artist to be sent overseas to document Canada's war effort, and in particular, the work of the Canadian Women's Army Corps (C.W.A.C), as one of Canada's war artists.
Bruno Bobak, was a Polish-born Canadian Official war artist and art teacher. His main medium was watercolour painting but he also produced woodcuts.
Samuel Bejan Tata was a Chinese photographer and photojournalist of Parsi descent. Tata grew up in Shanghai where he learned the basics of photography from several mentors including Lang Jingshan and Liu Xucang. Due to political unrest, he mostly confined himself in his early career to portraiture in the tradition of pictorialism.
Arthur S. Goss, also known as William Arthurt Scott Goss (1881-1940) was the City of Toronto's first official photographer.
Minna Keene, née Töneböne, was a German-born, self-taught Canadian pictorial portrait photographer, considered "hugely successful".
Sandra Semchuk is a Canadian photographic artist. In addition to exhibiting across Canada and internationally, Semchuk taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design from 1987 to 2018.
Vera (Olivia) Weatherbie (1909-1977) was a Vancouver painter and one of the first graduates from the Vancouver School of Decorative Applied Art. Weatherbie was known for her connections with the Group of Seven Painter, VSDAA faculty member, and co-founder of the British Columbia College of Arts, Frederick Varley.
Mary Schäffer Warren (1861–1939) was an American-Canadian naturalist, illustrator, photographer, and writer. She was known for her experiences in the Canadian Rockies in the early 20th century.
Mattie Gunterman, born Ida Madeline Warner, was a Canadian photographer and mining camp cook in British Columbia.
John Vanderpant was a Dutch-Canadian photographer, gallery owner and author. He made his living doing portrait work while becoming known as a major member of the International Modernist photography movement in Canada. He was a key figure in Vancouver's artistic community.
Gabor Szilasi is a Canadian artist known for the humanist vision of his social-documentary photography.
Hayashi Studio (1911–1942) was a film photography studio run by Japanese-Canadian photographers in Cumberland, British Columbia. The studio was closed shortly before the internment of Japanese-Canadians, as part of a broader climate of racism and xenophobia at the time.
