Helen McNicollLife & Work

“McNicoll maintained a strong attachment to the fundamental principles of ‘pure’ Impressionism and pushed the style further than any other Canadian artist.”

– Samantha Burton

Helen McNicoll: Life & Work explores the impressive career of an artist who, until recently, has been relatively little known to the public. Celebrated in her own day as technically advanced and “profoundly original,” at the time of her death McNicoll had exhibited over seventy works in exhibitions in Canada and England, some of which are published here for the first time. The book describes the artist’s life from her early years in Montreal, examining the possibilities and limitations faced by a professional woman artist in the years just before the First World War, to McNicoll’s significant role in the transmission of Impressionism to Canada. Using her luminous canvases to discuss issues such as femininity and domesticity, rural labour, fashion, and tourism, the book reveals McNicoll’s body of work as diverse, complicated, and surprisingly modern.

Copyright Information

Banner Image: Helen McNicoll, The Chintz Sofa, c. 1913. Private collection, Thornhill, Ontario. Courtesy of Masters Gallery, Calgary.