Jack Weldon Humphrey (12 January 1901 – 23 March 1967) was a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

landscape and figure painter, mainly in watercolour. Art historian J. Russell Harper called him the "most significant eastern Canadian painter of his generation".

Biography

Humphrey was born in

Saint John, New Brunswick Saint John is a seaport city of the Atlantic Ocean located on the Bay of Fundy in the province of New Brunswick, Canada. Saint John is the oldest incorporated city in Canada, established by royal charter on May 18, 1785, during the reign of Ki ...

. He studied at the school of the

Boston Museum of Fine Arts The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

, with Philip Hale and with

Charles Webster Hawthorne Charles Webster Hawthorne (January 8, 1872 – November 29, 1930) was an American portrait and genre painter and a noted teacher who founded the Cape Cod School of Art in 1899. He was born in Lodi, Illinois, and his parents returned to Maine ...

at the

National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the fin ...

(1924-1929) and the

Art Students League The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

, New York, as well as at Charles Hawthorne's

Cape Cod School of Art The Cape Cod School of Art, also known as Hawthorne School of Art, was the first outdoor school of figure painting in America; it was started by Charles Webster Hawthorne in Provincetown, Massachusetts Provincetown is a New England town located ...

. He was a Tiffany Foundation student at Oyster Bay, Long Island, 1927. He travelled to Europe from 1929 to 1930, studying in Paris with André Lhote and at the

Académie de la Grande Chaumière The Académie de la Grande Chaumière is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France. History The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the Acad� ...

, and in Munich at the Hans Hofmann school. He also travelled in Italy, Holland, Belgium, and England. He visited Vancouver in 1933 and Mexico in 1938. Humphrey was a founding member of the

Canadian Group of Painters The Canadian Group of Painters (CGP) was a collective of 28 painters from across Canada who came together as a group in 1933. Formation The Canadian Group of Painters succeeded the disbanded Group of Seven, whose paintings of the Canadian wil ...

(C.G.P.) in 1933, the Eastern Group (1938) which evolved into the

Contemporary Arts Society The Contemporary Arts Society was founded by John Lyman in 1939 to promote modern art in Montreal, at a time when Canada was dominated by academic art. Lyman was the Society's first president. The additional officers were vice-president Paul-Émil ...

, the

Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour The Canadian Society of Painters in Water Colour (in French: La Société Canadienne de Peintres en Aquarelle), founded in 1925 is considered to be Canada's official national watercolour Society. Since the 1980s the Society has enjoyed Vice-regal ...

(Director, 1944; Vice-President, 1945); and the Canadian Society of Graphic Art (Regional Representative, 1946; Eastern Vice-President, 1951; Regional Representative, 1956, 1959). In 1951, he taught at Queen's University in

Kingston, Ontario Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada. It is located on the north-eastern end of Lake Ontario, at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River (south end of the Rideau Canal). The city is midway between Toro ...

. That year, he received a Doctor of Laws from the

University of New Brunswick The University of New Brunswick (UNB) is a public university with two primary campuses in Fredericton and Saint John, New Brunswick. It is the oldest English-language university in Canada, and among the oldest public universities in North Ameri ...

. From 1952 to 1954, he painted in Paris on a

Canadian Government The government of Canada (french: gouvernement du Canada) is the body responsible for the federal administration of Canada. A constitutional monarchy, the Crown is the corporation sole, assuming distinct roles: the executive, as the ''Crown-in ...

-Royal Society Overseas Fellowship. Returning from France in 1954, he experimented with painted more abstractly in his gouache and oil landscapes, while his watercolours focused on the intimate details of nature. He received a

Canada Council The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporations of Canada, Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the fede ...

Senior Arts Fellowship in 1960. In 1966-1967, a

retrospective A retrospective (from Latin ''retrospectare'', "look back"), generally, is a look back at events that took place, or works that were produced, in the past. As a noun, ''retrospective'' has specific meanings in medicine, software development, popu ...

exhibition of his work was organized by Stuart A. Smith for the

Beaverbrook Art Gallery The Beaverbrook Art Gallery is a public art gallery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. It is named after William Maxwell "Max" Aitken, Lord Beaverbrook, who funded the building of the gallery and assembled the original collection. It opened i ...

, Fredericton, N.B. that toured through Canada, circulated by the National Gallery of Canada. Humphrey's paintings of the harbour, streets and workers of Saint John in Canada established his reputation as an artist and his work extended to numerous portraits of friends and the city's children. Humphrey's approach made him a respected member of

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

's Contemporary Arts Society and the Canadian Group of Painters. He died of a heart attack on 23 March 1967 in hospital at Saint John, New Brunswick. He had been recovering from a recent surgery. His papers are in the National Gallery of Canada Library and Archives Jack Humphrey fonds.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Humphrey, Jack Weldon 1901 births 1967 deaths 20th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters Artists from Saint John, New Brunswick Landscape artists 20th-century Canadian male artists