John Herbert Caddy (June 28, 1801 – March 19, 1883) was a Canadian artist who painted watercolours, soldier, engineer, educator, diarist, and explorer.

Career

Caddy was born in Quebec City, Lower Canada and at the age of 14 travelled to England for training at the

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...

as an engineer. While there he also learned topographical sketching and painting, as did other military men who were artists earlier such as George Heriot. He was promoted to 1st lieutenant in 1827. Caddy subsequently travelled to the West Indies: Tobago (1828), St. Lucia (1833), St. Vincent (1834), to British Honduras (now Belize, 1838), to London, Ontario (1842) and finally, to Hamilton, Ontario (1851). In 1837, he had published a series he painted on the West Indies. In 1839, he and Patrick Walker led an expedition to the Mayan city of Palenque. On his return, Caddy prepared a text and illustrations from his diary and sketches for a report which he meant to publish as a book. These, along with fragments of earlier diaries, were finally collected and published in 1967. Caddy returned to Woolwich in 1841 as a captain. He chose London, Canada West as his next assignment. In 1844, he retired and got a job as a civil engineer for London. In this capacity, Caddy laid out plans for the growing community, and he acquired land in the town. He also began to paint Canadian landscapes, marines, animal and flowers. Hamilton Bay - John Herbert Caddy

In 1851, Captain Caddy moved to Hamilton where he lived until his death in 1883. He worked first as an engineer on the Great Western Rail Road, then became a full-time painter, concentrating on the Hamilton area but travelling to areas as far away as Lake Superior and New Brunswick. He opened a studio and served as an art instructor. He exhibited watercolours and oils in the annual provincial exhibitions from 1858 to 1868. Other members of Caddy's family were also artists.

Public collections

His work is in the collections of

Dundurn Castle Dundurn Castle is a historic neoclassical mansion on York Boulevard in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The house took three years and $175,000 to build, and was completed in 1835. The forty-room castle featured the latest conveniences of gas lighti ...

in Hamilton, Ontario; the National Gallery of Canada; the

Royal Ontario Museum The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) is a museum of art, world culture and natural history in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is one of the largest museums in North America and the largest in Canada. It attracts more than one million visitors every year ...

Library and Archives Canada Library and Archives Canada (LAC; french: Bibliothèque et Archives Canada) is the federal institution, tasked with acquiring, preserving, and providing accessibility to the documentary heritage of Canada. The national archive and library is th ...

, and the Art Gallery of Algoma.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Caddy, John Herbert 1801 births 1883 deaths 19th-century Canadian artists 19th-century Canadian painters Canadian male painters 19th-century Canadian male artists Canadian landscape painters Canadian watercolourists